March 27, 2013
This compilation of “cartoonist’s cartoonist” Bernard Krigstein’s comics for EC and many other publishers spans many genres.
Bernard
Krigstein began his career as an unremarkable journeyman cartoonist
during the 1940s and finished it as a respected fine artist and
illustrator — but comics historians know him for his explosively
creative 1950s, during which he applied all the craft, intelligence and
ambition of a burgeoning “serious” artist to his comics work, with
results that remain stunning to this day.
Krigstein’s legend rests
mostly on the 30 or so stories he created for the EC Comics, but dozens
of stories drawn for other, lesser publishers such as Rae Herman,
Hillman, and Atlas (which would become Marvel) showcase his skills and
radical reinterpretation of the comics page, in particular his
groundbreaking slicing and dicing of time lapses through a series of
narrow, nearly animated panels.
Greg Sadowski, who has previously
written and designed a Harvey Award-winning biography of Krigstein, has
assembled the very best of Krigstein’s comics work, starting with his
earliest creative rumblings, through his glory days at EC, to his final,
even more brilliantly radical stories for Atlas Comics — running
through every genre popular at the time, be it horror, science fiction,
war, western, or romance (but no super-heroes).
Legendary EC colorist
Marie Severin, in her last major assignment before her retirement, has
recolored 15 stories for this edition. The remainder has been taken from
printed comics, digitally restored with subtlety and restraint.
This
edition reprints the out-of-print 2004 hardcover B. Krigstein Comics,
with a number of stories re-tooled and improved in terms of
reproduction, and several new stories added. It also contains an
extensive set of historical and editorial notes by editor Greg Sadowski.
Page stats from Krigstein’s personal archives and a comic book
checklist of the artist’s entire body of work round out this substantial
volume.
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