Source: comicsalliance.com

5. Crime Suspenstories

(EC Comics)

Come on, you guys, how could I not include some of the crime comics that made the government try to ban crime comics?

I woulda put Crime Does Not Pay up here, but I haven’t read it yet, so here’s some EC goodness. The book followed the EC/Twilight Zone formula of setting up a jerk, having them do something jerk-ish, and then paying them back with a hideously ironic punishment. And some great people did work on these.

Harvey Kurtzman did some serious work on these comics. Joe Orlando did, too! A lot of MAD Magazine people worked on these when they weren’t working on MAD, so the art is straight-up top notch. The book ran about 27 issues, with each issue containing three stories. But these stories are crime books that aren’t influenced by noir, which is something fascinating to read.

Read these. They’re good.