More Horror

Artist Paul Tucker and I are currently working on a new concept titled "John Watkins: Phantom for Hire", which is right now just a short story exercise that threatens to take up more of our time in the future, as it's been loads (just loads) of fun to this point.  Paul even went so far as to draw a mock cover for the character, an homage to old EC Comics horror books that carries the title "Oh! The Horror!"  Interestingly, what I like most about the image is the furniture - that's not to say that everything isn't great, but just take the time and look at couch and endtable set!  Seriously, I love it.

I have no idea if this cover will ever be used for anything, which is why I wanted to get it up here for more people to see.  It's too swell for me to keep all to myself.  The title, by the way, is a reference to a short-run book that Paul and I put together a few years ago under the same name.  It contained three short stories, and...oh, I'd show the cover to it if I still had the image on this hard drive and not hiding away on a DVD-R in the closet.  Oh well, the best I can do is this picture from the New York Comic Con, with the book next to the Teddy and the Yeti paper heroes and the Franks and Beans DVDs.

That's a robot holding a sword in the desert underneath the title on the cover - that's how cool it is.

I currently have one single copy of this book left with me from the orignial print run.  One!  It traveled back from the Motor City Comic Con all alone.  The person who buys it at the upcoming Baltimore show goes home with a prize, no joke.

Bernard Krigstein's "Master Race"

Thanks to the urging of your friend and mine, Paul Tucker, I've been reading some old EC Comics stories recently - I'm trying to emulate the style to an extent for a new story we're working on together.  By far the best of the bunch has been "Master Race" by Bernard Krigstein, a story from the 1955 title Impact! which is generally regarded as some of the top work to come out of EC.

Because I found the story so engrossing and so powerful, I decided to post it below in its entirety (my ability to do so thanks to time and the Internets); the art seems vibrant and the words strike a nerve even 56 years after its initial publication.  Perhaps most surprising is that this story was published just 10 years after the Holocaust ended, a time when many people found the subject still too shocking to discuss.  In its form and function, I think that this story shows the greatest potential of comics.  In eight pages Krigstein created a memorable work of art.