Crime Illustrated | |
---|---|
Cover by Joe Orlando | |
Publication information | |
Publisher | EC Comics |
Schedule | Quarterly |
Format | Anthology |
Publication date | November/December 1955 - Spring 1956 |
No. of issues | Two |
Creative team | |
Created by | William Gaines, Al Feldstein |
Crime Illustrated was a black-and-white magazine published by EC Comics in late 1955 and early 1956. Part of EC's Picto-Fiction line, each magazine featured three to five stories. [1] The format alternated panels of typography with panels of illustrations. Thus, it was arranged in tiers like a comic book but eliminated hand-lettering, balloons and panel borders.
The first issue appeared with a cover date of November–December 1955. Crime Illustrated ran for a total of two issues. The Picto-Fiction magazines lost money from the start, and when EC's distributor went bankrupt, they had no choice but to cancel them.
The editor of Crime Illustrated was Al Feldstein. As with EC's comics, Feldstein was the most prolific writer of this title, and generally wrote up to three stories per issue. In addition to stories credited to him, Feldstein also wrote using the pseudonyms Maxwell Williams and Alfred E. Neuman. In a move suggested by publisher William Gaines, Feldstein included retellings of previous stories: the first issue's "Fall Guy for Murder" and "Mother's Day", and the second issue's "Screenplay for Murder" and "Pieces of Hate". Writers included Jack Oleck (who had contributed to EC's earlier publications), Richard Smith and John Larner.
Artists featured in Crime Illustrated include Joe Orlando, Bernard Krigstein, Reed Crandall, Graham Ingels, George Evans, Jack Davis and Johnny Craig.
Crime Illustrated was reprinted along with the other Picto-Fiction magazines in hardbound volumes by Russ Cochran (and Gemstone Publishing) in 2006 as part of his Complete EC Library. These reprints also included the first-time publication of the third issue (assembled in 1956 but never published by EC).
# | Date | Cover Artist | Story | Story Artist | Story Writer |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Dec 1955 | Joe Orlando | Fall Guy for Murder | Bernard Krigstein & Reed Crandall | Al Feldstein |
The Sisters | Joe Orlando | Jack Oleck | |||
Fool's Gold | Graham Ingels | Richard Smith | |||
Farewell to Arms | Reed Crandall | John Larner | |||
Mother's Day | George Evans | Alfred E. Neuman | |||
2 | April 1956 | Reed Crandall | Motive | Reed Crandall | Jack Oleck |
Fair Trade | Graham Ingels | John Larner | |||
Clean Sweep | Joe Orlando | Maxwell Williams | |||
Screenplay for Murder | Jack Davis | Al Feldstein | |||
Pieces of Hate | Johnny Craig | Alfred E. Neuman | |||
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books, which specialized in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction, dark fantasy, and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series. Initially, EC was owned by Maxwell Gaines and specialized in educational and child-oriented stories. After Max Gaines' death in a boating accident in 1947, his son William Gaines took over the company and began to print more mature stories, delving into genres of horror, war, fantasy, science-fiction, adventure, and others. Noted for their high quality and shock endings, these stories were also unique in their socially conscious, progressive themes that anticipated the Civil Rights Movement and dawn of 1960s counterculture. In 1954–55, censorship pressures prompted it to concentrate on the humor magazine Mad, leading to the company's greatest and most enduring success. Consequently, by 1956, the company ceased publishing all of its comic lines except Mad.
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