Weird Fantasy (1950 - 1954)

EC's sci-fi and fantasy line of comics have delighted me since I first discovered them via the reprints (thank you Russ Cochran) I began buying back in the 1990s. I recently re-organized my bookshelves and, like any other well-adjusted 44 year old out there, put all of my ECs (and my Bongo Comics, but that's a story for a different post) above the computer for easier access. 

If you're unfamiliar with EC, I implore you to google or otherwise explore the subject. It's such an important and entertaining chapter of comic book history. All I intend to do here is share some panels that caught my eye over the past few weeks. Chances are you don't need any of this, but here's the broadest of backgrounds:

- When Max Gaines, one of the big comics guys of the Golden Age of comics, did and left his company to his son William, Gaines the Younger William immediatel sets about publishing a crazy run of kick-ass awesomeness, including but not limited to Mad, Weird Science, Tales from the Crypt, and Vault of Horror. Light years ahead of the rest of the market and widely imitated.

- Tying the proliferation of violent comics to the rise of adolescent crime - and fudging his statistics to prove it - Dr. Fredric Wertham earned the enmity of generations of comics-readers to come for successfully getting Congress to do what Congress does best: ruin everything for everybody. The newly established Comics Code made most of the EC's comics unpublishable, and the company became a one-magazine (Mad) operation. 

Oh, so much more to the story, but moving on to:

1.

SOME VISUAL ATTRIBUTES OF EC

Here let me switch from EC in general to Weird Fantasy specifically. Here are some of the things you find in damn near every story of the series.

Short skirts (and not just for the ladies) and bug-eyed monsters. And other you-know-what-you're-getting-into illustrations.

Word balloons or captions that push everything else out of the way.

And finally, the twist, ironic ending.

The twist ending is of course no invention of EC's, but the company employed the technique so memorably (one might even say pathologically) that the AV Club once had a game of guessing the ironic twist at the end solely from the first few panels. They weren't the only ones; the two are tied together in the popular imagination. Or so many learned people have said. (If you want to know what unlearned people say - one in particular - then read on, Macduff!)

I bring all this up only to say: there are certain trade-offs a modern reader has to make to engage with any Golden (or very early Silver) Age material, even stuff so ahead of its time than EC. 

Enough blather? Good! Let's move on to:

3.

SOME TITLE PAGES

I'll do a cluster-credit at the end, but this is obviously Harvey Kurtzman.

There's a lot of Stephen King on this page.

Not the Steve Coogan/ Rob Brydon show. Or the Peter Fonda movie. Or: any other Trip.

4.

These two stories need to be read to be fully appreciated. "A Man's Job" imagines a future where a radical feminist movement so profoundly rocks the order of the world that men undergo a biological change.

...

It's all such a twisted parody of 2018 that I don't know what to say. Not so much "The End" but it treads a similar path through suddenly explosive political terrain. A passing comet renders every man sterile and every woman barren, so in a last-ditch effort to save humanity, the men open a portal to the past, picking Grand Central Station in 1950 as a logical enough point to snatch folks.

But, their calculations are (gulp!) ten feet off.

I wish this story had been brought up more during the Great Bathroom Wars of recent memory. "Don't you realize we're committing suicide?! I'M NOT MAD, I'M FROM THE FUTURE!!"

5.

Damon Knight's short story "To Serve Man" first appeared in November 1950 of Galaxy Science Fiction. The Twilight Zone episode adapting it came out in 1962. Weird Fantasy #7, which featured "Come Into My Parlor", came out in 1951. It is by no means an adaptation of "To Serve Man," but the similarities are unmistakable. Of course, both have their roots in the sort of devil comes to town, grants wish, but with a twist the protagonist only learns at the end in innumerable other tales.

This guy's instant reaction is great.

OH BUT IT IS, STEPHEN.

6.

SOME RANDOMS

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I'm not quite sure why I 'capped this one.

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Nor these. Sheesh. My screencapping ethos has failed me. All the weirder because there are a dozen more sci-fi-y panels I thought I'd grabbed but apparently did not. I probably saved them to the wrong place. Kind of kills the whole "Scenic Route"ness of the entire post, doesn't it? Nothing but the best here at Dog Star Omnibus, Inc.!

7.

FOUL PLAY

I pulled my copy of Grant Geissman's Foul Play ("the art and artists of the notorious 1950s EC Comics!" Side note: I always bristle when people say "EC Comics." I know it's more or less entered the lexicon that way but it's like when people say "MLB Baseball." The "Baseball" is already in the "MLB," Jerk!) off the shelves. Whereupon I realized that the softcover binding is already starting to come undone on this thing. Ditto for my other EC book that I bought at the same time maybe 10 or 11 years ago. What the hell. I have softcover books of comparable size from the 1960s that are still together. Let that be a lesson to me: always get the hardcover.

Still two wonderful books, though. Loaded with interviews, behind-the-scenes (and some exclusive) artwork, essays, you name it.

The two sections on Joe Orlando and Wally Wood - who were friends and collaborators and two of the brightest stars in the EC-and-especially-Weird-Fantasy firmament - are especially great.

A painting by Joe that hung in the EC offices for years.

Bill Gaines was a generous boss, and he organized yearly trips to exotic locales for his regular MAD contributors. As a thank you, Joe painted this street scene from Port-Au-Prince and added his boss as a vendor hawking busts of Alfred E. Neuman and back issues.

Revisiting this book reminded me of the powerful "Judgment Day" story, as well as the even more powerful behind-the-scenes stuff behind it. First some panels from the story - if I did my job right, there should be no plot summary required.

The tour eventually goes to the "blue" robot factory.

I love the gold robot's reaction. Probably a familiar refrain in the early 1950s from certain quarters.

I just want to say a couple of things about the above. Notice how it's straightforward but not particularly heavy-handed (for 1950s comics context, I mean - basically, all caption-writing in the Golden/Silver Age was as over-the-top as possible.) It's morally courageous - particularly for the early 50s, when Jim Crow was still the law of the land - without being shrill or obnoxious. It's basically the most Star Trek-y episode ever. 

Compare/ contrast to any similar tale told since the turn of the century. It's so ridiculous how this topic has become just a blunt instrument with which to bludgeon your political opponents and endlessly trigger your fellow travelers. Indeed, a comicscube tribute - typically, for that site - does just that under guise of celebrating it.

Now (to further contrast then and now) here's how that went down behind the scenes. (For the full story, see here.) After the whole brouhaha with Congress and Wertham, the industry was now under the thumb of the Comics Code Authority, led by Judge Charles Murphy, who, to put it mildly, really had it in for EC. When the story was submitted to the CCA, Murphy said forget it, you've got to change the last panel, the astronaut can't be black. Feldstein said the last panel was "the whole goddamn point of the story." Murphy said sorry, change it (and don't curse at me.) Feldstein, keeping his cool, said, Judge, it really seems you're not listening here; we were promised a fair hearing when we (EC helped set up the Comic Magazine Association of America, the immediate forerunner to the CCA) agreed to this. Murphy said "There's nothing to discuss here; change it." Feldstein wouldn't give in and went to Bill. Bill called Murphy on the phone and threatened to hold a press conference; there was absolutely no way they were backing down. Murphy said okay, fine, but you have to remove the perspiration in the last panel. We can't have "black skin glistening."

Bill stared at Al; Al stared back at Bill. They both stared at the speakerphone. "Fuck you," he said and hung up. EC published the story with no alterations, but the victory was somewhat Pyrrhic. After standing up to Congress and realizing this sort of fight would be replayed every month he was in business, Bill cancelled the entire EC line except for Mad. 

If anyone is confused, the Judge Murphys of the world not only still exist; their objection (and their censorship) just seems to have become preoccupied with the skin color of the creators of the comic, not the astronaut in the last panel. 

And to them - and to the Judge Murphys - I have similar sentiments to Bill and Al. Ray Bradbury said it best:

Happy Halloween, kids, and long live EC.

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