Fall Guy For Murder!

Fall Guy for Murder and Other Stories by Johnny Craig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fall Guy for Murder and Other Stories contains 23 stories illustrated and sometimes also written by Johnny Craig.

My EC Artists Top Five list doesn't include Johnny Craig but the guy has some chops. A couple weeks ago, I saw this volume was out of print so I jumped on it. Have you seen what 50 Girls 50, another out of print artist's edition goes for these days?

The twenty-three tales in this collection fall into the horror or crime genres. Craig illustrates all of the tales and writes all but three of them. Ray Bradbury wrote one and Gaines and Feldstein, the usual suspects, wrote the others. Storywise, this is a very strong collection. Till Death, When The Cat's Away, and The Execution were my favorites.

Craig's art is never particularly flashy but the guy got the job done admirably. He's equally adept at drawing rotting corpses and double-dealing wives. I have to think he shares some influences with Steve Ditko since that's the artist I kept thinking of while reading this.

Bonus: It turns out Johnny Craig is responsible for a couple of my favorite EC covers:



Johnny Craig isn't one of my top EC Artists but Fall Guy for Murder might just be in my top five EC collections. Four out of 5 stars.

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