In 1947, Bill Gaines inherited EC Comics, a new venture founded by his legendary father M. C. Gaines, who was responsible for midwifing the birth of the comic book as we know it during his tenure at All-American Comics, bringing the likes of Wonder Woman and Green Lantern to the world. Over the next eight years, Bill Gaines and a “who’s who” of the era including Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, and Wally Wood would reinvent the very notion of the comic book with titles like Tales from the Crypt, Crime SuspenStories, Weird Science, and MAD. EC delighted in publishing gory, morbid horror and crime comics that had snap, ironic endings-but they also pioneered the first true-to-life war comics, the first “real” science-fiction stories, and a series of tales about such then-taboo subjects as racism, bigotry, vigilantism, drug addiction, police corruption, and anti-Semitism. Too good to last, they were eventually caught up by various 1950s guardians of morality, who were convinced that EC’s often over-the-top content was causing juvenile delinquency. A year or so after a full inquiry investigating horror and crime comics, the incredible EC Comics were no more. After publishing the full, fascinating story behind this fabled company in XXL size in 2020, TASCHEN now presents in full the story of what is considered to be EC’s prime period, the New Trend, plus the complete covers of that era-including those of Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear, Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, Panic and MAD. Many of the cover images are reproduced from Gaines File Copies, which are widely regarded as the best surviving copies of the EC Comics.
