EC Comics

Of the EC comics, I read from Crime Illustrated and it was a really  interesting experience looking at what appears to be a product of the period during the transition from pulp magazine stories to comics. I can see that "comic book" was not even a widely established category term because EC advertised on the covers that it was a "new form of adult entertainment" known as "Picto-Fiction".

I can also see that there weren't yet any preconceived ideas as to what a comic book was supposed to look like, EC's Illustrated stories are a good example of this. In Crime Illustrated for example it has an interesting format, It seems more akin to that of an illustrated story book with pictures and words separated into narrated captions and a wordless picture for each.

There seems to be a lot of experimentation and learning that took place, which is prevalent with the illustrations in The Fall Guy For Murder story for example since they appear to be emulating the work of other illustrators like Charles Dana Gibson in certain shots and in fact do a decent job in some but in other portions are weaker. However the artist seems to get more comfortable as the images improve throughout that story as well as others.

Though it may sound like otherwise, I do in fact like these stories however for their story-telling and unusual format.