About Heroes

Author: Various
Artist: Various
Publisher: EC

For the past two years during the month of October we have done a Halloween special podcast. To be more specific it covers the horror genre in comics. If you have heard them, you know how much I love EC's (Entertainment Comics) Tales From the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, and Vault of Horror. But each of those books had a beginning somewhere else. Since 2006 EC has been publishing re-printings of all their comics in a new EC Archive Edition. Each volume is printed in full color and includes six comics or about 20+ stories.

Crime SuspenStories was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. This was a crime comic that ran for 27 issues, ending with the 1955 issue. Of course this all happened when the Comics Code Authority whitewashed all comic books to remove all themes of horror and violence. And if you have seen the infamous cover to issue 22 Crime SuspenStories, you can tell why this was one of their primary hits.

The first volume contains the original first six comics in their entirely. There is an introduction by novelist Max Collins (Road to Perdition, Ms. Tree, and Dark Angel). These first six issues collect a total of 24 stories mainly focusing on noir-styled detective stories that had the classic O Henry twist endings. The stories range from detective stories to stories of revenge and then to the occult which you can see spawned the titles like The Vault of Horror. To be honest, they feel more like horror stories than detective stories. For the cover, they used the classic cover to issue five, which is a story called The Sewer.

Overall the volume is a fantastic collection of old stories, that seem timeless due to the wonderful talent of the creative team. I have to say that Johnny Craig is a master of his craft. I had seen his covers countless of times, but his interior pages are some of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of art I have ever seen. The colors really make not only his pencils stand out, but the rest of the artist like Jack Kamen, Graham Ingles, and the legendary Havery Kurtzman. Of course the colors wouldn't be so dazzling without the glossy pages it is printed on. However, there are a few pages, at least in my copy that seem like the art is printed in low resolution. But, those are nothing more than five pages and the rest of the book looks phenomenal. I can't recommend this book highly enough and cannot wait for the next volume of this great series. A