The High Cost of Dying and Other Stories

The High Cost Of Dying and Other Stories by Reed Crandall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The High Cost of Dying and Other Stories is a collection of 21 tales illustrated by Reed Crandall.

I'm officially running out of ways to express how much I enjoy these EC volumes. The stories, written by Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Otto Binder, Colin Dawkins, Jack Oleck, Carl Wessler, and Ray Bradbury, range from average to slightly above average, lots of double dealing spouses, as usual. I enjoyed this volume but it wasn't one of the exceptional ones. Still, even an average EC Artist Library edition is still pretty good.

That being said, there are some good stories in here. Carrion Death features a man dying of thirst in a desert with a corpse handcuffed to his wrist. Only Skin Deep sees a bride get her face torn off on her wedding night. The Silent Towns, my favorite of the collection, features the last man on Mars getting a mysterious phone call. The title story, The High Cost of Dying, features a man too poor to bury his dead wife.

Reed Crandall's art chops were up to the task, once I forgave him for not being Wally Wood or Harvey Kurtzman. The story leaned heavily toward crime so there weren't a lot of walking corpses or tentacled monsters. Still, his use of black makes me wonder why anyone would have wanted these stories in color. He's great at setting the mood with the heavy ink but then most of the EC crew were. Seriously, when the whole lineup is home run hitters, a guy like Reed Crandall gets shoved into the background, even though he was a top notch artist.

While The High Cost of Dying wasn't my favorite edition from the EC Artist Library I've read so far, it was still a fun read. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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