EC Comics was considered far ahead of its time for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most engaging is their complete lack of regard for the Fourth Wall, years before Deadpool or Harley Quinn. As a case in point, your Major Spoilers Retro Review of The Haunt of Fear #3 awaits!
THE HAUNT OF FEAR #3 (#17)
Writer: Johnny Craig/Harvey Kurtzman/Al Feldstein/Gardner Fox
Penciler: Johnny Craig/Harvey Kurtzman/Al Feldstein/Graham Ingels
Inker: Johnny Craig/Harvey Kurtzman/Al Feldstein/Graham Ingels
Colorist: Harvey Kurtzman
Letterer: Jim Wroten
Editor: William M. Gaines
Publisher: EC Comics
Cover Price: 10 Cents
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $1,600.00
Release Date: May 25, 1950
Previously in The Haunt of Fear: It’s easy to think of metafiction as an entirely modern invention, something that cropped up in the 1980s, or maybe with the works of Kurt Vonnegut. But the editorial staff of Entertaining Comics (formerly Educational Comics) were playing with form and metatext over seventy years ago. Young Bill Gaines returned from a hitch in the Army Air Corps to find himself a publisher, due to the tragic death of his father Max in an accident. The superheroes that had defined the comic industry since 1938 were experiencing a downturn, but Bill and his creative staff (listing the names that aren’t legit comics legends is easier, but Wally Wood, Al Feldstein, Basil Wolverton, Jack Davis, Graham Ingels, and a host more were all part of EC’s staff, as well as the entire Usual Gang of Idiots behind Mad Magazine) experimented with a number of different genres. The spring of 1950 brought the first appearance of EC’s most enduring star, The Crypt-Keeper, and a full range of EC horror books followed.
And this is the “true story” of how that all happened, beginning with two comic editors finishing up the latest issue of Modern Love and heading home for the night.
Al Feldstein’s remark about how creepy the dark corridors of their office are sets the mind of Bill Gaines racing about how it’s a little bit fun being scared. Of course, when a shadowy figure begins stalking them through the darkened streets of the city, though, Bill starts to doubt that premise.
Escaping the mysterious spectre by climbing into the sewers (beautifully rendered by Al Feldstein himself in this story, and full of unsettling angles and dark corners), the two editors are trapped. Unable to get out the way they came, they begin exploring the underworld of New York, looking for a way out to safety.
And that’s when they nearly trip over a human corpse, floating in the fetid waters.
That look of sudden terror in the last panel is legitimately giving me the creeps, even having read the entire issue and knowing what I know about what comes next. After Gaines is snatched away, he finds himself face-to-misshapen-face with a strange under-dweller, a wart-covered thing called… The Crypt-Keeper!
Feldstein, too, is met by a strange being, the Keeper of the Vault of Horror, who begins to speak with him. We readers don’t get to hear what is said, as the story jumps forward in time to find a clearly traumatized Bill Gaines running for his life, yelling for his missing friend.
As the editors finally return to the surface, the final page of the story features The Old Witch (for whom Haunt of Fear is her home title, as Tales From The Crypt is for the Crypt-Keeper and Vault of Horror would be for the Vault-Keeper) looking the reader in the eye, explaining that this is absolutely how the GhouLunatics got their berths in EC’s horror books. Oh, and if you were wondering what might have chased Bill and Al into the underground in the first place? It rhymes with Bold Switch, and she got her own comic by agreeing to let them OUT of the sewers.
Thanks to EC’s unusual numbering/renumbering schemes, The Haunt of Fear #3 is also numbered 17, as it continued the numbering of the canceled Western title, Gunfighter, but regardless of how you number it, the whole issue is creative, bizarre, joyful, and above all, entertaining, earning 5 out of 5 stars overall. The salad days, sadly, were brief, as the advent of the Comics Code (which contained several clauses specifically targeting Gaines’ comics) meant that all the EC horror books were gone by 1954, with the rest of their publishing line, save for Mad Magazine, going under in 1956.
But it was great fun while it lasted.
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HAUNT OF FEAR #3
The "origin story" of EC's three horror hosts is a fourth-wall breaking tale full of black humor, impressive art, and the joyful culture of EC's heyday. Buy if you find it, do not hesitate.
Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.