The Lost EC Stories Part Thirteen

Saturday John Severin Day.

Like last week's western story I am not sure if this thirteenth installment of John Severin and Colin Dawkins 'lost EC stories' is actually written by Dawkins and not drawn by Severin from some script on Stan Lee's desk. Like the previous story, it does not have the amount of captions the earlier Dawkins stories have and in addition, the splash page lettering does not resemble the EC style headers the duo used up till this. It is also the last story of this series, because after this Severin is done at EC and starts doing stories for Timely exclusively for a while. So I hope you enjoyed this short run of forgotten gems and have fun with this last one.

The Lost EC Stories Part 12

Saturday John Severin Celebration.

We are nearing the end of John Severin and Colin Dawson's run of pseudo EC stories for Stan Lee, which were done at the same time they were doing most of the work for Two Fisted Tales as well. After that run, John Severin started worked on scripts from Timely, which were mostly western stories at the start. That makes this entry a strange duck, because it is a western story, but it does follow the EC format and seems to have been written by Colin Dawkins. I chose to include it, so you can see for yourself. I did not include When The Dillans Rode from Western Outlaws #8 (April 1955) because it looks and reads like a house story as well.

The Lost EC Stories Part Eleven

Saturday John Severin Day.

Continuing last eeks trend there is more dialogue in the next of John Severin and Colin Dawkins' amazingly EC-like historica war stories for Stan Lee.

The Lost EC stories Part Ten

Saturday Severin Special.

Only a few more stroies to go on the Severin/Dawkins run of remarkably EC-like stories for Timely. In this one, they seem to be using more dailogue and less description than in some of the others. With it's Civil War subject it is also a prime example of Timely doing some great historical pieces.

The Lost EC Stories Part Nine

Saturday Severin Special

My guess is that these stories by John Severin and Colin Dawkins (which were done concurrently with their run on Two Fisted Tales) wre brought in whole by the team, after which editor Stan decided where they shoudl go. This one ended up in Rugged Action, a new title inspired by the succesful men's magazines from publisher Martin Goodman of men doing daring stuff with women who were barely clothed. Of course, this being a post code title the women part had to be dropped. The title ran for only a couple of issues.

The Lost EC Stories Part Two

Saturday Severin Day

The second of the EC style stories John Severin did with his regular writer Colin Dawkins for Timely while he was still editing Two-Fisted Tales.

Missing EC

Saturday Leftover Day.

By 1956 the once mighty Lev Gleason empire was crumbling. His crime books Crime Does Not Pay and Crime And Punishment had not survived the arrival of the comic book code and the reslting backlash for hooror and crime books. All he had left were a couple of kids books, some westerns and his long running romance book Boy Loves Girl. Over at he comics museum two scanners are uploading almost all of the issues of ths title (and it's predessor Boy Meets Girl from books donate by Jim Vandeboncoeur Jr. For the next to last issues, Gleason got himself some Leroy lettering and called the book a New Trend book. Leroy lettering was used in all of the EC books which were called part of... you've guessed it, a new trend. All of these books had long gone, EC being one of the first casualties of the comic book witch hunt of the mid fifties. Even their comics code friendly follow up New Direction titles had stopped. But still Gleason must have thought there must be some fans out there would have been missing them.

Ig they did, they were treated by the standard romance fare of the period. But two of these stories were drawn by Bill Walton doing his best Alex Toth impression (even more than usual). The result is a remarkable book, I would love to share. The wo other stories in this book, one of which is drawn by romance regular An Brewster, have been inked in the same sober Toth style, which makes me think that Mike Peppe was involved in the inking of all these stories, maybe even an editor. His style is visible in other books of this series as well, but never more so than in these two stories.

Looking into the Gleason books I found two other Bill Walton stories with Leroy lettering in an Alex Toth style in Crime And Punishment #72 from April 1955. These are from about a year earlier and even has Leroy lettering in the balloons. So there may be even more out there, although all of th Walton stories I have seen in Boy Loves Girl in 1955 and 1956 didn't.