Disney and Muppets and Nothing Else

panicbeats:

John Severin passed away the other day. He never worked on Tales from the Crypt or Vault of Horror or anything, his work for E.C. was pretty much restricted to the war titles.

Nobody drew blank stares of horror like Severin. He probably wouldn’t have had to actually illustrate anything too awful if he had done horror, he could have just drawn terrified guys staring at something off-panel and we’d have been sold.

There’s a story that everyone at E.C. was saying that Severin COULDN’T draw horror, so Severin came in with some illustrations the next day that were so nasty they made Bill Gaines throw up on the spot, making it clear that Severin could do it, he just didn’t want to.

Severin’s stories always had a stark realism that kept the comics grounded among the more cartoony styles of Kurtzman and Jack Davis, the other two artists I associate most closely with the war comics. If Severin had brought that realism to the horror titles, the comics code would have been started years earlier.

(Source: spookycomics)