Book Review: EC Comics Library: Weird Science Vol. 1 (Taschen)

 The Rolls-Royce Collection of Era-Defining Sci-Fi Comics

Photo: Taschen

 When you close your eyes and think of 1950s comics, you're probably thinking of EC Comics. From 1950 to 1955, they published iconic horror comics, some of whose titles will still be familiar today: Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, and Vault of Horror. Never a superhero house like DC or Marvel (previously known as Timely Comics, then Atlas Comics), EC specialized in original genre comics that coincided with broader trends in popular entertainment, such as crime comics that evoked film noir, war comics, and Westerns. But EC's publisher, Bill Gaines, said at the time that they were most proud of their flagship "Weird" titles, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science, which evoked the popular sci-fi short stories and radio dramas of the time.

This gigantic collection from art-book publisher Taschen collects the first 11 issues of Weird Science, and complements them with an informative introduction by jazz guitarist and EC collector/superfan Grant Geissman, credits for each of the collected issues, and biographical sketches of the artists and personnel involved in the issues.

These comics are collected elsewhere, in far more wallet-friendly versions. I personally own digital copies of several Fantagraphics EC collections, but those are black-and-white, line-art only collections organized by theme, artist, or style. They're great for what they are and I personally dig them a lot, but they don't present the full issues of the comics as they originally appeared. Dark Horse has published these comics in digitally-recolored editions that are even less expensive. I've looked at these, and they're not for me. I find the digital recoloring pretty clinical and I don't get the same feel from them as I do from the original halftone prints with all the little ink dots and offset printing that gives such a very particular look. But if you just want to read these comics, you have options that will allow you to do so for less than the steep Taschen price tag.   

But the pre-order announcement for this book came at a particular moment where I was able to treat myself, so I pulled the trigger. And months later when the book arrived, I was... shocked. Guys, this is a BIG book. I mean, it's literally the biggest book I own. It's the size of my teenage daughter:

I can caveat this whole book with the acknowledgement that these are comics made for predominantly male audiences and created almost entirely by dudes from 1950 to 1952. There's a lot of sexism, and if you're looking for a comic that passes the Bechdel Test, you're not going to find it in any of these (gigantic) pages. I don't want to hand-wave that away, because it does effect the experience of reading this book today. There are moments that had me cringing, for sure, but one thing I will say is that it's not that the female characters are flat and one-dimensional, it's that all the characters are flat and one-dimensional. Ray Bradbury didn't write these stories, you know? But at least in my experience of this collection, the stories themselves weren't really the main draw.

Experiencing these comics, printed exquisitely on high-quality paper at a size that far exceeds their original dimensions, in the format they were originally presented, gave me a ton of joy. The collection lays out each issue as it originally appeared, including with ads, reader correspondence, and the two-page throw-away short stories in the middle of each issue that qualified as enough "print material" to give the issues access to the second-class postage rate. It's learning details like that that really heighten the experience. 

Photo: Taschen

 The supplemental materials offer other details, as well. Both through included process photos, draft vs. final comparisons, and the introductory essay, I learned things I always wanted to know about how these books were actually produced in an entirely analogue age. I discovered how the covers were colored and those choices communicated to the offset printers, and behind-the-scenes information on the editorial and art process that went into each issue. I found myself having flashbacks to Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, as I learned the story of how publisher Bill Gaines inherited a comics company from his father that had chiefly only printed illustrated Bible stories, and experienced a rocket ship launch of success, scrambling with a small group of artists and editors to put out an expanding catalogue of titles that took the public by storm.

Line-art and hand-colored cover to be sent to the engravers. Photo: Taschen

 

One thing that this volume doesn't go into -- and maybe it's a more natural fit for a Vol. 2, should it ever come along -- is why the EC story came crashing down two years after the end of this collection. Due to the early-1950s moral panic over "juvenile delinquency" and the junk-science work of the previously trailblazing child psychologist Fredric Wertham, a Senate subcommittee led by Estes Kefauver hauled EC publisher Bill Gaines in front of them in the opening salvo to censor comic books, which led to the end of the "pre-code" comics period, a collapse in jobs for comics illustrators, and decades of self-censorship across the industry. Gaines himself would pivot and go onto create MAD Magazine after the fallout.

This story has been covered elsewhere, as have the groundbreaking efforts of EC Comics to address and combat racism through its science fiction comics (which probably didn't help endear Gaines to the U.S. Senate of 1954). 

In the end, then, I agree with the decision to focus the supplemental material in this collection on processes and people. It helped inform my appreciation of the books themselves. And I can't speak highly enough about the actual printing of these pages. In the book's notes, it discusses the restoration process, which eschewed digital recoloring -- even with advanced tools available today that can create period-specific results. Instead, original copies of each issue were photographed at extremely high resolutions, and then errors such as line smudging and misalignment of the original four-color plates were corrected digitally. 

The results are truly breathtaking.

If you are a fan of pre-code comics and are able to splurge $200 on a high-quality volume, I would encourage you to take a look at Weird Science, Vol. 1. Taschen has outdone themselves with the restoration, and I have to be honest -- if Vol. 2 does come along, I'm going to have a hard time not squirreling away my nickels and dimes to try to get my hands on that one, too. And, like I learned from the 1950s ads in this book and an inflation calculator, back in 1951 this book only would've cost $14.95.

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Posted by Vance K - cult film reviewer and co-founder of nerds of a feather, flock together.