EC Comics publications

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 26. Chapters: List of Mad Magazine issues, Crime SuspenStories, Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, Shock SuspenStories, Two-Fisted Tales, Weird Fantasy, Weird Science, Frontline Combat, Weird Science-Fantasy, Impact, M.D., Incredible Science Fiction, Moon Girl, List of Entertaining Comics publications, Land of the Lost, Shock Illustrated, Terror Illustrated, Crime Illustrated, Extra!, Psychoanalysis, Valor, Confessions Illustrated, Panic, The Autumn People, Tomorrow Midnight, Aces High, Piracy. Excerpt: The humor magazine Mad has had a consecutive run for well over half a century, making a transition over the years from color comic book to black-and-white magazine to color magazine, presenting a constant parade of parodies. When Harvey Kurtzman began editing Mad in 1952, his intention was simply to satirize comic book genres. He had no idea that his comic book was destined to become a publishing phenomenon that would reach a circulation of 2,132,655 by 1974, be reprinted in slick, full-color hardcover slipcased editions and transform the culture of the 20th Century. The cultural significance of Kurtzman and his creation were noted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman: Kurtzman's Mad held a mirror up to American society, exposing the hypocrisies and distortions of mass media with jazzy grace and elegance. He's our first post-modern humorist, laying the groundwork for such contemporary humor and satire as Saturday Night Live, Monty Python and Naked Gun.Only three years after it began, Mad was catalogued in Harvard's Houghton Library. Kurtzman's expansion to parodies of radio, films and television was a step-by-step evolution, and not all readers were familiar with all the satirical sources and references, including some drawn from contemporary and classical literature. Readers could have enjoyed the first issue of Mad without being aware that it featured a lampoon of an E. M. Forster short story, and a reference to the sound effects in James Thurber's short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Mad did not restrict its attentions to the popular culture of the day. A baseball story in the second issue is a twist on Stephen Vincent Benét's "The Devil and Daniel Webster." In the fifth issue, the Renfrew of the Royal Mounted source was already more than a decade out of date for the readers of 1953, and is exponentially more obscure today. Some subtle distinctions may not be not readily apparent in reading the material. For instance, "Dragged Net" i