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The EC Artists' Library #23
Doctor Of Horror and Other Stories
A collection of comics torn from the pages of Tales from the Crypt and more: plus, Poe adaptations and EC’s first Ray Bradbury story!
This volume features Ingels’s earliest EC crime and horror work. Highlights include Ingels’s very first EC story, a clever twist on “The Cask of Amontillado” that you won’t see coming, and more. Black & white illustrations throughout.
This volume features Ingels’s earliest EC crime and horror work. Highlights include Ingels’s very first EC story, a clever twist on “The Cask of Amontillado” that you won’t see coming, and more. Black & white illustrations throughout.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published November 13, 2018
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About the author
Graham Ingels
126 books3 followersGraham J. Ingels was a comic book and magazine illustrator best known for his work in EC Comics during the 1950s, notably on The Haunt of Fear and Tales from the Crypt, horror titles written and edited by Al Feldstein, and The Vault of Horror, written and edited by Feldstein and Johnny Craig.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 19, 2018
Doctor of Horror and Other Stories collects Graham Ingels' earliest EC comics work.
With stories written by Al Feldstein, Gardner Fox, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Allan Poe, Doctor of Horror shows Graham Ingels art when it was still in its figurative diapers. The first few stories are westerns and crime comics, nothing fancy storywise but Ingels' art was up for the task.
The title story, Doctor of Horror, is where the fun begins. From there, it's a parade of living dead, vampires, double crossing husbands, double crossing wives, murderous relatives, grave robbers, freak shows, parasitic twins, and all the other stuff that led other publishers to form the Comics Code and run EC out of business.
While I wouldn't say any of the stories were bad, the westerns could have been clipped. Some of the stories felt like trial runs of better stories done by other EC artists or even Ingels himself. The world of EC comics sure has a lot of crooked undertakers in it.
Ghastly Graham lived up to his name in a lot of these tales. Like I've said before, the man knows his way around a rotting corpse. While it wasn't as good as Grave Business and Other Stories, Doctor of Horror is a fun collection of Graham Ingels' EC work and a look at a great artist in his early years. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
With stories written by Al Feldstein, Gardner Fox, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Allan Poe, Doctor of Horror shows Graham Ingels art when it was still in its figurative diapers. The first few stories are westerns and crime comics, nothing fancy storywise but Ingels' art was up for the task.
The title story, Doctor of Horror, is where the fun begins. From there, it's a parade of living dead, vampires, double crossing husbands, double crossing wives, murderous relatives, grave robbers, freak shows, parasitic twins, and all the other stuff that led other publishers to form the Comics Code and run EC out of business.
While I wouldn't say any of the stories were bad, the westerns could have been clipped. Some of the stories felt like trial runs of better stories done by other EC artists or even Ingels himself. The world of EC comics sure has a lot of crooked undertakers in it.
Ghastly Graham lived up to his name in a lot of these tales. Like I've said before, the man knows his way around a rotting corpse. While it wasn't as good as Grave Business and Other Stories, Doctor of Horror is a fun collection of Graham Ingels' EC work and a look at a great artist in his early years. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
January 11, 2023
It begins! The most revolutionary artist in all horror comicdom shows up like Jimi Hendrix reinventing the instrument in his very first horror story, the titular "Doctor of Horror"!
It's a shock to see just how much ink is covering the page, it makes me wonder if he was asked to pull back a little ("the printer's are running out of black!"). It's followed by "The Hungry Grave", "Rats Have Sharp Teeth", and "The Killer In the Coffin", one after the other. These all rank alongside his very best work, with an aggressive style that he would channel later for things like "Horror We, How's Bayou?" (from the Sucker Bait collection). The irregular panel shapes Ingels draws really show off his work in a way that would be sadly lost almost immediately as Feldstein gained more control and insisted on more brick style layouts. However, Ingels was never more charged and raw than here, and it's essential.
A handfull of his stark western stories are included, too which really adds to the wallop of just how amazing his first four dark tales really are. The remaining twenty tales (yes, there's 29!) here are solid, with the best stories mostly being the ones that wound up in Haunt of Fear. "Monster Maker" is a nice 'Frankenstein' knock off with some last lovely jagged fames. "Reunion" and "Room for One More", two classics, close out this volume with Ghastly already showing his mastery of rotting flesh, zombies, and (almost) the final form of the Old Witch.
In four years, he would be done forever. At this stage though, Ingels was the rockstar of the label, setting the bar for everyone, and I almost suspect that Feldstein held off on giving him material because he was scared of how brilliant Ingels work was and still is. For historical importance, this is perhaps the most important book in this series, waaaaaay under-rated. So cool!
.............and because nobody asked, if Ingels = Hendrix, then:
Jack Davis = Bob Dylan (great characters, casting, and artistic longevity)
W. Wood = Lennon (versatile, nerdy, serious, sensitive, revolutionary, tragic)
Kamen = McCartney (cutesy, suburban, but sometimes subversive with staying power)
Craig = Ray Davies (clever, clean, consistently sharp, and under-rated)
Orlando = Pete Townsend (little messy, gross; very earnest, energetic)
Feldstein = Phil Spector (in-your-face wall of bug-eyed pop lunacy)
Kurtzman = Berry Gordy ('the hit maker')
Williamson = David Bowie (because 'space')
Krigstein = Lou Reed (iconoclastic and self destructive)
Severin = Merle Haggard (traditional cowpoke)
Anyways, you're welcome.
It's a shock to see just how much ink is covering the page, it makes me wonder if he was asked to pull back a little ("the printer's are running out of black!"). It's followed by "The Hungry Grave", "Rats Have Sharp Teeth", and "The Killer In the Coffin", one after the other. These all rank alongside his very best work, with an aggressive style that he would channel later for things like "Horror We, How's Bayou?" (from the Sucker Bait collection). The irregular panel shapes Ingels draws really show off his work in a way that would be sadly lost almost immediately as Feldstein gained more control and insisted on more brick style layouts. However, Ingels was never more charged and raw than here, and it's essential.
A handfull of his stark western stories are included, too which really adds to the wallop of just how amazing his first four dark tales really are. The remaining twenty tales (yes, there's 29!) here are solid, with the best stories mostly being the ones that wound up in Haunt of Fear. "Monster Maker" is a nice 'Frankenstein' knock off with some last lovely jagged fames. "Reunion" and "Room for One More", two classics, close out this volume with Ghastly already showing his mastery of rotting flesh, zombies, and (almost) the final form of the Old Witch.
In four years, he would be done forever. At this stage though, Ingels was the rockstar of the label, setting the bar for everyone, and I almost suspect that Feldstein held off on giving him material because he was scared of how brilliant Ingels work was and still is. For historical importance, this is perhaps the most important book in this series, waaaaaay under-rated. So cool!
.............and because nobody asked, if Ingels = Hendrix, then:
Jack Davis = Bob Dylan (great characters, casting, and artistic longevity)
W. Wood = Lennon (versatile, nerdy, serious, sensitive, revolutionary, tragic)
Kamen = McCartney (cutesy, suburban, but sometimes subversive with staying power)
Craig = Ray Davies (clever, clean, consistently sharp, and under-rated)
Orlando = Pete Townsend (little messy, gross; very earnest, energetic)
Feldstein = Phil Spector (in-your-face wall of bug-eyed pop lunacy)
Kurtzman = Berry Gordy ('the hit maker')
Williamson = David Bowie (because 'space')
Krigstein = Lou Reed (iconoclastic and self destructive)
Severin = Merle Haggard (traditional cowpoke)
Anyways, you're welcome.
December 8, 2020
This fascinating collection of early work 'Ghastly' Graham Ingels did for EC's horror comics exists to showcase how his art developed and changed from a basic comic book artist illustrating Westerns to the signature art style of an entire genre. The early stories about cowboys, or criminals, are forgettable in their telling and in their illustration but when 'Ghastly' was given full creative freedom, the difference is staggering.
None of the stories are longer than 8 pages and read in a short space of time many of them feel repetitive and formulaic. There's a love triangle, there's nastiness and there's often a twist ending. Over and over again. But these stories weren't published in hefty collections, they were cheap, throwaway comics. To judge them by another standard is unfair.
And some of the stories are excellent. The most memorable are adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe (the version of the Cask of Amontillado here has a great ending), HP Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury (more unofficial rip-offs than actual adaptations) but EC's own writers' gruesome imaginations and tight storytelling also shine through. But the star here is Ingels' artwork, the stark, black-and-white artwork that does such a fantastic job of conveying horror, corruption and weirdness.
None of the stories are longer than 8 pages and read in a short space of time many of them feel repetitive and formulaic. There's a love triangle, there's nastiness and there's often a twist ending. Over and over again. But these stories weren't published in hefty collections, they were cheap, throwaway comics. To judge them by another standard is unfair.
And some of the stories are excellent. The most memorable are adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe (the version of the Cask of Amontillado here has a great ending), HP Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury (more unofficial rip-offs than actual adaptations) but EC's own writers' gruesome imaginations and tight storytelling also shine through. But the star here is Ingels' artwork, the stark, black-and-white artwork that does such a fantastic job of conveying horror, corruption and weirdness.
November 10, 2025
Wonderful October read. Be warned: the first bunch of stories in this book are not horror but kind of bland Western stuff, but it's there to show you Ingels' progression into horror and the context he came from. Each story is around 6 or 7 pages so they are easy to pick up, read one or two, and put down until later. The art is intense and dramatic and beautiful.
One thing I found very funny was how many stories involved somebody being buried alive as part of some elaborate con they were enacting ("you bury me alive, then later, dig me up, and...!") I mean I'm sure you can imagine what keeps going wrong there.
One thing I found very funny was how many stories involved somebody being buried alive as part of some elaborate con they were enacting ("you bury me alive, then later, dig me up, and...!") I mean I'm sure you can imagine what keeps going wrong there.
February 21, 2023
Includes some growing pains (this collects all of Ingels' early EC stuff), but Ingels really gets into his groove here. It doesn't have as many high points as the Sucker Bait collection, but it's still worth reading. By the end of this, Ghastly truly lives.
October 26, 2024
No one was better suited for EC horror comics than Ghastly Graham Ingels, and this collection does a terrific job of showing his evolution as an artist by arranging a series of representative stories in chronological order.
January 14, 2019
Great overview of some of the work from Ingels' career as a noted comic illustrator. It was fun to learn a bit about his life and to see how his work evolved over time.
September 17, 2022
Another fantastic collection, beautifully presented with lots of insight- highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews