Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Fall Guy For Murder And Other Stories by Johnny Craig

The first collection to ever showcase the chronological run of Johnny Craig’s crisp, elegantly drawn Crime SuspenStories adds noir to the EC Comics library.

Surrounded by the ornate, retro, proto-splatter horror graphics of Jack Davis and Graham Ingels and the slick, futuristic sci-fi stylings of Wally Wood and Al Williamson, EC Comics superstar Johnny Craig stood out with his elegant, crisp, contemporary graphic style. And nowhere did this style work more beautifully than in the dozens of superb crime comics he wrote and drew for EC, mostly in Crime SuspenStories (for which he handled the cover and lead-story duties for most of its run).

Featuring escaped convicts, murderous husbands and wives, blackmailing maids, scheming nurses, executioners, time bombs, private dicks, and the occasional hatchet killer, the 22 stories in this book—all written and drawn by Craig—comprise a perfect encapsulation of the very best kind of noir writing, stunningly executed (in more than one sense of the word!) by one of the great cartoonists of his (or any) era. And all in eight pages per story! Fall Guy For Murder and other Stories is the first collection to showcase the chronological run of Craig’s Crime SuspenStories tales in one criminally convenient package, supplemented with several fascinating essays and informative historical notes on the stories.

No comments:

Post a Comment