When the Comics Code forced EC Comics to abandon its popular horror and crime titles, EC launched a “New Direction” in hopes of attracting new readers. Among the new titles were two medical dramas, M.D. and Psychoanalysis, which were competing in a rapidly changing media landscape, increasingly dominated by television. It would be more than five years before TV caught up with EC with shows such as Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, and The Eleventh Hour — precursors to the medical shows we know today.
Artists Jack Kamen, Reed Crandall, George Evans, Graham Ingels, and Joe Orlando paired with writers Robert Bernstein, Jack Oleck, Carl Wessler, and Daniel Keyes to produce a series of taut tales of physical and psychological crises and the doctors who must make split-second life-or-death decisions.
Plus: all twelve stories from Psychoanalysis, each masterfully drawn by Jack Kamen and most written by Daniel Keyes about the struggles of three patients to reconcile their inner fears and turmoil with their outward lives. With an introduction by Dr. Travis Langley, author of the heroes-and-villains Psychology book series.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
The Brooklyn-born Jack Kamen (1920-2008) began his career as a pulp illustrator and spent his last professional decades as an illustrator, but is best remembered for his half-decade at EC (and his 1982 contributions to the EC-inspired movie Creepshow).
Reed Crandall (1917–1982) is best known for his art for EC—and later Warren’s—horror, crime, war, and adventure comics; he also contributed to Flash Gordon in the 1960s. Crandall was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2009.
Graham Ingels (1915–1991), began working for EC Comics, drawing Western, romance, and crime stories, in 1948. But it was with the advent of EC’s horror titles that “Ghastly” Graham Ingels’s detailed work perfectly evoked the proper mood for the kind of wickedly macabre stories EC excelled at, and it made him a fan favorite.
Joe Orlando (1927–1998; Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, 2007) became one of EC’s top science fiction/fantasy illustrators in the early 1950s. He freelanced for Mad and Warren Publications in the 1960s. In the 1970s, he edited House of Mystery, Phantom Stranger, Swamp Thing, Plop!, and other titles for DC Comics, where he later became a vice president.
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