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| Don't take for Granted |
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| New readers start here |
The story moves at a hectic pace, and there are colourful characters aplenty mixed in with some great invention (Larry the Lark, the living fortune-telling machine is one to remember). More widely read people than me might be able to detect influences, but to me Aaronovitch is an original - light-hearted and black-hearted at one and the same time, full og plot and full of wit. Looking forward to the next one.
Unputdownability : I think I'll go to bed early and do some reading...
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| That sinking feeling... |
TftC lacks the variety of, say ShockSupenStories - and although its stories tend to have a moral (albeit most of them are along the lines of "Do this, and someone will take revenge on you from beyond the grave") there is nothing which comes close to the social commentary stories , and none of the adaptations of other writers' works (like the Ray Bradbury's seen elsewhere).
You can forgive the lack of variety - Bill Gaines provided most of the plots for Al Fedstein to write the stories, for most of the EC line of seven bi-monthly titles. Do the maths - that fourteen short stories a month, every month. No wonder the plots could be a little samey (or even "inspired" by other media - note the number of times a Wax Museum provides the setting).
Still - you can imagine the chill these stories gave the unsophisticated juvenile reader, and some of the artwork is pretty ghastly (in the best possible sense). And you can equally imagine how parents siezed up the EC horror line as the cause of all their problems (in much the same way that, say "Civil War" bubblegum cards outrgaed British parents in the 1960s, and punk rock in the late 70s). Every generation needs something other than their own failings to take the blame for the inevitable youth disaffection. Poor old Bill Gaines - it was him and the Communists, and his comics were easier to spot.
Volume 1 now sells for around the £200 mark - not sure that I am completist enough to go that far. But I shall continue to pick up odd volumes of the EC archive whenever I see them at a decent price.
Unputdownability: Like a big box of chocolates, one or two taste great, but the the whole lot in one sitting 'll make you a little bit icky.
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
A shock-troop invades a small American town, bent on eliminating every single inhabitant. A small handful stand against them and by a series of lucky coincidences, and the ability to stand almost any amount of pain (toes bitten off, ruptured kidneys, self-amputation, and no amount of being thrown across rooms)... but why spoil the ending for you? 
Hundreds of heads roll, much blood is spilled, the tension is racked up here and there, but it isn't a book to pick up again in a few years time and think "I really enjoyed it last time, let's give it another go.
