Terror Train and Other Stories

Terror Train and Other Stories by Al Feldstein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Terror Train and Other Stories collects 38 stories illustrated by Al Feldstein.

Al Feldstein wrote over 600 stories for EC comics but he was also a fairly competent artist in his own right. Terror Train shows his journey from his early days at EC Comics until around the time they shut the lights off.

Feldstein wrote most of his own stories but there are some in the collection by Bill Gaines himself or Gardner Fox. The tales are westerns, crime stories, and horror once the Crypt Keeper is introduced. Feldstein's art is on the third tier of EC artists but there's no shame in being a bench player when there are superstars like Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood in the starting lineup.

There are some iconic horror tales in this, like The Thing from the Grave, Escape, The Thing from The Sea, and The Dead Will Return. Feldstein pioneered the poetic justice, bite you in the ass ending of EC stories and was a master of the form. While I dog on his art, his inking is great and the guy uses dramatic angles and perspective to make up for his shortcomings in other areas.

Terror Train and Other Stories is the best EC collection I've read since the last one. 3.5 out of 5 rotting corpses.

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