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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
Strange Suspense : The Steve Ditko Archives volume 1 - Blake Bell (ed)
0 comments Posted by Mike at 07:30Steve Ditko is probably one of the greatest (and one of the most divisive) comic book artists of the Silver Age. From his Atlas pre-superhero horror and mystery stories, though the classic work on Doctor Stange, Hulk, and Spiderman, taking in his Charlton superhero work, and oddities like "Hawk and Dove" for DC, and onto his Ayn Rand inspired (and proselytizing) indepent work, there are fans who love him for what he achieved in his early days, and loath him for the way he refused to play the fanboy game and become the passive idol they desired.
But before all the times of adulation and excoriation, there were the days when Ditko was a learner, plying his trade for the small, low-paying comic book publishers in the days before the Comics Code stifled the medium for a generation. This volume prints all of Ditko's pre-code work, most of it for Charlton, in a beatiful hardback volume on heavy stock paper. It looks as if the artwork has been reprinted from stats of the comic pages, with their register slippages and mistakes. I suspect that that is the only form that the comic pages are now available in, the originals having long gone to feed furnaces or line trash cans. And these are, it must be emphasised, the works of an artist learning his trade. Many of the trademarks are already present - the floating heads, the closing in camera shot, the distorted faces. There is, too, a clumsiness, as if the pages were being drawn at high speed (and given the kind of page rates these guys were payed, they drew fast or starved). So, don't go into this book expecting the fine delineation of Ditko on Doctor Strange, or the sharp scripting of Stan Lee in his Tales of Suspense majesty. Enjoy, instead, the development of a talent, the first stretchings of the artistic muscle - it is only by seeing where he came from that you can tell just how far he managed to travel.
A great biography of one of the true masters of the comic book art form; Steve Ditko.
An engrossing trip though the troubled relatinship between the creator of Spiderman, the industry that milked his talent, and the fans who adored his early work, abused his generosity, and eventually abandoned him.
Beautifully illustrated, with wonderful black-and-white full page repros of Strange Tales splash pages, and even featuring a complete reprint of his first ever published story, making you realise that the Ditko talent hit the industry fully formed and as mature as the greats of the fifties.
How highly can I praise this book? How strongly can I recommend it.
Words almost totally fail me.
Just do yourself a favour.
Who would have thought that the Superman myth could be made fresh all over again?
