Number 1219: Baseball by moonlight

Ty Cobb (1886-1961) was an awfully great baseball player and a greatly awful person. There are many stories of his nastiness. Despite the records he set and his accomplishments on the field he's just as well known for his bad temperment, his aggression and intimidation of opposing players. The story is that Cobb filed his steel cleats to be razor sharp, and when he stole bases he slid into base “with his feet up and steel showing.”

I'm sure that Ty Cobb was the inspiration for “Foul Play” in Haunt of Fear #19 (1953). The story, with its gory ending, was fairly typical EC-revenge. But it was brought before a stunned public of non-comics readers with a page in Seduction of the Innocent (1954) by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

The caption reads, “A comic-book baseball game. Notice the chest protector and other details in the text and pictures.”

In 1986 I attended a panel with Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis at the San Diego Con. Davis made mention of the horror comics and the trouble they caused. Speaking of the Senate hearings and uproar over them Davis said, “I'd lie awake at night and think, did I cause this?”

This is the infamous baseball story, drawn by Jack Davis, and written by editor Al Feldstein.

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Number 1014





Ship in a bottle





If I taught a college course on EC Comics this story would fit into EC 101. It's EC's most common plot: guy kills somebody who has a hobby/lifestyle/job, etc., that defines him, then justice is served in a horrible fashion to the murderer by a form of that which the victim did. In this case a spoiled nephew kills his rich uncle whose hobby is building ships in bottles. You can guess the rest.



What makes "Model Nephew" isn't the Al Feldstein story, but the Jack Davis artwork. I was able to download scans of the original art from Heritage Auctions. (I'm always happy when I see something like this on their site, and thank Heritage profusely for making it available online.) Despite working from an uninspired script, Davis turns in his usual excellent job. I particularly like the mood set by the atmospheric panel of the seaman-in-shadow on page 4. From the time I first saw Davis's artwork I've always marveled at how he could draw. In one story he could scare me, in the next have me laughing.



The story may be hackneyed EC but the artwork saved it. Now the required reading for Professor Pappy's EC 101 course, from Haunt of Fear #22, 1953. We'll start with the printed version from my copy of the first printing of this issue of HOF:

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Number 475


Vampire of the North Country


I think this story is a really good example of why Jack Davis was not only funny, but one of the greatest horror comics artists ever.

Four men in the frozen North, and a vampire set loose. Who couldn't love a story like that? The best part is Jack Davis' wonderful artwork, which shows how good he was at portraying tension and suspense. The story isn't anything surprising from EC, which had many stories which stuck to this formula, but...

...those eyes in the chink of the logs, watching, waiting. It still creeps me out, just like it did when I was a kid.

According to the Grand Comics Database, the script is by Otto Binder.

I'm alternating pages of this story from Haunt of Fear #26 with the original art, found on Heritage Auctions. Davis' talent at portraying the macabre was matched by few others in the field, and like Bob Powell and some others, I love seeing the originals.

Because of the fragile condition of my copy of Haunt #26, I scanned the printed pages from the reprint produced in 1999 by Gemstone.

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