Beschreibung:

HAUNT OF FEAR No. 19 Publisher: EC [Indicia: Fables Publishing Co., Inc.] Date Published: May-June, 1953 Description: VG/Fine (5.0). 1/4" split to top spine, reading creases to spine, pencilled distributor's mark ("H 1/9 20") to "H" in "HAUNT." Cream pages. Cover: Graham Ingels. Plots and scripts: Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein. Art: Graham Ingels, Jack Kamen, Jack Davis, George Evans. Used in SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT. GPAnalysis: A 5.0 sold for $420 in 8/22. In 1954, Robert Warshow, a critic for Commentary magazine, wrote what was probably the most perceptive contemporary article on EC comics. His son Paul was an EC fan, and Warshow tried to discourage the boy from reading the grisly mags. Paul convinced his dad to give EC a try, so Warshow read a handful of ECs and tried to keep an open mind. At first, Warshaw was grudgingly impressed by EC's high quality: "It should be said that the EC comics do in fact display a certain imaginative flair." But then he got to Haunt of Fear #19 and "Foul Play." "There is a picture of a baseball game in which the ball is a man's head with one eye dangling from its socket, the bat is a severed leg, the catcher wears a dismembered human torso as a chest protector, the baselines are marked with stretched-out intestines, the bases are marked with the lungs, liver and heart, the resin-bag is the dead man's stomach, and the umpire dusts off home plate with the scalp." Years later, Al Feldstein tried to explain how this over-the-top tale found its way into print: "You get into a certain frame of mind when you're close to something over a period of time. You're having a tongue-in-cheek approach to horror and you don't realize you're getting more and more numb to what you're being tongue-in-cheek about. The baseball story, to me, was absurd in terms of reality.... But when you step away and become a non-involved individual reading it for the first time, it's an atrocity." — Al Feldstein interviewed by Bill Spicer, The Complete Haunt of Fear. Russ Cochran: 1985. By the end of his essay, Warshow admits that EC comics are unlikely to harm his son, but he still wishes they'd dry up and blow away. As he signs off, the lingering impression of "Foul Play" continues to haunt him like a bad dream: "We are left with the underworld of publishing which produced that baseball game, which I don't suppose I shall easily forget." — Robert Warshow, "Paul, the Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham," Commentary: The Monthly Magazine of Opinion, June, 1954. Enjoying the Sale? Order a fully-illustrated softcover catalogue for 30 bucks. Only about 100 copies were printed and they're going fast. To reserve a copy, contact PBA's Director of Comics: ivan@pbagalleries.com. Consign to PBA Galleries. Our comic sales average a 98% sell-through rate, our prices realized are top-of-the-market, and our research-intensive catalogues are the best in the business. Seeking Silver Age Marvel, Golden Age superheroes, and pre-Code horror. Contact ivan@pbagalleries.com. Item#: 351120 Headline: HAUNT OF FEAR #19 * 5.0 * An Atrocity from "The Underworld of Publishing"