Number 1955: Wallace Wood, “The Man from the Grave!”

In Russ Cochran’s 1985 reprints of Haunt of Fear, artist Roy Krenkel gives a nightmarish vision of artist Wallace Wood: “You’d come to Wally’s door and you realize Wally had been up all night. You ring the bell repeatedly. The door finally slowly opens and Wally stands there with an absolutely glazed look in his eyes. He’d be walking like a mummy, and he’d slowly amble in and guzzle some fruit juice and go back to the drawing board. With all his brilliant imagination, everything is done totally automatic, a real frozen zombie way of life. Why it didn’t kill him I’ll never know. The guy was totally obsessed with work, really hung up on hard work . . .”

Bill Mason follows that comment with a paragraph about today’s story: “‘The Man from the Grave’ matches an excellent Gardner Fox script with the best job Wallace Wood ever did on a horror story. Roy Krenkel’s 1972 reminiscence of the young, workaholic Wood corroborates what is already clear from the artwork: that “The Man from the Grave” is not just another assignment to Wood, but a fable of his own life as an artist.”

This is a black line version of the story I found a few years ago on the internet, from The Haunt of Fear #4 (1950):

Number 1935: Ghastly's real-life horror

Graham “Ghastly” Ingels’ gothic and moody artwork for EC Comics can still send a shiver to anyone encountering his work for the first time. But Ingels struggled with alcoholism, and it was (according to some) at EC that his drinking got worse. In an article in Filmfax Outré #5 (1996), author/interviewer Don Vaughn tells of Ingels’ drinking: “Ingels quickly became one of EC’s premiere [sic] talents, drawing the lead story in . . . Haunt of Fear, secondary stories for the two other horror title and the occasional crime tale. It was a grueling schedule, but Ingels was fast with a brush and had little trouble keeping up, says fellow EC alumni [sic] George Evans.

“It was during this period, associates recall, that Ingels’ drinking started to get out of hand. His work never suffered, but he occasionally missed deadlines, forcing EC editor Al Feldstein to give him advanced deadlines so that publishing schedules wouldn’t be affected. Sometimes, say friends, Ingels would disappear for days at a time — often with the completed artwork under his arm. Amazingly, he never once misplaced it.”

In the article Evans describes a ride home with Ingels after Ingels had imbibed several beers. “We would be tearing along at 65 miles per hour on the parkway and I would see lights a mile ahead and he would suddenly hit the brakes. Then we would be approaching traffic and he would put his foot on the gas pedal. At a given point, I would say, “Hey, Graham, you’re coming up on that pretty damned fast!” And he would say, “Not to worry, George, I’ve got everything under control.”

So Ingels drove drunk. He is lucky he and his passengers — or innocents in another car — didn’t end up looking like the cadaverous creatures he sometimes drew. As the article goes on, in later life Ingels backed off drinking so much, but by then it had ruined his marriage and his relationship with his children. Before he died in 1991 he reconciled with his daughter, but not his son. Alcoholism was the horror story Ingels lived. But there is some sort of happy ending: Ingels became a respected art teacher in Florida, and author Vaughn quoted some comments from Ingels’ students praising his teaching and artistic ability.

In a more traditional sense, Ingels’ paper nightmares, those he drew for EC Comics, are readily available in various forms, deluxe hardcover compilations to the original pre-Code comics to reprints of those comics. In the case of “Nobody There!” from Haunt of Fear #16 (1952), these are scans of the original art I am posting with grateful approbation to Heritage Auctions, who sold these eight pages for $28,680.

Number 1844: Television terror

Our family got a television in 1950, and the terror — television addiction — set in.

Okay, that is my story. The story you came here to see is from The Haunt of Fear #17 (actual #3), in 1950. “Television Terror!” was written and drawn by Harvey Kurtzman before he became an editor at EC Comics. I am presenting it in black line because the way it was drawn and inked it looks more like the black and white TV that was the standard of the television industry then and for years to come. It is also an example of the way early television was sometimes presented, as radio with pictures.

Number 1782: EC fans thrown to the wolves!

This story, shown in the original art scans that are available on the Heritage Auctions site — thank you, Heritage! — is a clever work of suspense. [SPOILER] Yet it is ultimately frustrating for the reader. I recall it caused some readers to write, wanting to know who paid the price to keep a coach full of people ahead of a pack of hungry wolves.[END SPOILER]

I am asking my readers...is this story, credited to Al Feldstein, one of those EC swipes? It seems that I have either read or heard it told, before EC did it.

Jack Davis’s artwork fits the story well, but seems a bit hurried...as hurried as the characters trying to outrun the wolves. All in all, though, I think it is good fun.

From The Haunt of Fear #13 (1952).

Number 1767: The cut-up

The mad magician, man, he is really mad! He has a plan to cut someone in half and put them back together. The biggest and baddest magic trick of all. Too bad he can’t make it work. It seals the fate of at least one victim, a guy who came across the magician’s path, who we see chained to a wall pleading for his life. We are left to imagine his awful demise.

This tale, drawn by Harry Harrison and Wallace Wood for EC Comics’ Haunt of Fear #15 (actual issue #1, 1950), is from the very beginnings of the EC horror comics, and like others of its time, is feeling its way around what is really horror, or is just horrible. The plot of “The Mad Magician” is born of innumerable “shudder” pulps, and although well drawn, is hokey.

As you may know, Harry Harrison went into other endeavors after his comic book career, writing among them. He is well thought of for his science fiction work, including several popular novels. But he didn’t write this story. Fred von Bernewitz’s Complete EC Checklist credits it to Gardner Fox. Note the magician’s name of Boris Petaja. Emil Petaja was a well-known figure in science fiction circles, who also wrote several novels.

My scans for this story came from the Gladstone 1990 reprint from the double-sized first issue of The Vault of Horror, which includes a reprint of HOF #1.

Number 1219: Baseball by moonlight

Ty Cobb (1886-1961) was an awfully great baseball player and a greatly awful person. There are many stories of his nastiness. Despite the records he set and his accomplishments on the field he's just as well known for his bad temperment, his aggression and intimidation of opposing players. The story is that Cobb filed his steel cleats to be razor sharp, and when he stole bases he slid into base “with his feet up and steel showing.”

I'm sure that Ty Cobb was the inspiration for “Foul Play” in Haunt of Fear #19 (1953). The story, with its gory ending, was fairly typical EC-revenge. But it was brought before a stunned public of non-comics readers with a page in Seduction of the Innocent (1954) by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

The caption reads, “A comic-book baseball game. Notice the chest protector and other details in the text and pictures.”

In 1986 I attended a panel with Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis at the San Diego Con. Davis made mention of the horror comics and the trouble they caused. Speaking of the Senate hearings and uproar over them Davis said, “I'd lie awake at night and think, did I cause this?”

This is the infamous baseball story, drawn by Jack Davis, and written by editor Al Feldstein.