Fall Guy for Murder and Other Stories

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 in the 1950s with his elegant, crisp, contemporary graphic style. And nowhere did this style work more beautifully than in the dozens of superb crime and horror comics he wrote and drew for EC,mostly for the two comics he also edited, Crime SuspenStories and The Vault of Horror. (Craig was the only EC artist to habitually write his own material for the entire length of EC's run.) Featuring murderous husbands and wives, executioners, thieving surgeons, vengeful sword-swallowers, time bombs, private dicks, vampires, werewolves, and ghouls, the 23 stories in this book comprise a perfect encapsulation of the very best and darkest kind of noir and horror 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 seven or eight pages per story! Fall Guy For Murder And Other Stories is once again, as are the other EC Comic Library releases, supplemented with several fascinating essays and informative historical notes on the stories.

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.

John "Johnny" Thomas Alexis Craig (born in 1925 in Pleasantville, New York) drew one of the most infamous covers in comic book history: the “severed head” Crime SuspenStories that was spotlighted at the Kefauver comics hearings. He passed away in 2001.Gary Groth is the founder of The Comics Journal and also the co-founder and co-publisher of Fantagraphics Books. He lives in Seattle.