Crime Suspense Stories - Volume 1 -The EC Archives

 

I've been a sucker for EC comics ever since I've known about them and I always appreciate the various reprints that have come out over the years and I have a number of them. This seems to be a relatively new series of reprints and from what I see, it seems to be pretty comprehensive, if you start buying them all! Of course, since I already have various comps, I don't want to go crazy with these new ones, but I've started picking up a couple that I'm pretty confident I haven't seen the stories already.

The titles are, of course, pretty self-explanatory, although there is some crossover in that some of these "crime" stories could also qualify as "horror", as do some of the various sci-fi and other genres. This is not a bad thing, by any stretch, and, in fact, I think it shows that they knew what their audience was looking for - violence, suspense, death, gore and horrific twists where someone always gets some form of "justice" in the end!

The artists really sell these stories for me and there are some greats here - Johnny Craig, Marie Severin, Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, Graham Ingels, Jack Davis and more! Of course, these folks all worked on practically all of the EC titles at one point or another, but that prolificness just goes to show how talented - and overworked! - these people were!

Murder is the main theme here - murder for love, murder for revenge, murder for power, murder for money, murder by accident and whatever other reason they can think of! The "Crime" is the title doesn't go much farther than that - no real thieves or mobsters, although EC told some tales of those folks, as well. I suppose murder was lurid enough to draw people in and, as I said, there is a bit of horror involved, even to the point of some of the horror comic MC's introducing the stories.

There's even some of the original advertising included, along with some short - just a page or two - prose stories minus the drawings. Altogether, it's a really nice, slightly oversized package and all for a very reasonable price. Certainly recommended if you're a fan of EC Comics - and who isn't?!