WEIRD FANTASY VOLUME 4 INTRODUCTION (Patreon)

I find writing essays and introductions incredibly difficult. Often, I find these things more difficult to put together than an entire script. My intentions on these is to write something that praises the virtues of the book and creators, while providing some interesting background information and maybe even a little personal insight on the subject. 

At the same time, there are several things I want to avoid like cancer. These are things I've come to despise from reading too many intros to various DC Archives, Marvel Masterworks and the like (as well as many prose introductions, it's not just a comics thing):

1) I don't want the introduction to be about me. The book is the thing. 

2) I also don't want an introduction to be a litany of story recaps. What the fuck is that lazy-ass shit? I know DC paid $500 for an intro -- I don't know if that still holds -- and if you're Roy Thomas or whoever that added up nicely. But come on. There's usually enough hack work in the comics themselves. Ha ha ha. 

3) I! Will! Not! Use! A! Hundred! Fucking! Exclamation! Points!!! 

Anyway, the reason I find it hard is that for me, at least, being positive and interesting is a lot harder than a snark-fest. I worry about being boring (even though I know that no one remembers a book introduction, by and large). So, there's that.. But what I really fear is that I'm going to come off as a fucking imbecile. Even though a lot of people aren't even going to read the introduction in the first place. 

I try to do right by the project and the people involved. If I agree to write anything it's because I like the book, I owe someone a favor, or I'm a friend of someone. Usually it's a combination of the former and the latter (Jay Stephen's Land of Nod, Jim Rugg's Street Angel), but the Superman Archive intro was a way to thank Scott Nybakken at DC for being an angel and dropping some books my way (I honestly had no idea at the time that I'd get paid. That was awesome. And I got a free book with Mr. Mxyzptlk's first appearance. Yay.).

So, Daniel Chabon is the editor on all my stuff at Dark Horse, and he's been aces with me, and he knew I was an EC comics fan. He asked me to do an intro for an EC Archive, and they were getting close to finishing a lot of the titles up, so I ended up with Weird Fantasy volume 4. Bigger industry names and non-comics folks who eat well got the headline titles, the horror stuff and all that. I'm not complaining.  And I worked on the damned thing for weeks, on and off, until the deadline loomed and I had to wrap it up. 

I have the Russ Cochran slipcase set of Weird Fantasy, and I went through all the stories and the interviews for material. I have all the Cochran editions, actually -- which only took about thirty five years to collect, starting with the Tales From the Crypt set that I walked home from the comic shop I worked at when I was 18 (or was I 19?). And I ended up going through a number of them, because I had settled on the idea of centering the piece on the Ray Bradbury adaptations, the story about how EC and Bradbury hooked up, and how Gaines and Feldstein silly-puttied a lot of story plots from original sources. Then I pulled out some of the books I have about EC and of course I got all worked up and I did too much reading and researching, and had too much material. I panic-edited it and asked Sarah to give it a read-through. I wanted to make sure it wasn't dull, dumb or full of disinformation. There's enough bad information out there in comics, I'd hate to have added anything else to the pile..

Now I've written an introduction to a friggin' introduction. The wonder of it all. The blunder of it all. I hope this sort of thing is of some interest, let me know in the comments and I'll see if the Superman introduction is available to post.

NOTE: The version below is what I send in to Daniel, it was copy-edited before seeing print.

WEIRD FANTASY VOLUME 4 INTRODUCTION

EC publisher William Gaines and editor Al Feldstein launched Weird Science and Weird Fantasy out of a mutual interest in the science-fiction genre and the possibilities it offered the comics medium. Gaines had been a reader of science-fiction pulps such as Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories, and it was through him that Feldstein became a science-fiction fan as well. As a result, the SF titles benefited from Gaines and Feldstein's friendship and shared interests more than the rest of the EC line. They were labors of love for the two men, acknowledged as such in house ads proclaiming them as the comics they were the “proudest to publish”.

Going in, Gaines and Feldstein knew that their more conceptual approach to SF wouldn't appeal to younger children and readers who wanted something more along the lines of Fiction House's popular Planet Comics, which featured square-jawed Flash Gordon-types wielding ray pistols while saving space damsels in distress. EC wasn't exactly offering hard science fiction as an alternative to space opera – they had their share of aliens and monsters, atomic bombs and rockets and flying saucers, as well as stalwart rocket-jockeys and alluring space sirens. But even when the SF titles debuted in 1950, boldly daring mid-century proto-nerds to delve into a “Weird-Science SuspenStory!”, an “Eerie -Science SuspenStory!” or a “Fanta-Science SuspenStory!” –  bearing bombastic titles such as “Atom Bomb Thief!”, “Cosmic Ray Bomb Explosion!” and “Martian Infiltration!” – they still weren't quite like anything else on the stands. At EC, atomic bombs were often detonated so some poor schmuck could wander into the blast, alien menaces would turn out to be the innocent victims of human prejudice, and war – both terrestial and interplanetary – was portrayed as stupid and immoral, rather than thrilling.

The traditional “SuspenStory” taglines were soon dropped as Gaines and Feldstein began to find their footing and hone their approach to the titles. At the beginning of EC's “New Trend” era, both men lacked confidence in their ability to come up with workable springboards for comic book scripts. To compensate, Gaines took inspiration from some of the pulp stories he had read. He also took a few plotlines. The earliest example of this in the SF line can be found in the first issue of Weird Science (#12, 1950), where the opening story, “Lost in the Microcosm”, lifted the idea of a man shrinking through infinite worlds from “He Who Shrank, written by Henry Hasse and first published in Amazing Stories in 1936.

Even after Gaines and Feldstein became adept at coming up with original stories, the constant need for new material to meet deadlines meant some EC stories would owe their origins to material reworked from other sources, mostly prose, but also including films and radio plays. Gaines was an insomniac who spent his sleepless hours reading – pulps, short story collections, newspapers and magazines. When something struck him as a potential framework for an EC story, he'd make a note of it in pencil. Gaines would pitch these springboard ideas to Feldstein, and the two men would kick things around, rejecting and augmenting, until settling on a premise for Feldstein to take up to his office to work up as a comic script. On one occasion, this led to a situation that could have landed EC in legal hot water, but instead led to a relationship with one of the premier authors of weird and fantastic fiction.

The letters page of Weird Fantasy #16 stated that “Home to Stay” (WF #13), was the first in a series of authorized adaptations of short stories written by famed SF author Ray Bradbury. This is a congenial reworking of what actually took place. As Gaines admitted later in interviews, he and Feldstein swiped not just one, but two Ray Bradbury short stories, “Kaleidoscope” and “Rocket Man”, for “Home to Stay”, and got caught by the author (two previous “adaptations” escaped Bradbury's notice: “A Strange Undertaking” (Haunt of Fear #6, based on his story “The Handler”),  and “What the Dog Dragged In”, (Vault of Horror #22), based on “The Emissary”).

Bradbury had been alerted by friends and readers to plagiarisms of his work appearing in a number of publications, including Weird Fantasy #13. In order to protect his publishing rights, on April 19th, 1952, Bradbury wrote an infamous letter to EC. “Just to remind you of an oversight”, it began. “You have not as yet sent me a check for $50.00 for secondary rights on my two stories...I feel this was probably overlooked in the general confusion of office-work, and look forward to your payment in the near future.” Remarkably, it closed with a P.S., in which Bradbury suggested the two parties come to an agreement for doing future stories based on his work. It turned out that Bradbury was a fan and collector of newspaper strips and comics, having clipped dailies and Sunday strips for years, and was impressed and delighted with the “adaptation”. In one of the happier EC twist endings, a deal was struck to produce official, properly-credited adaptations of Bradbury's stories.

Bradbury wasn't the only author whose work was used as the basis for an EC story, but he was the only one who called them on it. There were other EC stories derived – if not outright swiped – from the work of such notable SF authors as A.E. Van Vogt, Damon Knight and Fritz Lieber. Some examples of stories with borrowed plots are “The Gullible One” (Crime Suspenstories #5, based on Cornell Woolrich's “After Dinner Story”), “Dead Right!” (Shock Suspenstories #6, based on “In The Cards” by John Collier), “Divide and Conquer” (Weird Science #6, based on “A Scientist Divides” by Donald Wandrei) and “He Who Waits” (Weird Fantasy #15, based on “The Kelpie” by Manly Wade Wellman). In this volume you'll find “...For Us The Living” (Weird Fantasy #20), a take on “Bring the Jubilee” by Ward Moore.

Even so, Bradbury was a choice author for EC to have on board, and not only because of his reputation. Bradbury worked in multiple genres, so Feldstein could adapt stories for the crime, shock and horror titles, as well as SF. The material was varied enough in tone that Feldstein was able to assign stories to almost every artist on the EC roster. Feldstein knew his stable and knew how to write a story that played to their individual strengths, whether it was Graham Ingles “Ghastliness”, Jack Kamen's romance comic roots, or Wally Wood's intensity and detail.

Feldstein himself was enamored of Bradbury's work, to the point where it influenced his own writing, providing a lasting impact on the EC line and the SF titles in particular. In an interview conducted by Grant Geissman for Tales of Terror (The EC Companion), Feldstein said, “This became the love of my life, adapting Ray Bradbury into comics”. Not counting the three early, unofficial adaptations, Feldstein adapted twenty-three of Bradbury's stories (with Johnny Craig handling the writing and art on one  adaptation). Five of these stories are featured in this volume: “King of the Grey Skies” and “The Million Year Picnic” (art by John Severin and Will Elder), “I, Rocket” (art by Al Williamson), “The Silent Towns”, (art by Reed Crandall) and the final EC Bradbury adaptation, “A Sound of Thunder” (art by Williamson with Angelo Torres).

Because of the personal commitment Gaines and Feldstein had for the SF titles, EC continued to publish them even after they began losing money and had to be supported by the horror and crime comics. However, in 1953 the inside front covers of Weird Fantasy and Weird Science #22 announced the deaths of both books, explaining that there were “not enough discerning SF readers in the country to support a “high print” s-f mag”. EC combined both titles into one in order to lower costs and keep a pet project alive a little while longer, launching Weird Science-Fantasy as a 15 cent quarterly comic.

“We published to a large extent because we loved what we were publishing”, Gaines said while appearing on a panel at the 1972 EC Fan-Addict convention. Gaines and Feldstein especially loved their science-fiction titles. After you've read this new Dark Horse collection of stories from Weird Fantasy and Weird Science-Fantasy, they just might be your EC favorites, as well.