EC Comics – Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Wallace Wood — EC For Me, See?

October 22, 2026 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Tales From The Crypt #25, August 1951

Wallace Wood and film noir. A favorite artist and a favorite fiction genre for me. I’m in, of course.

Okay, so this page is actually from Tales from the Crypt, EC’s best-known horror title. But the look and feel are pure film noir, so I’m counting it. Crime and horror overlap pretty frequently—especially in EC comics, now that I think of it. A rotting corpse—or a witch—might show up along the way, but the atmosphere is still straight out of a noir film.

But I digress.

Funny thing is, despite how much I like this page, I’ve owned it—and parted with it—once before.

Some paste-ups had me convinced that portions of the art were photostats rather than original drawings. Then I learned that Wood sometimes combined original art from different boards onto a single page, whether to incorporate shading from Craftint paper or to rework the storytelling or a “camera angle.”

Unfortunately, I learned that after I’d let it go.

Anyway, that’s probably more in-the-weeds information than you need. All you really need to know is that I really dig this page, and I paid dearly to own it a second time.

That last part I’d just as soon forget myself.

Wallace Wood — “On Your Toes…!”

April 15, 2026 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Two-Fisted Tales #23, September-October 1951

This is a great Wallace Wood war page, from the classic EC Comics WWI story: “Old Soldiers Never Die.” (Two-Fisted Tales #23.)

I first discovered EC comics in late ’71 or early ’72, thanks to the incredible oversized Nostalgia Press collection, The EC Horror Library of the 1950’s.

From that moment on, I was hooked.

Maybe surprisingly, once I got past the initial shock value of the horror books, I realized I could kind of take them or leave them. But everything else? That was a different story.

Science fiction—absolutely.
Crime—of course.
Humor—what was better than Mad?

And those war comics… man.

Harvey Kurtzman’s storytelling was first-rate. And unlike the Al Feldstein-driven stories in the other genres, he typically let the art—more than captions or dialogue—carry the narrative.

If you had told 12-year-old me that one day I’d own original art from artists like Wally Wood, Jack Davis, and others, I would’ve thought you were completely out of your ever-loving mind.

To say I’m grateful to be the temporary caretaker of this art… that’s the understatement of the year.

Jack Davis — Stage Fright

October 22, 2025 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Tales From The Crypt #27, December 1951

I love dynamic panel pages like this from Tales From The Crypt and EC’s other horror titles: Dark, foreboding, and yes, murderous — but without the gore. More film noir than horror, Jack Davis once again crafts the dramatic scene with a terrific balance of shadows and light.

Since I can remember, the prolific Davis has been one of my favorite artists, and he should absolutely be on any list of best commercial illustrators of the 2nd half of the 20th Century.

Side note: As one of EC’s youngest artists, he hadn’t quite turned 27 years old when he drew this.

***EC’s creators discuss the legendary Jack Davis for his profile in the 1972 EC fan convention.* *Art by Marie Severin.***

Wallace Wood — Creature Feature

October 8, 2025 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

House of Mystery #251, April 1977

Dear DC:

Please collect all the random and misc. (and typically GREAT) stories from the legendary Wallace Wood in one place — omnibus, compendium, DC Finest, whatever. I’m constantly discovering “new” storiesI’ve missed like this one, aptly titled “The Collector.” (Pencils and inks by Woody, blueline breakdowns by Al Sirois.) Reprinted only once, 40 years ago, in a cheapie digest.

Woody deserves better treatment.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Yr. Pal,

Greg

PS That middle panel page is such a great throwback to Woody’s classic EC days, isn’t it? The coloring doesn’t quite do it justice.

Graham Ingels — Trapped… In The Crypt*

October 2, 2024 Greg Goldstein 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!

Jack Davis — Ace

January 2, 2024 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Aces High #3, August 1955

An entire case of Champagne might be a bit much for a New Year’s celebration — unless you have a big crowd, and they all like to drink the bubbly.

Either way, Jack Davis brings us a killer EC title page from Aces High. A lovely way to start the new year.

(Fun fact: This page kicked around for a while as part of the complete story. When it was finally broken up, the pages sold very quickly — and at an aggregate price greater than the entire story.)

Reed Crandall — Debt Of Honor

March 10, 2023 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Valor #3, August 1955

Reed Crandall pencils and inks a terrific page from a Crusades story about honor and betrayal. It appears in one of EC’s final comic books before the company completely exited the 10-cent color periodical business.

The Comics Code may have taken some of the teeth out of the storytelling of EC’s New Direction titles,

But the art?

The art remained just… great.

Dave Berg — Back From Vacation

January 6, 2023 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

“The Lighter Side of…,” Mad #305, September 1991

Dave Berg loved to draw his friends, neighbors and colleagues into his Mad Magazine “Lighter Side” series. On this great strip, Mad Publisher William (Bill) Gaines and other staffers get the full Berg treatment. I love this.

Mad staffers here are —

Leftside, front to back:

Lenny Brenner, Tom Nozkowski, Charlie Kadau, Joe Raiola

Rightside, front to back:

Nick Meglin, John Ficarra, Sarah Friedman, Andrew Schwartzberg

(Thanks to my pals Joey Cavalieri and Charlie Kochman for filling in the names of folks I didn’t know.)

*Left: Still one of my favorite biographies of all time. Right: A fun ad parody featuring the Mad gang further back in the day.*

Antonio Prohias — A MAD Look at Spies

January 15, 2022 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Mad # 170, October 1974

One punch line panel of the iconic Spy vs. Spy gag strip often sported more violence than an entire episode of Looney Tunes. (That’s saying something.)

And we loved it.

Prohias, a Cuban refugee, was a genius. He didn’t speak very much English. And he didn’t have to. Humor is a universal language.

And me personally? I love wordless gags. After all, cartooning is a visual medium.

Spy vs. Spy made its debut in a classic issue of Mad — the infamous election flip cover. Newsstand proprietors could face out whoever actually won the election. (Spoiler alert: It was JFK.) Also above are the first three Spy gags, all appearing in the same issue.

I was fortunate to visit Mad’s offices in 1976 and received the classic Cheap, Crummy Souvenir. More importantly, I met many of the “Usual Gang of Idiots” including the fearless leader himself, Bill Gaines.

Mort Drucker — A MAD Look at Movies

January 13, 2022 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Mad #154, October 1972

I heard the best story recently:

When artists Mort Drucker and Angelo Torres were creating those amazing Mad movie parodies (especially the earlier ones) they often had trouble acquiring official photo references. The solution? Torres would sneak a camera into the movie theater and quietly snap some photos for himself or Drucker.

In other words, the Mad artists were the original film pirates.

You have no idea how much I love that.

This classic Drucker page from a parody of the film “The Hot Rock” comes with a personal anecdote as well:

I discovered my pal Stuart Ng had three original pages from this story for sale about six or seven years ago. I didn’t want all three, I only wanted one (they’re huge — about 18×24), but even if I did, we couldn’t agree on price. (Hot Rock is one of my favorite films, and it’s one of Stuart’s also, and besides, it’s not like Drucker pages are lying around.)

So of course, every so often, I would revisit the pages, and of course, following the rest of the original art market, the price would increase and I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

(Insert emoji of me slapping myself here.)

Finally… A few months ago, we had a meeting of the minds. He sold me one, and he knows it’s going into a good home. I paid more than I wanted to, he sold it for less than he wanted to, and that seemed like the making of a decent compromise.

And I think he still has the remaining two available, in case other Hot Rock fans see this post. Tell him Greg sent you.