EC Comics, which specialised in tales of horror, crime and suspense, and was shut down within the “ethical panic” of the Fifties, is making a comeback.
Oni Press will publish two new anthology sequence beneath the EC Comics banner. The primary, Epitaphs From the Abyss, coming in July, will probably be horror centered; Merciless Universe, the second, arrives in August and can inform science fiction tales.
Hunter Gorinson, the president and writer of Oni Press, mentioned the brand new tales will interpret the world of immediately, a lot as EC Comics explored the American psyche of the Fifties. The quilt designs will really feel acquainted to EC Comics followers: Operating down the highest left is a label declaring the kind of story — “Terror” or “Horror” or “Science-Fiction” — and the emblem evokes the daring colours and fonts of previous sequence like “Tales From the Crypt” and “The Vault of Horror.”
The sequence are a partnership between Oni and the household of William M. Gaines, the unique writer of EC Comics, who died in 1992. Gary Groth, the editor of The Comics Journal, informed The New York Instances in 2013 that EC Comics was “arguably the very best industrial comics firm within the historical past of the medium.”
Cathy Gaines Mifsud, a daughter of William M. Gaines, who can be president of the household firm, William M. Gaines Agent, mentioned, “We’re very excited it’s coming again for a complete new technology.” The brand new tales will probably be written by comics all-stars like Jason Aaron, Rodney Barnes, Cecil Castellucci and Matt Kindt.
EC’s unique subversive content material introduced it to the eye of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 and its hearings on whether or not comics have been linked to ethical decay.
Gaines testified: “The reality is that delinquency is the product of the true setting wherein the kid lives and never of the fiction he reads.” The hearings resulted in comedian guide publishers founding the Comics Code Authority, to self-impose requirements on what comics might depict. Gaines quickly closed down EC and shifted his focus to his humor publication, Mad.
EC has remained extremely revered, and picked up editions of its tales have been offered by numerous publishers through the years. The unique artwork for one EC story, “Grasp Race,” a couple of postwar encounter between a Nazi warfare legal and a Holocaust survivor, offered for $600,000 at Heritage Auctions in 2018.
Together with the top-notch writers, the artists of the brand new tales embody Peter Krause, Malachi Ward and Dustin Weaver. Covers will probably be drawn by Lee Bermejo, Greg Smallwood, J.H. Williams III, amongst others.
