Daniel KeyesThe EC Archives: Shock Illustrated

I also own the RCP Picto-fiction set.I'll try to list some differences.First there is the 8.5X11 size that it is printed on is close to actual magazine sizes instead of the blown up large format that the RCP set uses.With this book being B&W (except for the covers) there is thankfully no re-coloring of the covers.Maria Severin had recolored a lot of Picto-Ficton covers as you will read about and then see. Marie's cover color jobs look fantastic. none of them are in this book.It also includes the "lost" Frazetta story finished in pencil, it is presented here with no coloring added to it. They just cleaned the pages up a bit to help them look sharp, you hardly notice!!All in all, I will keep grabbing the Picto-Fiction titles as they come out.

The last gasp for EC is still a powerful collection of EC-quality stories and artwork. The story format is a little less successful than the comics format, but it's still a beautiful effort. Highly recommended!

Reading the letters pages as the time, there were very popular, though perhaps the sales were not great. Sad, as I think this is an excellent format and given many issues, I am certain these would be considered as highly as some of the other EC output. The artwork is superb, the writing is fine, the stories are pretty decent as well. This volume includes some extra material such as scripts, love those. I have the boxsets but I will also be getting these volumes as the size is about (or is) the same as the original mags though the mags never looked this good, even mint off the news stand (surely). Would have loved more extras, more articles etc, of course, but it is a classic DH volume - will continue to get the rest of the pinto-fiction ones, and perhaps this format will be revisited by another comic publisher someday