History Creator / ECComics

* CruelTwistEnding: [[spoiler:Mr. Drink, from "The Reluctant Vampire", is perhaps the only murderous individual who doesn't quite deserve his gruesome end - while he has begun to kill other people again, ostensibly to save his ass and keep him supplied in "liquid assets", he's also donating most of the plasma to the blood bank he works at to boost the inventory and keep it from being shut down. (Ironically, [[Series/TalesFromTheCrypt the TV series]], usually known for being DarkerAndEdgier, makes him more sympathetic than his comics counterpart, and [[SparedByTheAdaptation even gives him a happy ending]].)]]

* KarmaHoudini: It happened quite often in ''Crime [=SuspenStories=]'' and ''Shock [=SuspenStories=]'' but the darkest example has to be "A Kind of Justice".

Notoriously, EC was told to change the ethnicity of a character in a reprint of the classic DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything story [[http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/54803.html "Judgment Day."]] This was the last straw, and the story was reprinted unchanged in the final comic book published by the company.

* TakeOurWordForIt: In ''Crime [=SupenStories=]'' #5, a mystery writer discovers an airtight way to sneak in a house, commit a murder, and sneak out with all doors and windows shut in a locked room. Naturally, although it drives the ensuing plot, the method is never revealed.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In "Wish You Were Here", a businessman's wife discovers an enchanted Chinese figurine and wishes for a fortune. Learning that her husband was killed while driving to his lawyer's office (after naming her the beneficiary of a generous life insurance policy), and remembering what happened in "Literature/TheMonkeysPaw", she wishes for him to be brought back to the way he was "just before the accident"; unfortunately, he's still a corpse since he died of a heart attack ust before the crash. She uses the third and final wish to make him alive... which condemns him to eternal pain and agony, since his dead body had been embalmed. Even her [[AndIMustScream hacking him to tiny bits can't put him out of his misery.]]

* [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness Pre-]][[LighterAndSofter Trend]] Comics (1946-1950):

* New Direction Comics (1955-1956)

* ContemptibleCover: EC's horror and crime books were often ''exceedingly'' violent for the era in their cover material(and yet ''still'' more restrained than some of their imitators) -- an excellent advertising and sales tactic on the newsstand, but one that earned them the enmity of teachers, parents' associations and clergy before they even read a single page (if they could stand to). Infamous among them was [[https://bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cri1.597a-1.jpg the "severed head" cover]] from ''Crime Suspenstories'' #22, which Gaines unwisely tried to argue wasn't in bad taste at the Senate hearings, [[DiggingYourselfDeeper because it only showed the axe covered in blood and the woman's head separate from her body, not the bloody stump of her neck.]]

* AnthologyComic

* BackFromTheDead: ''Many'' stories in the horror titles have the victim(s) pulling this off in order to ensure that justice will be served.

** One story has a gangster being brought BackFromTheDead, by a professor who tells the gangster's colleagues that there may have been some brain damage. The gangster awakens, badly burned, [[UngratefulBastard shoots the scientist]] (was going to do some follow-up care) dead and then monomaniacally starts killing off the jurors who convicted him. He shoots the first two, but the police get wise to him and put the others under protection. He then goes after the judge, but as this point is a slow, rotting mass of flesh that goes down one strike from the poker and disintegrates. Maybe next time, don't kill the only guy who might [[RealityEnsues keep you from decaying]]?

* RealityEnsues:
** One sci-fi tale had a man turn into an ever-growing giant. While the SquareCubeLaw is ignored, his increased need for energy is ''not''... He's eventually consuming [[BigEater over fifty tons of meat a day]], and the government [[ShootTheDog actually has to destroy him]] before he causes a famine!
** A couple of stories involve people being brought BackFromTheDead and still decaying afterward.

* ColorCodedCastes: The story "Judgement Day" combines this trope with FantasticRacism. A human astronaut visits a planet of robots that come in two colors, orange and blue, and the orange robots discriminate against the blue robots.

* EnclosedExtraterrestrials: In "Judgement Day" a human astronaut visits a planet of robots to determine their fitness to join the Galactic Federation and keeps his helmet on for the entire visit. He eventually decides that the robots are not ready to join because some robots discriminate against others because of the color of their casings. In the final panel he takes off his helmet, showing that he is a black man.

* FantasticRacism: "Judgement Day" is centered around a planet of racist robots who enslave other robots based on the color of their casings.

* SuddenlyEthnicity: "Judgment Day".

* YouAreNotReady: The ending of "Judgement Day". The story depicts a human astronaut, a representative of the Galactic Republic, visiting the planet Cybrinia inhabited by robots, who are divided into functionally identical orange and blue races, one of which has fewer rights and privileges than the other. The astronaut decides that due to the robots' bigotry, the Galactic Republic should not admit the planet. In the final panel, he removes his helmet, revealing himself to be a black man.

The black-and-white ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'', which had switched from the color-comic medium for reasons unrelated to the Code, ultimately became the sole surviving EC publication and went on to decades of success as a satirical/parodical magazine for children, preteens, and immature adults. But the influence of EC has continued through multiple reprints, homages by subsequent horror and SF writers, a pair of early-'70s British feature films titled ''Film/TalesFromTheCrypt'' and ''Film/VaultOfHorror'', and the television series ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt''.

[[quoteright:315:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ec-comics-gaines_5355.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:315:EC Comics' publisher William Gaines, flanked by the Crypt Keeper, the Old Witch, and the Vault Keeper.]]

EC Comics was founded by Maxwell Gaines in 1944 as "Educational Comics", with the aim of producing fact-based comic books marketed at churches and schools. After his death in 1947, his son William Gaines inherited the business, re-branding it as "Entertaining Comics" and producing titles in more typical commercially-oriented genres: {{Western}}, CrimeFiction, romance. Then, starting in 1949, the younger Gaines began introducing the "New Trend" series focusing on {{Horror}} (''Tales from the Crypt'', ''The Vault of Horror'', ''The Haunt of Fear''), crime (''Crime [=SuspenStories=]''), realistically depicted war (''Two-Fisted Tales'', ''Frontline Combat''), ScienceFiction (''Weird Science'', ''Weird Fantasy''), or some mixture of the above (''Shock [=SuspenStories=]''). The horror, science fiction and crime stories almost invariably had a TwistEnding. EC made extensive use of the KarmicTwistEnding before ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' ever aired. (They stayed clear of the CruelTwistEnding.)

* GenreSavvy: Sasha from "Concerto for Violin and Werewolf" (''Tales from the Crypt'' #42, and not to be confused with "Werewolf Concerto" from ''Vault of Horror'' #16) is a rather rare example in EC Comics. Upon a visit to his old master, who has become a bit of a lunatic in his older years, he finds reports of a werewolf on the prowl, similar to those of his youth. Instead of dismissing them as fiction as many protagonists of similar stories have, he sees this as an opportunity to increase his fame, and so prepares himself a gun and silver bullets. Then, when its revealed that the whole town is infested with werewolves, he laughs and reveals that he had expected this after reading the story "Midnight Mess" from Tales From the Crypt, wherein a man wonders into a restaurant only to find it to be inhabited by Vampires. As such, he opens his case to pull out his machine gun...only to find his priceless Stradivarius violin. As it turns out, his old master is a werewolf to and made the switch, but he still gets credit for effort.

* WrongGenreSavy: In "Thump Fun" from The Haunt of Fear #20, Marvin begins hearing a thumping coming from the walls after murdering his abusive brother. Believing at first he is still alive, Martin goes to finish the job before happening on The Tell-Tale Heart. Upon reading Poe's work, Marvin laughs off the episode as his nerves playing up on him. Later, when some policeman come by and hear the noise, Marvin assumes they're trying to bait him and plays dumb. They weren't...

* SeveredHeadSports: In the story "[[http://cacb.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/ec-comics-foul-play/ Foul Play]]", an evil baseball player is murdered by the members of the opposing team. After killing him, they play a game where they use his head for as the ball, his leg as the bat, his intestines to mark the base liner and his organs to mark the bases. They even use his scalp to dust off home plate. Predictably, this story was among the ones cited most often by parents' groups and legislators as proof of EC's depravity -- as they saw it, [[FauxHorrific impugning the noble American pastime of baseball with such gory filth -- and made an appearance at Gaines and Feldstein's day in court.)

* GenreSavvy: Sasha from "WerewolfConcertowithViolin" is a rather rare example in EC Comics. Upon a visit to his old master, who has become a bit of a lunatic in his older years, he finds reports of a werewolf on the prowl, similar to those of his youth. Instead of dismissing them as fiction as many protagonists of similar stories have, he sees this as an opportunity to increase his fame, and so prepares himself a gun and silver bullets. Then, when its revealed that the whole town is infested with werewolves, he laughs and reveals that he had expected this after reading the story "Midnight Mess" from Tales From the Crypt, wherein a man wonders into a restaurant only to find it to be inhabited by Vampires. As such, he opens his case to pull out his machine gun...only to find his priceless stradivarius violin. As it turns out, his old master is a werewolf to and made the switch, but he still gets credit for effort.

** ''Tales Calculated to Drive You MAD'' (October/November 1952 to May 1955, 23 issues)(Retooled as ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' magazine, with issue #24 in July 1955; ongoing to this day)

** ''Tales Calculated to Drive You MAD'' (October/November 1952 to May 1955, 23 issues)[[note]]Retooled as ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' magazine, with issue #24 in July 1955; ongoing to this day)

* ContemptibleCover: EC's horror and crime books were often ''exceedingly'' violent for the era in their cover material[[note]]and yet ''still'' more restrained than some of their imitators[[/note]] -- an excellent advertising and sales tactic on the newsstand, but one that earned them the enmity of teachers, parents' associations and clergy before they even read a single page (if they could stand to). Infamous among them was [[https://bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cri1.597a-1.jpg the "severed head" cover]] from ''Crime Suspenstories'' #22, which Gaines unwisely tried to argue wasn't in bad taste at the Senate hearings, [[DiggingYourselfDeeper because it only showed the axe covered in blood and the woman's head separate from her body, not the bloody stump of her neck.]]

* SeveredHeadSports: In the story "[[http://cacb.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/ec-comics-foul-play/ Foul Play]]", an evil baseball player is murdered by the members of the opposing team. After killing him, they play a game where they use his head for as the ball, his leg as the bat, his intestines to mark the base liner and his organs to mark the bases. They even use his scalp to dust off home plate.[[note]](Predictably, this story was among the ones cited most often by parents' groups and legislators as proof of EC's depravity -- as they saw it, [[FauxHorrific impugning the noble American pastime of baseball]] with such gory filth -- and made an appearance at Gaines and Feldstein's day in court.)[[/note]]

* CompleteTheQuoteTitle: "...And All Through The House" [[note]]which was adapted in the ''Film/TalesFromTheCrypt'' film and again as an episode of the ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt'' television series[[/note]] takes place on [[HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday the night before Christmas]].

* AuthorPowers: "My World", a Feldstein story written as a showcase for Wally Wood's talent, which depicts the artist's act of creation as a beautiful, amazing thing that transcends the bonds of mundane reality.[[note]]Decades later, Wood would skewer Feldstein's idealism in the deeply profane and cynical SelfParody "My Word" for ''Big Apple Comix'', where sex -- the ultimate act of creation -- is revealed to be just as dulled by the hopeless passivity of modern life as everything else, and the artist has absolutely no control over any of it.[[/note]]

* FunWithAcronyms: The Grateful Hoboes, Outcasts, and Unwanteds' Layaways Society ([[spoiler:G.H.O.U.L.S.]]) in ''Mournin' Mess''

* GenreSavy: Sasha from "WerewolfConcertowithViolin" is a rather rare example in EC Comics. Upon a visit to his old master, who has become a bit of a lunatic in his older years, he finds reports of a werewolf on the prowl, similar to those of his youth. Instead of dismissing them as fiction as many protagonists of similar stories have, he sees this as an opportunity to increase his fame, and so prepares himself a gun and silver bullets. Then, when its revealed that the whole town is infested with werewolves, he laughs and reveals that he had expected this after reading the story "Midnight Mess" from Tales From the Crypt, wherein a man wonders into a restaurant only to find it to be inhabited by Vampires. As such, he opens his case to pull out his machine gun...only to find his priceless stradivarius violin. As it turns out, his old master is a werewolf to and made the switch, but he still gets credit for effort.

* GenreSavy: Sasha from "WerewolfConcertowithViolin" is a rather rare example in EC Comics. Upon a visit to his old master, who has become a bit of a lunatic in his older years, he finds reports of a werewolf on the prowl, similar to those of his youth. Instead of dismissing them as fiction as many protagonists of similar stories have, he sees this as an opportunity to increase his fame, and so prepares himself a gun and silver bullets. Then, when its revealed that the whole town is infested with werewolves, he laughs and reveals that he had expected this after reading the story "Midnight Mess" from Tales From the Crypt, wherein a man wonders into a restaurant only to find it to be inhabited by Vampires. As such, he opens his case to pull out his machine gun...only to find his priceless stradivarius violin. As it turns out, his old master is a werewolf to and made the switch, but he still gets credit for effort.