Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Al Feldstein

Graham Ingels — Trapped… In The Crypt*

Original Art and The Artists

Tales From the Crypt #23, April-May, 1951

Graham (“Ghastly”) Ingels creates a fabulous story page for the classic (and unsurprisingly, horrific) EC tale, “Last Respects.” (Tales of the Crypt #23.)

I likely first ran into this specific story from the Vault of Horror reprint paperback (1965) which I grabbed at a flea market sometime the early 70s. Oddly, the Crypt cover from this story was reused as the jacket art for the amazing Nostalgia Press EC reprint collection (1971) (which hooked me into EC Comics to begin with) — but did not include the story inside!

As for Ingels himself? — He was the most prolific of the EC horror artists and in many ways, he was the most intriguing personality of the EC gang. Later in his life, he was certainly the most elusive, seemingly horrified (pun intended) by his contribution to these classic comics.

*Yes, I know it’s a mausoleum, but crypt was more fun, and appropriate.

See you next week for another taste of Halloween horror; it is October after all!

Screenshot

William Stout — Thunderous

Original Art and The Artists

Ray Bradbury Comics #1, February 1993

The legendary SF author Ray Bradbury would have turned 100 years old this year. He passed away in 2012.

Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder is my favorite time travel short story.

It’s also the very first time travel short story I ever read. (I had already read HG Wells’ novel, The Time Machine, at that point. Multiple times in fact.)

Thanks to the progressive spirit of my secondary school system, we read the Bradbury short story collection “R is For Rocket” in eighth or ninth grade.

A Sound of Thunder: Time travel. Adventure. Dinosaurs. In other words, for my tastes, perfect.

Nearly 20 years later, Byron Preiss and Topps struck a deal to publish comic book versions of Preiss’ graphic novel series, Ray Bradbury Illustrated.  Main feature in the first issue? A Sound of Thunder, cover by the incredibly talented Bill Stout, who is generally in a class by himself when it comes to Dinosaurs.

(The comic features a new adaptation by Richard Corben and the reprint of the classic EC story by Al Feldstein and Al Williamson.)

And 25 years after that? Stout decides to part with the cover, and I literally stumble upon at his booth at SDCC. Hanging in the frame that hung in his studio for many years.

Serendipity at work. Lets call this one a part of the “ permanent collection.”

Covers for both the Topps comic book version and the Byron Preiss “graphic novel.”
Richard Corben did an outstanding job on the “modern” version of Sound, while Al Williamson drew both the cover and the adaptation of the beloved EC Comics version.
Ray Bradbury’s intro for the first issue of Topps Bradbury comics, along with the cover of the 70s paperback version of R Is For Rocket, ubiquitous at the time.