They really do feel ahead of their time, but thats probably based on my prejudices and uninformed views of the the 1940's and 50's. As I've been exposed to more from the era (in literature, movies, and comics), I've found that it wasn't nearly as conservative as I had been led to believe. It's not just in the horror and crime genre either; I've been collecting The Complete Dennis the Menace, and there's as much (if not more) sexual content and undertones then modern mass newspaper strips. But the point of this is to say the EC books are really good, but are seemingly going back out of print very quickly so if you like horror, sci-f, war stories, adventure, crime...give them a try and do it fast. I'm hoping the out of print volumes will come back (like Tales of the Crypt and Weird Science vol. 1), but because of money issues I can't be certain.
Shocksuspense is my drug of choice because of the variety; there's four comic stories in each, a horror, crime, sci-fi, and a 'wild-card' shocksuspense story. These don't really fit into any one mold and are usually the best of the issue. The first one from issue 1 is Yellow (turned into an episode of the Tales From the Crypt tv show) about a father in the military dealing with his sons cowardice in battle. Another of my favourites is called The Patriots, which focuses on blind patriotism and its costs. Despite coming out in 1952, these stories in particular teach the same lessons today that they did almost 60 years ago. Anyway, EC books are awesome, find them if you can, even if its just to read them once.
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