‘EC Covers: Artist’s Edition’ (review)

Art by Johnny Craig, Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood,
Al Feldstein, Jack Davis, Reed Crandall, Bill Elder,
George Evans, Graham Ingels, Bernie Krigstein,
Frank Frazetta, Shelly Moldoff, Al Williamson,
John Severin, Basil Wolverton
Introduction by Thommy Burns
Edited by Scott Dunbier
Published by IDW Publishing

Comics collectors tend to all get lumped together in the general public’s collective mind. With the mainstreaming of Marvel movies and such, the cliché of the overweight, deodorant-challenged nerds living in their parents’ basement has been upgraded a tad but the nerd part is still there.

But like every other large group, there are factions, and one of the most obsessive factions of this one is the EC Comics collector. The EC Fan-Addict. These would be the folks that the late, misguided Dr. Fredric Wertham was convinced would grow up to be stranglers, ax murderers, arsonists, and general ne’er-do-wells. And their kids. And THEIR kids, now, too.

The fact is, however, that EC fans are beyond question the nicest and friendliest comics fans of them all. They also tend to be the among the smartest and the most appreciative of art.

Recent years have offered a cornucopia of delights for EC fans and collectors with a number of impressive reprint projects culminating in Grant Geissman’s astonishing complete EC history.

But the hits just keep on comin’! At hand today is Scott Dunbier’s latest IDW Artist’s Edition, this one focusing on a treasure trove of EC Comics covers, as always scanned in remarkable detail from the original art.

Hardcore fans have already seen these covers, of course, but never quite like this, and never all in one place like this. The true joy here, as with the 65 volumes that preceded this one, is in seeing the process, the flaws, the ink, the white paint, red lines, paste-ups and paste-overs, the up-close imperfections of the lines that look SO perfect on the final printed ten-cent product.

Covers, of course, are a whole different animal than actual stories, and there have always been some artists who excel at one over the other. Covers gave the artists the opportunity to be genuine illustrators of the old-school magazine type that dominated the American art field at the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th. Artists like Jack Davis seemed to really enjoy that. The Davis examples here give the clear impression that he spent much more time and effort on his covers than the relatively small amount he was being paid called for. Hundreds of lines, for instance, have been used to create pockets of light and shadow in a deceptively simple illustration of a little girl selling lemonade in front of a store on an Impact cover.

Johnny Craig—a very clean illustrator—was responsible for some of EC’s most controversial covers and they’re all here in grisly detail where you can study his skillful use of blacks and speculate on his artistic choices.

Al Feldstein’s artistic legacy has long been obscured by his decades of editing Mad. His art style may never have been as flashy as that of the more lionized EC artists but looking at his cover work here, one has no doubt that in any other company, he’d have been a star!

A fan-favorite then and now, and an obvious influence on the young Bernie Wrightson, Ghastly Graham Ingels’ Haunt of Fear covers seen here are often cited as the very best horror comics covers ever done by anyone.

Bill Elder, Bernie Krigstein, George Evans, Al Williamson, and John Severin did far too few covers for EC but they’re here for study as well, along with the one-off contributions of Frank Frazetta and Basil Wolverton. There’s even a Sheldon Moldoff Moon Girl! Reed Crandall was too good for comics, but he’s here with his pirate painting homages.

The work of all the artists is presented alphabetically, with my personal highlights toward the end—Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood. If I recall, some or all of the Wood covers are in his earlier IDW book but still so cool to see, and the Kurtzmans include lots of roughs for Mad covers. Kurtzman and Wood were so very different as illustrators with the latter, in this period, improving by leaps and bounds and throwing in as much detail as he could. Harvey, meanwhile, was an impressionist and a minimalist, rarely adding anything that he didn’t feel needed to be there to get across the point of his illustration. His war covers are sometimes heartbreaking but one can almost feel the tension and stress. These were never the gung-ho war comics found at other companies.

Pluses: As always with this series, the plus is that you can spread this thing out on a table and study every page with a magnifying glass for hours. There’s also one Craig cover I’d never seen before—a later commission.

Minuses: I found one very embarrassing typo in my PDF review copy but for all I know that got fixed for the print edition.

Bottom line: EC fans! Hey, look! (as Kurtzman would say.)

Booksteve recommends.