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THE EC ARCHIVES: TALES FROM THE CRYPT, VOL. 1

The EC Archives: Tales from the Crypt Volume 1The EC Archives: Tales from the Crypt Volume 1 by Al Feldstein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As with my recent reading of THE EC ARCHIVES: THE HAUNT OF FEAR, VOL. 1, I found the stories in TALES FROM THE CRYPT, VOL. 1 to be utterly charming in a cheesy, nostalgic sort of way. Nothing here is going to get under the skin of a modern horror reader, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll love the stories anyway. They’re earnest, direct, and anything but subtle. Most of them are tales of supernatural comeuppance, although a few, like the vampire story “Blood Type V” and the body horror “Rx…Death!”, break the mold to offer a sting in the tail.

Something I never knew was that the first four issues of TALES FROM THE CRYPT were actually titled THE CRYPT OF TERROR (in keeping with the titles of its sister publications THE HAUNT OF FEAR and THE VAULT OF HORROR). What’s more, those initial issues, which are included here, focus on stories of crime and suspense rather than horror, perhaps as holdovers from when CRYPT was originally a crime comic called CRIME PATROL. In fact, it isn’t until the comic changes its name to the more familiar TALES FROM THE CRYPT that the stories become the supernatural tales we all know and love. (This is my sole reason for giving the volume 4 stars instead of 5.)

Interestingly, the first horror story in the first issue titled TALES FROM THE CRYPT, “The Thing from the Sea,” is an uncredited and I assume unauthorized adaptation of F. Marion Crawford’s “The Upper Berth.” I can only guess that Al Feldstein, the credited author, thought none of the comic’s young readers would notice! (He also changed the ending.)

The EC ARCHIVES series from Dark Horse is truly a joy. I look forward to getting my hands on more volumes!

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Black Mountain

Black MountainBlack Mountain by Laird Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The second Isaiah Coleridge thriller builds admirably off the first. Freed from having telling an origin story, Barron gives us fully formed characters to follow as they face a compelling, impossible mystery. Two mobsters have been murdered by an unknown assailant, and every clue points to a legendary serial killer who died a long time ago. As Coleridge and his trusty but frequently self-destructive sidekick Lionel investigate, I was put in mind of Peter Straub’s magnum opus THE THROAT, which treads similar terrain, and beside which BLACK MOUNTAIN can proudly stand. I can think of no higher praise than that. With a nerve-shredding climax that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Barron’s horror short stories, BLACK MOUNTAIN delivers the goods.

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Have I Got a Cartoon For You!

Have I Got a Cartoon for You!: The Moment Magazine Book of Jewish CartoonsHave I Got a Cartoon for You!: The Moment Magazine Book of Jewish Cartoons by Robert Mankoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The cartoons in this slim volume are funny, but they would be funnier if you called your mother more often.

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The Haunt of Fear, Vol. 1

The EC Archives: The Haunt of Fear Volume 1The EC Archives: The Haunt of Fear Volume 1 by Al Feldstein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The stories in this collected volume of one of EC’s famous horror comics may be cheesy and trite by today’s standards, but I loved them. They’re short and to the point, often running 5-7 pages and never outstaying their welcome. Interestingly, each issue also includes a short, two-page tale in prose as well. Most of the stories center on bad people getting their supernatural comeuppance, often from beyond the grave. A few delve into something deeper, like the surreal inevitability of “Nightmare,” in which a man keeps dreaming he’s being buried alive until he can no longer tell what’s real and what’s not, to tragic ends; the terror of the unexplained in “House of Horror,” in which college pranksters disappear without a trace in a supposedly haunted house until one is found having aged fifty years; and the strangely poetic in “Seeds of Death,” in which a murder victim’s pocketful of gardenia seeds blossoms to mark where his body has been secretly buried.

Roughly halfway through the collection, the Vault-Keeper from EC’s THE VAULT OF HORROR and the Crypt-Keeper from TALES FROM THE CRYPT join THE HAUNT OF FEAR’S Old Witch to guest-host some of the stories, which gives the book a fun, family-reunion feeling. All in all, this volume is a great time for anyone interested in EC’s classic and highly influential horror comics.

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