Jack Kamen

Jolting tales of criminals, capers, and tension, now in an affordable, oversized paperback Collecting issues #13-#18 of Crime SuspenStories from the twisted artistic talents of Al Feldstein, Johnny Craig, Bill Gaines, Jack Kamen, Sid Check, Al Williamson, Fred Peters, Graham Ingels, George Evans, Al Williamson, Joe Orlando, and more. Featuring a foreword by David del Valle

Jack Kamen's stories for The Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt, and The Haunt of Fear favored unnerving creepiness over gruesome shock. With his penchant for deft delineations of scheming women, jealous husbands, murderous love triangles, and not-so-innocent children, Kamen's pen laid down a precise, sure line that brought each story's shock ending into sharp relief. This volume features 27 Kamen favorites, drawn at the peak of powers, including: "Kamen's Kalamity," our title story, featuring the "true" origin story of the artist himself When the pressures of drawing his stories, dealing with his editors, and pleasing his wife and kids become too much, comic book artist Jack Kamen loses it, and that night, when the moon is full ... "How Green Was My Alley," the cautionary tale of a traveling salesman who spends every other week at home with his wife. And every other other week at his other home with his other wife In a grisly finale, echoing the EC shocker "Foul Play," Kamen leaves nothing to the imagination "Beauty Rest" How far would you go to win a beauty pageant for the title of "Miss Corpse"? -- Well, this contestant is willing to go even further than that She had the looks, the ambition, and the smoldering sex appeal to play the world's oldest game and snag the man of her dreams -- the rich man of her dreams -- but it was never more than "Only Sin Deep." Then, Kamen switches from horror to horror-humor for all 13 of his classic "Grim Fairy Tales," revealing the gruesome underpinnings of the classics. You'll never look at Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, or Little Red Riding Hood and their friends quite the same way again Plus: seven bonus crime and horror stories by EC short-termers John Alton, Frank Bolle, Leonard Starr, Bill Fraccio, Rudy Palais, and Ed Smalle. Introduction by Thommy Burns.Like every book in the Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library, Kamen's Kalamity And Other Stories also features essays and notes by EC experts on these superbly crafted, classic masterpieces.

Famed for his deft delineations of beautiful, scheming women, handsome jealous husbands, and not-so-innocent children, Kamen returns with a collection of classic EC horror tales from The Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt, and The Haunt of Fear. In the title tale, a cruel stepfather sends his stepdaughter to bed without her supper, but the old crone next door gives the hungry girl a candy figure made in the likeness of her father ... In "What the Dog Dragged In" -- one of the EC's earliest adaptations of a Ray Bradbury story -- a wheelchair-bound blind woman asks her faithful dog to go find her fianc , unaware that he had been killed in an auto accident... In "Loved to Death," a rejected suitor spends one dollar to buy a potion that makes a woman fall in love with him, but when it works too well he discovers the price of the antidote is more than he can afford ... Plus over 20 more tales of madness and horror as only EC can do them