Number 2459: Johnny Craig on the EC frontier

Artist Johnny Craig joined the EC gang early on, like fellow artist Graham Ingels, editor/writer/artist Al Feldstein, and of course, William Gaines, who had inherited the job as owner/publisher when his father died in 1947.

Later on, as EC grew in popularity and sales, biographies were published of the individual artists. The biography of Johnny Craig on the last page of “Colorado Rose” looks to be a warm-up for the later biographies. (I can’t tell you if this was the only one from the early, pre-horror comics EC, because I am too lazy to look it up. How is that for not doing my homework?)

Craig was a good artist, but according to even Craig himself, he was slow. Later on he both wrote and drew, showing his talent at both, and even took over as editor of The Vault of Horror. Except for the sharp illustrations, “Colorado Rose” seems like a standard early EC story, which followed the trends of the rest of the comic book industry with  a Western comic to go along with a couple of crime comics and even a love comic.

I appreciate the artist biographies more now, because those were the days when comic books were under siege by Dr Wertham, teachers and parents, and later even the Congress of the United States. Guys like Johnny Craig, as well as the rest of the gang, could have chosen to remain anonymous, but they signed their work. Considering the times, I think Craig and his fellow artists were brave.

From Saddle Justice #5 (1949):

Number 2254: Gun-mad Lil gets revenge!

Lilly is a young bride, heading West on a stagecoach, which is stopped and robbed by a couple of road agents. Lilly’s husband is killed. She buries her husband in Gunville, then spots the murderers as she is talking to the sheriff! She tells the sheriff to do his duty, but he does not go into action, rather telling her while the killers ride away that Gunville is a town that believes in law and order. His idea of law and order seems to run along the lines of not chasing down criminals and holding them accountable.

Lilly goes on a rampage. Her mind must’ve snapped because she not only kills bad guys, she kills witnesses to her killing bad guys. By then becoming a murderer herself, she has law and order visited upon her.

The story, “Gun-Mad Lil,” appeared in Saddle Justice #7 (1949), an EC publication, done when EC was still following trends rather than creating them, as they later did with horror comics, Harvey Kurtzman’s war comics and later Mad.

The story was drawn by Ed Waldman, who signed his name in tiny letters on the bottom of the splash panel. Waldman was a journeyman comic book man who did some freelance work at EC during the forties.

Number 1007


Dead men--and women--tell no tales


Saddle Justice was an EC Comics entry into the field of Western-themed comic books, before they got into the New Trend comics that would make them infamous.

I like the alliterative titles of these stories, and the female protagonists, both of whom are as rough-and-tumble, if not more so, than the men they go up against. Johnny Craig did "The Lady Longrider" and Graham Ingels drew "The Grinning Gun Girl," setting the mood on the first page with the symbolic skull.

[SPOILER ALERT] The lessons of "Gun Girl" are muddled, especially in the last three panels when the law closes in. The posse decides to shoot down psychotic Sally "in cold blood" because it's the "only way we can stop her from killing more people!" The sheriff would rather "take her in alive. . .[but] no sense in running any more risk with a killer like her!" so they shoot her. As she lays dead the sheriff moralizes, "Reckon she was a bad one...human life didn't mean a thing to her it seems!" That's because even in death she has her grin and after shooting her in cold blood, he says, "See, she's still grinning! Sure was cold-blooded...even about her own death!" The code of the West in action! Another crime comics ending, where the law is just as brutal as the criminals they are chasing.

From Saddle Justice #6, 1949: