EC Comics: the publisher the Comics Code destroyed

Two Gaineses

M. C. Gaines, a pioneer of the comic-book format and co-owner of All-American Publications, sold his DC interest in 1944 and founded Educational Comics to publish Picture Stories from the Bible and similar titles. He died in a boating accident in August 1947 and his son William, then a student, inherited a failing company.

The New Trend

From 1950, William Gaines and editor Al Feldstein relaunched the line as horror (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear), crime (Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories), science fiction (Weird Science, Weird Fantasy) and war (Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, edited by Harvey Kurtzman). Mad followed in 1952. The stories were literate, ironic and beautifully drawn; the horror hosts and twist endings became the template for the genre.

The end

EC was the public face of the 1954 campaign against comics. Gaines testified at the Senate subcommittee hearing in April 1954 and was asked whether the Crime SuspenStories #22 cover — a severed head held by the hair — was in good taste. The Comics Code that followed banned everything EC did best. Gaines cancelled the horror and crime titles, tried a short "New Direction" line under the Code, and from 1956 published only Mad, which as a magazine was outside the Code's reach. See What was the Comics Code Authority?.

Collecting EC

EC books are collected for artist and story; the Gaines File copies — Gaines's own file copies, sold from the 1980s — are the finest known. See Collecting EC Comics and What is a pedigree comic?. Browse EC Comics in the store.