I've run into Russ several times over the years at conventions, B, and we've had on and off correspondences. But my kind of publishing is so very different from his that we've never had much to discuss in that arena. Fan to fan we've gotten on fine. I have always admired his EC sets, and loved his auction catalogs while they lasted.
My enjoyment of each EC title/editor is based on the different aspects they brought to the artistic table. Much as I love Kurtzman's war books for their penetrating social insights and artistic integrity, they lacked the gleeful spontaneity and frequent artistic competitive one-up-manship that Crash laments in the artistic mix in the s-f titles. And Kurtzman's control over layouts brought a continuity and consistency to his titles certainly lacking in all the others, but at the cost, I feel, of some artistic freedom and creativity.
Since I have managed to refrain from reading most Feldstein captions in EC comics, I don't have quite the same darts to throw at his writing. I can see its faults, but I don't experience all of them. Still, I never thought it was all that good, even sans captions. Agree that the horror books never seemed to bring out the best in any of the artists, save perhaps Ingels. Being in it for the art, therefore, I tend to shy away from them when revisiting the company.
The Crandall, Evans, Severin, Craig realism crowd are my solid second tier, meat and potatoes, gotta love 'em artists. (Throw in Kamen just to put him somewhere, but he never really belonged at EC.) These are the guys whose work I will pick up at other companies on general principles. I interviewed Severin and compiled a checklist of his pre-1960 work. I could probably do the same for most of Evans. but not Crandall or Craig. I'm not that dedicated.
Now all the rest of the EC crowd (you can rattle of the names here) I collect religiously and can and have put together indexes of most of them for myself and for various publications: notably Frazetta, Williamson, Wood and Krigstein - those being my favorites. These artists I will purchase any pre-1960 work from any company sight unseen. Add Torres and Krenkel and Toth and Colan and you have a core EC group that could and did transcend the editors.
If any of you are at all interested in modern times and 100 years ago, my Kickstarter Campaign of TODAY just reached it's first Stretch Goal of $10,000 and is arcing towards the second Stretch Goal of $12,500. I'm running the Campaign to help finance the 13th issue of The Vadeboncoeur Collection Of ImageS in which I will RE-present classic Public Domain illustration from the turn of the 20th Century in carefully recrafted colors. This issue will feature a special GOLD fifth spot color and 52 pages, the largest issue ever. If you'd like to learn more, visit:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1694106638/images-magazine-13-the-golden-glory-of-the-art-i-l. Thank you very much.
Peace, Jim (|:{>
