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Wiki Headlines 12th Feb: A new policy is being put in place for TRS threads: Make your case that the name/page is broken in the Opening Post, or the thread will be nuked immediately. See Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names for what "Make your case" means.
5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here 
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A short-lived but influential publisher of Anthology Comic books.EC Comics, aka "Entertaining Comics" and "Educational Comics", was founded in 1944 by Maxwell Gaines with the aim of producing fact-based comic books aimed at churches and schools. After his death in 1947, his son William Gaines inherited the business, producing comic books in typical genres: western, crime, romance. Starting in 1949, the younger Gaines began introducing the "New Trend" series focusing on horror (Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear), crime (Crime SuspenStories), realistically depicted war (Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat) and Science Fiction (Weird Science, Weird Fantasy). The horror, science fiction and crime stories almost invariably had a Twist Ending. EC made extensive use of the Karmic Twist Ending before The Twilight Zone ever aired. (They stayed clear of the Cruel Twist Ending.)A combination of evocative (if sensationalistic and florid) writing and excellent art by some of the top comic book artists of the time, combined with outreach to the fans, quickly caused EC's sales to skyrocket. In addition to a strong theme of often gruesome poetic justice, EC's titles often tackled social issues of the day, especially in their science fiction and suspense books.EC was not shy about "borrowing" ideas from prose stories and were caught at it by Ray Bradbury, but they were able to negotiate a settlement, and published several fine and very faithful authorized adaptations of his work.This was also the birthplace of a little comic book called Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad, a satire and comedy title. Its first issues sold poorly, but it soon found enough of a following to inspire a number of imitators, including one published by EC itself (Panic).But it was Too Good to Last. A groundswell of outrage from the Moral Guardians of the mid-1950s led to a Congressional investigation of possible ties between comic books and juvenile delinquency. To protect themselves from possible government censorship, the comic book publishers established the Comics Code in 1954. William Gaines, although he'd initially been in favor of the idea, felt the code adopted was far too restrictive and gave the Code authorities too much opportunity for Executive Meddling.After distributors refused to carry comic books without the Comics Code Authority stamp, Gaines reluctantly signed EC up to the service. This required canceling several series, some of them the company's best sellers, as the magazines' very titles violated the Code. Despite a valiant attempt at a "New Direction" focusing more on social realism than horror, EC remained blacklisted by many newsdealers, and found itself too frequently clashing with the CCA executives.Notoriously, EC was told to change the ethnicity of a character in a reprint of the classic Does This Remind You of Anything? story "Judgment Day."
This was the last straw, and the story was reprinted unchanged in the final comic book published by the company.The black-and-white Mad Magazine, which had switched from the comic medium for reasons unrelated to the Code, ultimately became the sole surviving EC publication and went on to decades of success. But the influence of EC has continued through multiple reprints, homages by subsequent horror and SF writers, and the television series Tales from the Crypt.Tropes associated with EC Comics include:
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