How did Papercutz land the EC Comics title, Tales from the Crypt?
Jim Salicrup: Well, there’s the short version and the long version. The short version is that we were able to obtain the rights from William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc by presenting a proposal which they were wonderful enough to accept. The long version is that I’ve been interested in EC Comics since I first read about them in Steranko’s History of Comics. At age 14, I was lucky enough to interview Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines for Kids Magazine. Obviously, it had quite an impact on me! I loved everything about EC– their titles, their publisher, editors, writers, and artists, their realationship with their audience, which they dubbed the “EC Fan-Addicts”– everything! At 15, I was working at Marvel Comics (Ec Comics was long gone at that point), which I also loved, and years later, the very first comic I edited was Marvel Premiere # 50 featuring Alice Cooper. The cover was clearly a tribute to EC’s horror titles, one of the first such homage ever done by Marvel. Of course, at Marvel I got t
