The Cross and the Switchblade / Wish You Were Here

My large stash of Jack T. Chick tracts aside, I don't normally gravitate towards religious-themed comic books. But I had to pick up this copy of Spire Christian Comics' The Cross and the Switchblade (1973) to see how the scene depicted on the cover played out.

Threatened by a hoodlum at knifepoint, a young street preacher boasts that "you could cut me up in a thousand pieces... and every piece will say 'I love you!'"

The prospect of seeing such a disturbing scenario actually play out was irresistible.

Adapted by Al Hartley from a 1963 autobiographical book (it was also adapted for film in 1970), The Cross and the Switchblade recounts the true story of Pastor David Wilkerson, who, prompted by alarming headlines of youth violence, and funded by a collection taken up by his congregation in a small Pennsylvanian church, ventured into the mean streets of New York to preach against inner city gangs.

Unfortunately, in a classic case of bait-and-switch, the intriguing front-cover tease does not actually appear anywhere in the comic. On the one hand I felt ripped off, but on the other I had to admire how a little shameless sensationalist ballyhoo had successfully separated this rube from his money.

So, I was denied the grim thrill of seeing the dismembered pieces of a corpse chanting "I love you" to its killer... but I imagine it would have resembled a conversion of this final scene from E.C. Comics tale Wish You Were Here (Graham Ingels, originally appearing in The Haunt of Fear #22 [1953], these scans from a Vault of Horror 1990 reprint).

After Jason Logan dies in an automobile accident, his wife Enid uses a magic jade statue (which grants wishes, ala The Monkey's Paw) to wish him back alive...

Jason does return to life, but with one minor hiccup... Jason's body had already been embalmed, and the formaldehyde running though his veins has his now living body writhing in agony...

Desperate to release her poor husband from his misery, Enid shoots him with a gun, but this merely increases his pain.

She then grabs a knife and proceeds to chop Jason's body into a million severed sections...

But her wish to keep him alive prevents Jason from succumbing to death and enjoying any final peace. As Enid continues cutting, she never notices that every tiny severed section of Jason's body is pulsating in eternal pain...

This story was adapted for the anthology film Tales From the Crypt (1972, Amicus).

The Black Ferris (1953, Ray Bradbury)

How author Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, etc.) and E.C. Comics, (publisher of Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, Weird Science, etc.) came to collaborate in the early 1950s is kind of a funny story.

It seems E.C. publisher Bill Gaines and editor Al Feldstein had been routinely "borrowing" premises and plot lines from short stories previously published in various genre magazines and anthologies, changing just enough details to escape scrutiny and avoid crediting (or paying royalties to) the original authors.

When in 1952, they used elements from two previously published science fiction stories, "Kaleidoscope" and "Rocket Man", as a springboard for a "new" story, "Home To Stay", it caught the attention of the original author, Ray Bradbury.

Rather than send them a threatening letter on attorney letterhead, Bradbury wrote them a friendly (but firm) letter requesting proper royalty payment (fifty bucks!) and an invitation to contact him about adapting his other short stories. Bradbury, as it turns out, was an unapologetic E.C. comics fan, at a time when comic books carried the stigma of being trashy, low-brow entertainment.

Gaines was flattered that a successful author like Bradbury was not only an E.C. reader, but eager to have his work adapted in comic form, and the legendary partnership began.

Here is the E.C. adaptation of "The Black Ferris", which appeared in The Haunt of Fear #18 (1953, illustrated by Jack Davis. These scans come from a 1991 reprint.) Jack Davis has stated he considers his work adapting Bradbury as a high point of his comics career (Bradbury, An Illustrated Life, p.106). Bradbury would later expand "The Black Ferris" into the full-length novel, "Something Wicked This Way Comes".

The original story "The Black Ferris" can be found in the R.L. Stine anthology Beware!

The story was also adapted for an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theater, available on DVD.

To learn more about the history of E.C. Comics, including its many collaborations with Bradbury, read Foul Play!: The Art and Artists of the Notorious 1950s E.C. Comics! The book is lavishly illustrated with tons of artwork, including stories reprinted in their entirety (unfortunately "The Black Ferris" is not one of these.)

Ray Bradbury: An Illustrated Life is an overview of Bradbury's career by way of magazine, comic and book illustrations, and includes transcripts of correspondence between Bradbury and E.C. Comics. The book is out of print as of this writing but can be had cheap on the second-hand market.