from Crime SuspenStories (1950 series) #10 (EC, April 1952), text by Al Feldstein (signed as Wm. M. Gaines)
Harvey Kurtzman: not necessatily a fan of fast-working Feldstein.
from "This Isn't a Senate Hearing! This Is...Madness" in Comic Book Comics #3 (Evil Twin, February 2008); script by Fred Van Lente; pencils, inks, and letters by Ryan Dunlavey
Long before Marvel would do much the same, EC made celebrities out of its creative minds, not only crediting them but featuring them in promotional pieces and advertisements. As all the kids of the time cheered, "Enact Everyone's EC!"
house ad for MAD #1, from EC Comics cover-dated September 1952, pencils and inks by Jack Davis
(Click picture to adult-education-size)
from "The Night Before Christmas" in Panic (1954 series) #1 (EC, February 1954), pencils and inks by Bill Elder, colors by Marie Severin, letters by Jim Wroten
Al, and the entire ferschluggin' staff of EC, gets featured in this goofy text story!
from Crime SuspenStories (1950 series) #15 (EC, February 1953), text by Al Feldstein, colors by Marie Severin
Here's Al 'n' EC co-editor Bill Gaines passing poison pen letters of comment back an' forth in the masthead of this EC editorial page:
from Panic #1 (EC, February 1954), text by Al Feldstein, pencils and inks (and colors?) by Marie Severin
In fact, as co-editors, Feldstein and Gaines often appeared together as characters in EC's spine-thribbling tales. Here, they're the only adults to believe a pre-teen genius's prediction of atomic apocalypse!
from "7 Year Old Genius!" in Weird Fantasy (1951 series) #7 (EC, May 1951), co-plot by Bill Gaines; co-plot, pencils, and inks by Al Feldstein; letters by Jim Wroten
(Please note that earlier in the story, Feldstein sneakily slides his own birth date into a panel.)
Naturally the two editors would be front and center in the spooky story of how artist Jack Kamen came to work for EC:
from "The Den of Iniquity!: Kamen's Kalamity!" in Tales from the Crypt (1950 series) #31 (EC, August 1952), co-plot by Bill Gaines, co-plot and script by Al Feldstein, pencils and inks by Jack Kamen (except for Graham Ingels, Johnny Craig, and Jack Davis, who draw themselves), colors by Marie Severin (?), letters by Jim Wroten
Bill and a reclining Al field a panicked phone call about communication with aliens!
from "Chewed Out!" in Weird Science (1951 series) #12 (EC, March 1952), co-plot by Bill Gaines, co-plot and script by Al Feldstein, pencils and inks by Joe Orlando, colors by Marie Severin, letters by Jim Wroten
Now, if you're an EC aficionado or even just a general fan of comics history, you've probably seen this gruesome comic cover before:
cover of Vault of Horror (1950 series) #30 (EC, April 1953), pencils and inks by Johnny Craig
Well, haven't you ever wondered who was responsible for that disarming sight?
from "Practical Choke!" in Vault of Horror #30; co-plot by Bill Gaines, co-plot and script by Al Feldstein, pencils and inks by George Evans, colors by Marie Severin, letters by Jim Wroten
Turns out it's Bill and Al, portrayed as med students using body parts to prank the general public!
Actually, there are three perpetrators of these gruesome pranks throughout the tale: the third is an undentified red-headed man. Anyone know who this is supposed to be among the EC crowd? Was George Evans red-haired? If you know, drop a line in the comments!
Speakin' of sand in your eyes, here's Bill and Al (in the striped swimsuit) popping up in a parody of theose Beach Blanket Bingo-style movies!
from "MAD Visits a Typical Teenage Beach Movie" in MAD #95 (June 1965), script by Larry Siegel, pencils and inks by Mort Drucker
Now, if you want to maximize your Al Feldstein (and Bill Gaines) reading enjoyment, I suggest you pick yourself up a backissue or reprint of Weird Fantasy #14! "But Bully," you ask, "which Weird Fantasy #14 do you mean? There's two of them!" And that's a very good question.
covers of (L) Weird Fantasy #14 (1950 series) (EC, July 1950), pencils and inks by Al Feldstein, letters by Jim Wroten'
(R) Weird Fantasy #14 (1951 series) (EC, July 1952), pencils and inks by Al Feldstein
Weird Fantasy has two #14s, volumes 1 and 2. Volume 1 was retitled from A Moon, a Girl...Romance with issue #13 and ran five issues, ending with v.1 #17. 1951's Volume 2 began its numbering with #6, counting those five issues of v.1 as #1-5. Clear as mud? Good! Let's proceed.
Because (I did have a point to this and here it finally is!), both #14s feature stories with Al 'n Bill! It's almost uncanny how that happened. It's like those two #34s of What If...? being the joke issues. From 1950's v.1 #14:
from "Cosmic Ray Bomb Explosion!" in Weird Fantasy (1950 series) #14 (EC, July 1950); co-plot by Bill Gaines; co-plot, script, pencils and inks by Al Feldstein; letters by Jim Wroten
Together they brainstorm the creation of the Sensational Character Find of 1950: the Cosmic Ray Bomb! one zillion times more powerful than the A-, H-, or Q-Bomb!
When the story hits the stand, it's more popylar than the Dark Phoenix Saga, the Ballad of Beta Ray Bill, and Superboy-Prime Punches the Universe put together! But it's attracted the attention of a sinister, Slavic-accented nogoodnik as he wqalksto the Unuted Nations, who, it just happens, also has a birthday today! Meanwhile, the FBIO arrives at the EC offices to inquire just where do you get a green suit.
G-Men warned Feldstein and Gaines that their comic is an accurate representation of a weapon the government's alreadyt working on! It's like when the OSS assassinated Sean Connery over the rebreathers from Thunderball.
Thus Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines perished in atomic war.
Luckily, they got better for 1952's Weird Fantasy #14, in which the duo are all out of ideas and brainstorming how to fill their comic...whoa, déjà vu.
from "The Expert!" in Weird Fantasy (1951 series) #14 (EC, July 1952); co-plot by Bill Gaines; co-plot, script, pencils and inks by Joe Orlando; colors by Marie Severin; letters by Jim Wroten
I really love this story, especially for Joe Orlando's amazing caricatures of his two bosses.
Their quest to write the ultimate story about Mars means they'll hire as story consultant the most famous expert on the Red Planet...
Is this guy an expert on Mars or what? You make the call!
Whew! What an ending, kids! Did you feel freezing terror run down your spin as your read that one as much as me? Oh, wait a minute...I left the window open. But wait! What If...? (copyright ©1977 Roy Thomas) Al 'n Bill told a big, big fib? Yes, this is what really happened when they wrote a story about Mars. Me, I hope Marvin and Dejah Thoris are in this one.
from "The Ad!" in Weird Fantasy (1951 series) #14 (EC, July 1952); co-plot by Bill Gaines; co-plot, script, pencils and inks by Joe Orlando; colors by Marie Severin; letters by Jim Wroten
The Dynamic Duo plot out a fake ad that promises a trip to Mars! You guys, this is exactly what almost put Burma-Shave™ out of business!
Enter a comic book fan! (Uh oh. That's always bad news.)
Turns out it's all true! Gasp! Choke!
So, now we've seen how Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines have destroyed the world, littered with body parts, and buttered the back of Annette Funicello. But what about a good old-fashioned origin story? How did this unassuming pair come to create the scariest comics ever published and simultaneously bring down the entire industry! Well, check it out in a little tale I like to call "EC Comics: What It Is and How It Came to Be!"
from "Horror Beneath the Streets" in Haunt of Fear (1950 series) #17 [#3] (EC, September 1950); script, pencils, and inks by Al Feldstein, letters by Jim Wroten
It's closing time (you don't have to go home but you can't stay here) sometime in 1949 at the offices of Educational Comics, publisher of Animal Fables, Reddy Kilowatt, Picture Stories from the Bible, The Church That Was Built with Bread, The Wonders of Wire Rope and many other wholesome, educational all-age comics for the kiddies so they can peacefully drift off to a happy sleep with absolutely no possibility of sleep terrors of nightmares.
All and Bill are trapped underground in the sewers (I hate when that happens) and scared out of their sensible 1940s-style BVDs. What's next...a grim meeting with The Old Witch, The Vault-Keeper, and The Crypt-Keeper?
Well golly you know what, yes it was! The trio of EC horror hosts trap them into signing lifetime contracts that they publish the most gruesome and frightening comic book in the industry, at the penalty of losing their souls...bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Or, possibly, losing their second-class mailing permit.
You can tell that the curse was real, because immediately after EC Comics stopped publishing scary stories at the order of Our Pal the US Government, Al Feldstein died fifty years later.
from DC Comics cover-dated August 2014
Hail and happy birthday, Al Feldstein! And thank you for teaching us how to laugh at terror, again!
from Strange Adventures (2020 series) #11 (DC/Black Label, September 2021), script by Tom King; pencils, inks, and colors by Mitch Gerads and Evan Shaner, letters by Clayton Cowles
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