Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

Entertaining Comics did more to change the face of comic books than any other company - more by the restrictions that were bought in in reaction to their"New trend" in explicit violence and highly sexualised women than in the comics themselves. That is not to say that their effects were merely transient - the Comics Code Authority no longer dictates the rules in the comic world, and the major shift that EC achieved, to bring adults into the comic reading arena, is more evident now than ever before. The Vault of Horror Volume 1 reprints, on great stock paper with stunning clarity and beautiful new colouring, the first half dozen issues of that comic featuring work by Al Feldstein, Graham Ingles and Johnny Craig in styles which were in advance of som many of their contemporaries but soon to fall out of fashion, to be replaced by the anatomical exagerations of Kirby, Ditko, et al. The stories are predicatable, if only because they set the template, and some of the art can be a little crude, but so many gems in this volume suggest that these library quality collections are worth having in their own right and not only as investement pieces (the now out-of-print "Tales from the Crypt" first volume sells for three times its cost price in the second hand market). subsequent