''Shock Illustrated'' was an American black and white magazine published by
EC Comics from late 1955 to early 1956. Part of EC's
Picto-Fiction line, each magazine featured three to five stories. The artists drew one to four panels per page with the text overlaid onto the artwork. The first issue appeared with a cover date of September–October 1955 and featured three psychology-themed stories, similar in theme to the comic ''Psychoanalysis'' published by EC in 1955. Starting with the second issue this type of story was generally reduced to one per issue, with the remaining stories being similar in theme to those that appeared in EC's comic ''
Shock SuspenStories''.
[Cochran, Russ. ''Complete EC Library: Terror Illustrated''. Gemstone, 2006.]
''Shock Illustrated'' ran for a total of three issues. The Picto-Fiction magazines lost money from the start, and when EC's distributor went bankrupt, the company had no choice but to cancel the prints. The third issue of this magazine is known as the rarest EC publication of all time. Although all 250,000 copies had been printed, publisher
Bill Gaines
William Maxwell Gaines (; March 1, 1922 – June 3, 1992), was an American publisher and co-editor of EC Comics. Following a shift in EC's direction in 1950, Gaines presided over what became an artistically influential and historically import ...
lacked the funds to bind them, and all but 100 copies were destroyed.
Contributors
The editor of ''Shock Illustrated'' was
Al Feldstein. In addition to those stories credited to him, Feldstein also wrote under the pseudonym
Alfred E. Neuman
Alfred E. Neuman is the fictitious mascot and cover boy of the American humor magazine '' Mad''. The character's distinct smiling face, parted red hair, gap-tooth smile, freckles, protruding nose, and scrawny body, first emerged in U.S. iconog ...
. Feldstein included multiple retellings of previous stories, a move suggested by Gaines. This included "A Question of Time" and "Dead Right" in the second issue and "Curiosity Killed" in the third issue. Contributing writers included
Jack Oleck (who had worked as a writer on EC's earlier publications), Robert Bernstein, John Larner, and
Daniel Keyes (using the pseudonyms Kris Daniels and A.D. Locke).
Artists featured in ''Shock Illustrated'' included
Jack Kamen, Rudy Nappi,
,
George Evans George Evans may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* George "Honey Boy" Evans (1870–1915), American songwriter and entertainer
* George Evans (bandleader) (1915–1993), English jazz bandleader, arranger and tenor saxophonist
* George Evans (si ...
,
Al Williamson,
Angelo Torres and
Graham Ingels.
''Shock Illustrated'' was reprinted along with the other Picto-Fiction magazines in hardbound volumes by Russ Cochran (and
Gemstone Publishing) for the first time in 2006 as the final part of his ''Complete EC Library''. With these reprints, published for the first time, was the fourth issue of the title which had been produced but never printed.
Issue guide
See also
*
Terror Illustrated
''Terror Illustrated'' was a black-and-white magazine published by EC Comics in late 1955 and early 1956. Part of EC's Picto-Fiction line, each magazine featured three to five stories. The format alternated blocks of text with several illustrati ...
References
{{reflist
External links
"Lipstick Traces" by Bhob Stewart
EC Comics publications
Magazines established in 1955
Magazines disestablished in 1956
Defunct magazines published in the United States
Fiction magazines
Quarterly magazines published in the United States
1955 establishments in the United States