As a lifelong horror fan, I’ve spent a lot of my time enjoying spine-tingling stories, movies, games, and novels. I remember playing Friday the 13th for the Nintendo when I was barely four. I wasn’t good at it and hadn’t fully grasped the idea of what was happening, but I knew the sense of urgency and fear I felt when Jason popped up was exhilarating.
Fast-forward a few years to when I was 10, I had seen Night of the Living Dead, Friday the 13th, Return of the Living Dead, and quite a few other movies and TV shows that only cemented my love for horror.
I started reading Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, then I moved on to R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, and eventually moved on to reading full-fledged Stephen King novels like The Stand by the time I was a teenager.
One of the shows I watched fairly often when I was a teen was Tales from the Crypt, which originally aired from 1989 until 1996. But I wasn’t into comic books at the time, so I had no idea that they were a reimagining of Tales from the Crypt, which was published by EC Comics in the early 1950s. (Side note: If you don’t know the history of EC Comics, it’s fascinating stuff and worth learning about if you want to dive down a “special interest rabbit hole.”)
Then, I met my wife, Lauren, and my father-in-law, Robert Tharp, who were just crazy about the old EC comics. Rob gave me one of his old copies of The Haunt of Fear and kicked off my journey into the wonderful, wacky world of EC horror.
Before long, I bought a shiny reprint of the one he had given me, and then I went after every EC horror comic I could get my hands on:
It’s hard to stress just how nice these new editions are. Hopefully, the pictures I’ve attached will do them justice!
All this leads us to what this article is about: my favorite stories and art from each Volume 1 “EC Archive” collection of EC’s horror comics from the 1950’s: The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, and Tales from the Crypt!
You’ll see quite a few panels here, but this is honestly just scratching the surface. All three of these volumes combined contain a whopping 72 stories, and that doesn’t include text-only stories!
Before we get started, here’s your warning that there are 75-year-old spoilers ahead!
The Haunt of Fear (EC Horror Archives, Volume 1)
“Nightmare”
“Nightmare,” which was drawn by Johnny Craig and published in The Haunt of Fear #17 in September-October 1950, is one of the first EC horror stories I read that made me love the series.
It starts with a man named Mr. Severin who gets ambushed and buried alive when a group of mourners realize the casket that’s supposed to contain their loved one is empty, which I found both hilarious and a good way to capture the often unbelievable core found in most nightmares.
Eventually, Mr. Severin wakes up just to discover that, yep, it was all just a nightmare — whew!
As he goes about his day, things take a turn as he spirals into dream after dream of him being buried alive under outrageous circumstances.
After a few more recurring nightmares, he visits a psychiatrist who insists these are just the result of him overworking and he should do his best to just relax.
I would say easier said than done, but he takes this advice a little too well! After his appointment, Mr. Severin shows up at his job and does a few checks on the foundation for a new office building his company is working on.
The employees begin pouring the concrete into one of the foundations, unaware that Mr. Severin is inside. His reaction is absolutely priceless and makes me laugh every time.
It made Mr. Severin laugh, too, all the way to the end!
“Monster Maker”
My second favorite story from The Haunt of Fear Volume 1 is actually in the same issue as “Nightmare,” but this one is called “Monster Maker.” The artist for this one is “Ghastly” Graham Ingels
If the title didn’t give it away, it has clear ties to the original Frankenstein films and novel. Speaking of Frankenstein, you should check out Rob Tharp’s article celebrating 110+ years of Frankenstein!
“Monster Maker” starts with a mad scientist-type surgeon being let go from his job. In a fit of rage, he decides to take his assistant Whitsly and go to his spooky cliff-side castle to finish their experiments. Seems legit.
Things go about as well as you’d expect.
Their original idea is to take an ape brain they’ve kept alive and put it into a dog… until they realize they can get a human body from a shipwreck and use that as the vessel for their ape brain.
All goes well until silly, simple Whitsly drops the brain in an excited panic and breaks it.
John reacts appropriately:
Before long, the drowned person from the shipwreck and Whitsly’s brain are one. He isn’t happy about it and dukes it out with John at the top of his cliff castle, ultimately knocking him to his doom.
“Ghastly” Graham Ingels did a great job with the art here, and I think the image of the monster smiling stupidly at his victory will stick with me for years to come!
“Horror at the Freak Tent”
My final pick in The Haunt of Fear is “Horror in the Freak Tent,” drawn by Wally Wood, which first appeared in The Haunt of Fear #5 from January – February 1951. It’s worth mentioning that the issues count started fresh; #17 from the previous two stories was a continuation of Gunfighter, the series that eventually became The Haunt of Fear.
This story is told through the eyes of Henry Hastings, a manager at a carnival that features many different acts, including a freakshow.
We learn of a knife thrower named Zolto, who gets bullied and eventually blinded by the ringleader, Mr. Glantz.
As you can imagine, the freaks don’t take kindly to Glantz injuring one of their friends, so they teach him how to do his act so he can keep his job, even though he’s now blind. It’s so nice to see them helping their friend and I’m sure nothing at all will go wrong.
Zolto invites Hastings to come check out the act he has been working on as they’re getting ready to show Mr. Glantz that he is still capable of performing.
When Hastings shows up, he’s excited to see the performance, then, surprise, is immediately horrified.
The last two panels are so well done, it’s spine-chilling to read. Even when you know things aren’t going to turn out well, it’s still so satisfying to see how the writers and artists decide to wrap up these stories!
Tales from the Crypt (EC Horror Archives, Volume 1)
“The Thing from the Sea”
The next set of my favorite EC horror stories are from Tales from the Crypt #20 and #21, which were published toward the end of 1950 and the start of 1951.
Much like The Haunt of Fear, Tales from the Crypt is a continuation of an older series, Crime Patrol, which is why the numbering says issue 20 when it’s actually issue 3 of the series.
This story starts with the main character, “you,” trying desperately to get onto a ship so you can go back to England. The person they’re talking to basically says, “sure, we have a room, as long as you don’t scare easily” since everyone who takes the cabin leaves by the end of the trip. Not sure how far away they can get since they’re on a boat, BUT ANYWAY…
“You” meet your roommate and calm him down, only for him to go missing in the middle of the night and be found cowering in a passage rambling to himself.
The main character goes back to the room and has an encounter with the thing that is driving everyone mad on the boat. It reminds me a lot of some of the scenes with the Creature just a few years later in the 1954 classic Creature from the Black Lagoon, as well as Matango, AKA Attack of the Mushroom People from 1963. Was this EC horror artwork an inspiration perhaps?
After all of this, the character goes to the deck to sleep and runs into the captain, who says he will go back to the room to spend the night so they can see what is haunting the room.
The captain soon finds out that the haunting is because of something he did.
This classic murder-revenge ending is something that comes up in EC horror comics again and again, but I really enjoyed the setting and look of the monster in this one. Artist and eventual editor of MAD Magazine, Al Feldstein, knocked it out of the park, and he was just getting started!
“Impending Doom”
Next up is “Impending Doom,” which is in the same issue as “The Thing from the Sea” and was drawn by Johnny Craig.
“Impending Doom” starts with a guy named Theodore Warren, who randomly draws a scared-looking man with a questionable hairstyle, even for the 1950s.
Ted doesn’t think much of it and goes on about his day and eventually wanders into a place called “Unique Stonecutting Gravestones,” which is a totally normal thing to do.
Then, he sees the guy with the weird hairdo carving HIS name, birthday, and death day into the gravestone. And his day of death is -CHOKE- today!
The guy from the drawing, Alex Kordova, looks back at Ted in one of the funniest looks of surprise I’ve ever seen:
The two get to talking, and Alex decides that his wife Ellen would love to meet Ted and see the drawing of Alex he made. Little does Alex know, but Ted and his wife have a bit of a…history together.
After a very tense dinner, Alex huffs out to his workshop and leaves Ellen and Ted alone. Big mistake.
Alex catches them together while, unfortunately, holding a hammer and decides to use it, killing Ted. Then, the connection between the drawing and the gravestone is made crystal clear:
“Terror Ride”
Next, let me show you “Terror Ride.” The art in this story was done by Wally Wood, and it tells a very tense, spooky story with one of the silliest endings I’ve read in a while.
It starts innocently enough, with a couple discovering an amusement park.
There’s even a neat old mill boat ride that has the both of them sold on it, even though there isn’t another soul in sight.
They eventually meet the weirdo, I mean, a super nice guy who runs the ride. He lets them know that it’s always slow this time of year and that they should go ahead and just hop on the next boat.
Things get crazy when the couple starts spotting “displays” showing people being unalived in a variety of scenarios.
Big surprise, it turns out the bodies they saw were real, and that super nice fella from the beginning might be a little bit unhinged.
After seeing all the horrors in this one, the ending made me laugh out loud. The crazy guy slips in a puddle of water during a big speech and just falls into the big water wheel. It’s hilarious. And if you don’t believe me, you can see it play out for yourself!
The Vault of Horror (EC Horror Archives, Volume 1)
“Voodoo Vengeance”
I’m fairly confident that “Voodoo Vengeance” will go down in history as one of the most memorable EC horror comics I’ll ever read. It starts with a married man named Caleb who wanders into a shop that reminds me an awful lot of Stephen King’s Needful Things.
The noseless shopkeeper offers him a regular doll, which he declines. Our noseless friend then ups the ante and says, “well, what about a voodoo doll that will give you full control over another person?” What could go wrong?
Caleb declines and heads home, only to find that his wife is cheating on him and is only using him for his money. Ouch. Maybe a voodoo doll wouldn’t be so bad.
So Caleb circles back and decides to get a voodoo doll of his wife Sally. I get a kick out of his nervous, sweaty excitement in this panel:
Before long, Caleb decides to start testing the doll to see if it actually works. In his mind, if he can use it to keep injuring Sally and then taking care of her, she won’t have a reason to leave.
Wouldn’t you know it, they start fighting after a while, and Sally has enough and throws the statue of herself into the fire in the “heat” of the moment.
And this, in my opinion, is one of the most haunting images from the first volume of EC horror comics. Because while we are looking at a doll, we also know that whatever happens to the doll, happens to the person.
This leads to the conclusion that stuck with me long after the story was finished:
Johnny Craig did an awesome job writing and drawing this one. It’s a neat twist on a voodoo story that I imagine captured the attention of kids and adults alike when this issue hit the stands in September 1950.
“Werewolf Concerto”
Johnny Craig struck gold again a few issues later with “Werewolf Concerto,” a story about a hotel in Hungary where some of the guests are getting attacked before they check out.
After three mysterious deaths, the frustrated owner decides he needs to do SOMETHING if he wants people to keep staying at his hotel. So, he does the logical thing and hires a concert pianist to stay at the hotel and perform shows.
Once the pianist, Mademoiselle Micheline, shows up the owner tries his best to be friendly and help her get her stuff together. She seems weirdly cold toward him and is showing some secretive behavior, which, if you’ve ever read an EC story, you know this is an immediate red flag.
SURPRISE — it turns out the owner of the hotel is actually a werewolf and is causing all the problems around the hotel, even if he isn’t fully aware of it. Case closed.
Or is it?! While looking for the pianist as a werewolf, he touches her piano and notices that it doesn’t make a sound. After ripping the cover off, he sees that the piano is actually -GASP- Full of dirt.
You know what that means, right?
“Escape”
The last story on my list is “Escape,” which was drawn and written by Al Feldstein and is from The Vault of Horror #16.
“Escape” starts in a prison where they need to unload bricks from a truck, presumably as part of their labor to the state.
We quickly meet the main character and he already seems slightly annoyed by the situation.
That is until he sees something that gives him, uh, let’s say, an interesting idea that surely won’t backfire. Basically, the unclaimed bodies are all brought to a cemetery outside the jail, which is a great opportunity to make an escape.
After some planning, he is able to work on the coffins and pack up the bodies when someone at the jail dies. Before long, he finds the perfect chance to execute his plan.
Thinking he’s going to make his way to freedom, he’s carried out in the coffin.
And he’s dropped directly into his doom. It turns out all of those bricks were being used to build a crematorium! Classic EC horror!
Should I Review More of My Favorite EC Horror Comics in the Future?
Reading through these EC horror stories, it’s so cool to think that for many people, this was their first jump into spooky, spine-tingling terror.
I mentioned that the Friday the 13th game for the NES was my first dive into horror — a 1980’s horror game based on a 1980’s horror movie… And the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s were all FULL of horror. It was a familiar concept to people that’s only grown more popular as time goes on.
But to the kids of the 1950s, these comic books must have fundamentally blown their minds because nothing like it had existed before. I bet it was a magical time for them, just like it was for the first group of people who sat down and watched Night of the Living Dead in theaters or the drive-in for the first time.
If you’re an EC horror fan with your own collection of comics, I hope this made you want to go grab your favorite issues and start reading again; and if you’ve never read an EC horror comic, I hope this inspires you to look for one of these newest reprint collections at your local comic book shop. If that doesn’t work out, you can always find them online!
I’m wondering: Would you guys like to see more posts like this? I have 40+ EC volumes that include the rest of the EC horror lines, Shock-Suspense stories, Crime-Suspense stories, Weird Science, and much more. I’d love to show you some of my favorites from future volumes!
P.S. If you didn’t know, EC Comics actually made a comeback in 2024 with a new horror line, a new science fiction line, and a suspense series that dropped in 2025. It’s super interesting to see what these stories look like 70 years later, but the classics will always reign supreme!
Images courtesy of Frank Spear via photographs of panels from his collection of EC Horror comics, used for review commentary purposes in accordance with Fair Use rules. This post isn’t sponsored and we’re not selling anything, but we hope it encourages people to buy/support EC because we want them to do well and keep making stuff! ♥
