Wallace Wood applied his preternaturally lush brushwork to over two dozen stories in the thematically overlapping ( dreadful things happen to people, both innocent and guilty ) horror, crime, and suspense genres. This work is the subject of one of the two premiere releases in Fantagraphics highly-anticipated new EC reprint line.

Taking its title from one of Wood s all-time classics, the evil little paranoid thriller Came the Dawn, this collection features page after page after page of Wood s sleek and meticulously crafted artwork put in the service of cunning twist-ending stories, most often from the typewriter of EC editor Al Feldstein.

These tales range from supernatural shockers from the pages of Tales From the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear ( The Living Corpse, Terror Ride, Man From the Grave, Horror in the Freak Tent ) to often pointedly contemporary crime thrillers from Crime SuspenStories ( The Assault, The Whipping, and Confession, which was singled out for specific excoriation in the anti-comics screed Seduction of the Innocent, thus giving it a special cachet), but the breathtaking art and whiplash-inducing shock endings are constants throughout.

Like every book in the Fantagraphics EC line, Came the Dawn will feature extensive essays and notes on these classic stories by EC experts but the real meat of the matter (sometimes literally, in the grislier stories) will be supplied by these ofted lurid, sometimes downright over-the-top, but always compelling and superbly crafted, classic comic-book masterpieces."

Barely old enough to drink when he joined the EC Comics stable, Al Williamson may have been the new kid on the block, but a lifetime of studying such classic adventure cartoonists as Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon) and Hal Foster (Prince Valiant) had made him a kid to reckon with as he proved again and again in the stories he created for EC s legendary New Trend comics, in particular Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. As a result of Williamson s focus, it s possible to compile all of Williamson s New Trend EC work into one book which Fantagraphics is finally doing here. Sci-fi aficionados should note that although most of the stories were written by Al Feldstein, 50 Girls 50 features three of EC s legendary Ray Bradbury adaptations, including I, Rocket and A Sound of Thunder and a unique curiosity, a strip adapted from a short story submitted by a teenage Harlan Ellison. Williamson ran with a gang of like-minded young Turks dubbed the Fleagle Gang, who would help one another out on assignments. Thus this book includes three stories upon which Williamson was joined by the legendary Frank Frazetta, and one story ( Food for Thought ) where Roy Krenkel provided his exquisite alien landscapes, to make it one of the most gorgeous EC stories ever printed. As a supplementary bonus, 50 Girls 50 includes three stories drawn by Fleagles sans Williamson: Frazetta s Shock SuspenStories short Squeeze Play; Krenkel s meticulous Time to Leave; and Angelo Torres s An Eye for an Eye, an EC story that famously fell prey to censorship and was not released until the 1970s. As with other Fantagraphics EC titles, 50 Girls 50 will also include extensive story notes by EC experts."

George Evans was a master of the aviation war story. This collection includes all of his highly-acclaimed stories for Aces High, EC s famous air war title. As a bonus, we present a rarity: Evans never-before-reprinted 3-D story of World War I ace Frank Luke (in regular, easy-on-the-eyes 2-D). This volume also includes numerous Evans crime and shock stories, including As Ye Sow, My Brother s Keeper, and Cadillac Fever. Other war stories, many done in collaboration with Harvey Kurtzman, include Napoleon and Flaming Coffins (which Evans wrote, about the inherent perils of WW I aircraft). Like all books in the Fantagraphics EC line, Aces High features essays and notes by EC experts on these superbly crafted, classic comic book masterpieces."

Joe Orlando was a mainstay at EC, especially on science fiction, and this collects 23 of his best sci-fi stories. All of them, most scripted by Al Feldstein, serve up classic O. Henry-style endings, such as 'I, Robot, ' and 'Fallen Idol'. The title story is one of EC's most famous, with its blunt anti-racism message. When it was printed during the era of the Comics Code, publisher Bill Gaines and Feldstein had to fight to keep the story's final panel 'reveal' (and thus its whole point) intact

Al Feldstein is best known as the main writer/editor of the EC comics line during the first half of the 1950s and then the editor of Mad Magazine for the first three decades of its existence. But what many don t know or remember is that Feldstein was also an accomplished and distinctive cartoonist, whose comics (which he both wrote and drew, a relative rarity in those days) adorned the pages of many of those self same EC comics. His powerfully composed, meticulously inked pages, often featuring grotesque creatures or scenes of ghastly destruction (and some of the greatest stiffly handsome/beautiful specimens of 1950s humanity ever put to paper), were a vital part of the allure of these classic comics. Feldstein s contributions to the first year and a half of EC s two SF titles, Weird Science and Weird Fantasy comprising 16 classic O. Henry-style shock-ending stories with such evocative, vintage title as Things From Outer Space. The Flying Saucer Invasion, Spawn of Venus, Destruction of the Earth, and Am I Man or Machine? will be collected in their integrity in this volume, which will also boast a new interview with Feldstein about his years at EC, focusing in particular in his work on these science fiction titles that were the company s pride and joy (and were killed a few years later by the Comics Code)."