Tales from EC ComicsBehind The Bend
One major perk of living in Los Angeles is getting the chance meet and become friends with creatives from many different industries and walks of life. When we first met Corey Mifsud, the Executive Director at EC Comics, we have to admit we definitely geeked out a bit. Who isn't a fan of Tales from the Crypt? After spending a few hours digging for secrets and all the dirt on the possibility of re-makes we finally learned that we hit the holy grail of EC info! Not only is Corey the Executive Director of EC Comics, it also runs in his bloodline.
Corey's great-grandfather Max Gaines started EC Comics in 1944, which was originally Educational Comics. He suddenly died in 1947, which forced his grandfather William Gaines to take over the business. William changed the name to Entertaining Comics, which eventually became home to Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales etc. We talked Corey into sitting down with us for an interview and all the gory details are below.
Q: With EC Comics being an established brand and having such a huge cult following, is there a certain franchise that you are focused on to reboot first?
A: Well, Crypt is our most well-known one, so we've been trying to focus on that. In late 2016, we put out a brand new Tales from the Crypt comic series through Super Genius. We also launched a Crypt-heavy apparel line through Kreepsville666, they have a store front called Monster-A-GoGo on Melrose Ave in LA.
Q: Is there a certain character or franchise that has a fan base that is the most hungry to be brought back?
A: Most everyone of a younger age, who is familiar with Tales from the Crypt, know it as the show on HBO. And although there certainly was a TV show, we've been trying to posture our new material as a celebration of the classic property. A lot of people don't know that the HBO show derived from a comic book, or that EC Comics had many OTHER comic series. We LOVE doing stuff with Crypt, but we'd also like to throw the other series in there as well. We've been very selective who we make merchandise with, as we only want the best people to do it. But we've found very exciting ways to use the 3 main horror hosts: The Crypt Keeper, The Vault Keeper, and the Old Witch, as well as Drusilla, the Vault Keeper's silent assistant.
Q: Are you feeling pressure from those cult fans to really hit the ball out of the park on the work you are doing with each of the properties?
A: All the time! But it’s a great thing! People really, really love this stuff, and everything we do with the property, be it publications, apparel, Halloween masks, etc, is done with the fans in mind. A lot of our fans are people that grew up reading the comic books, so we try to create things with the highest respect to the classic property.
Q: How are you hoping to bring EC Comics into 2017? What sensibilities do you want to remain? What do you want to see updated?
A: In regard to the previous question, we want to introduce Tales from the Crypt to a younger generation. We've only released our first issue of the Crypt comic series, so we're really looking forward to releasing the next few issues of that. Every issue will feature different writers and artists, so the new series is a great platform for all different kinds of horror. We still have yet to release a few items with Kreepsville666, and we just announced our Halloween masks with Trick or Treat Studios. There's also candy bars through Sweet! in Hollywood, with new bars yet to be released. Also, we're going to continue all of our publications with Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, and IDW. There's going to be a lot of EC to be had in 2017.
Q: Are there any secrets that you can share regarding projects that are in the works?
A: We're proud to announce that we just signed with Dark Horse Digital to finally bring the original EC Comics to a digital format! This is really exciting because the we've never fully taken the plunge into the world of downloads, but fans can expect them to start popping up in the near future.
How excited are we all for 2017 now. Huge thanks to Mr Mifsud for his time and all the insider knowledge. Make sure and keep up with all the EC updates in real time by following them on social media. They are @ec_comics on Instagram and Twitter and @ECcomics on Facebook. There are some big surprises coming up this year and we can hardly wait!
