“Gutter of
Horror” is a Brazilian column from Dinamo Studio website about horror comics.
This is a translated version of the articles.
After World
War II, the heroic acts of the fictional superheroes were not so relevant
anymore and most superhero comics ended up falling into oblivion. Many titles
were cancelled and only a decade later some of it would come back. In its
place, a spirit of cynicism and tension (already warming up the Cold War) took
over the American people and another kind of genre became popular: horror and
crime comics. In this context we got Tales from the Crypt which, along with The
Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror, formed the trifecta of bimonthly E.C.Comics horror titles.
The origins
of Tales from the Crypt and its frightening host, the Crypt-Keeper goes back to
crime comics published by E.C. in the end of 1940, when Willlian Gaines and
his editor Al Feldstein started to experiment in their stories a genre that
both liked very much: horror. Those experiments led to the story “Return
from the Grave”, published in “Crime Patrol”. Return from the Grave was a
straight up horror story which also introduced for the first time the Crypt-Keeper.
An issue later Crime Patrol already had more horror stories than typical crime
stories, so the title was rename to “Tales from the Crypt of Horror”, keeping its original format for 4 more issues. After that, it became the horror
title we know.
Although
the Crypt-Keeper was the official host, he was also a character in some of the
stories, which revealed details of your biography. One of these stories was “The
Lower Berth”, that tells the circumstances surrounding the birth of the
character. But his stories were also published in his sister titles: The Vault
of Horror #34 featured the story “While the Cat’s Away”, where we know a little
more about him; and “Horror beneath the Streets”, featured in The Haunt of Fear
#17 in which we know how he and the other two horror hosts got their “contracts” to be
published by E.C.
The
creative process for the stories were simple, but efficient: William Gaines
read a great amount of horror stories and used it as a template for the
scripts. Among the stories that influenced Tales from the Crypt were H.P.
Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” (the base for stories such as “Reflection of Death”
and “Mirror, MIrror on the Wall”); Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (base for “Shadow
of Death”); Edgar Allan Poe’s The The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (base
for “The Living Death”); among others. They also published an unauthorized
adaptation of Ray Bradbury, which made the author got in contact with E.C. and
arrange a deal to published authorized adaptations of his stories, which
included “There Was and Old Woman” and “The Handler”, published in Tales from
the Crypt #34 and #36 respectively.
The artists and writers that did Tales From The Crypt included Al Feldstein,
Johnny Craig, Wally Wood, Jack Davis (they did covers an inside art), George
Evans, Jack Kamen, Graham Ingels, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Williamson, Joe Orlando,
Reed Crandall, Bernard Krigstein, Will Elder, Fred Peters and Howard Larsen.
To have an
idea of the success that this stories had back then, E.C. published in 1954 “Three
Dimensional Tales from the Crypt”, a quarterly title that recycled stories already
published in the main title, but printed in Anaglyph 3D (the one in which you
have to use paper eyeglasses with blue and red lens). Each issue came with a 3D
glasses and the sales were very high. Despite the success, the title didn’t
last long, not just because of the Comics Code, but for technical factors, like
the printing cost of the title.
Tales From
The Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear were very successful
during the 1950s, but unfortunately, they didn’t pass 30 issues. All because of
the witch hunt lead by Fredric Wertham that led to the United States Senate
Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, whose main target were horror and crime
comic from E.C. We know the end of this story: the creation of the Comics Code
and subsequent shut down of E.C Comics (more on that here and here)
So E.C.
Comics and his titles, including Tales from the Crypt sadly came to and end.
But it was not the last time we would see the Crypt-Keeper and his scary
stories. In 2007, a puslisher called Papercutz decided to revive the title with
new stories. The first issue had a cover by Kyle Baker and brought back the 3
most famous E.C. horror hosts: The Crypt-keeper, The Vault-Keeper and the Old
Witch. The title lasted 13 issues through 2010.
Tales
from the Crypt is not remembered only for his presence in horror comics, but
also his many adaptations for TV an film. And that’s what we will see in the
next article.
Rafael Algures is a Bachelor of Philosophy specialized in Neurosciences of Language. He is also a copywriter, content and science writer, and a comic book creator. His latest work, “Gutter of Horror: Transition”, a short horror comic about Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence are available at Amazon – digital and paperback.
Further
reading: The Rise of E.C. Comics (Gutter of Horror)