EC Comics Return From The Dead in the 21st Century

 In 2022 to tie in to the Shudder ongoing Creepshow TV series, Image comics released a five issue mini series. The first new Creepshow comic to be widely released since the original movie comic book adaptation in 1982. Creepshow was George Romero and Steven Kings loving homage to the EC horror comics they grew up with and were inspired by. The most well known and remembered being Tales From The Crypt, in no small part due to the 90s TV series that itself was inspired by the Creepshow movie. 

Image released another five issues as volume 2 in 2023 with a third volume due in Autumn 2024. With the red box around the title on the cover and horror host The Creep introducing each tale inside it felt like a modern return to EC. 

Maybe due to Creepshows success, Oni Press have acquired the license to produce official EC comics. Though rather than reviving established titles such as Tales From The Crypt or Weird Science, they have instead created all new EC titles. The first two being Epitaphs From The Abyss for horror and Cruel Universe for their sci-fi tales. This helps to establish them as something original and somewhat avoid too many comparisons to the classic EC titles which were some of the best comics ever produced and a very hard act to follow or replicate. 

Oni Press are soon to include two more EC titles, Shiver Suspenstories and Cruel Kingdom in the vein of the classic EC titles Shock Suspenstories and Weird Fantasy. 

Oni Press have been proud to announce they are the first return to EC in 70 years though this is not quite true. In 2007, Papercutz had the rights to produce EC comics and published Tales From The Crypt Volume 2 which lasted 13 issues. Then almost a decade later in 2016 Papercutz released a volume 3 of Tales under their Super Genius imprint. This volume was aimed at a slightly older audience than volume 2 which was an ages 10 and up comic. Volume 3 only lasted two issues though from December 2016 to January 2017. 

So really it's been 7 not 70 years since new EC comics were published. But I guess a 7 year gap doesn't sound so impressive. 

As an interesting coincidence, Tales From The Crypt issue 1 and Creepshow issue 1 both show their respective horror hosts rising from the grave to signify their returns after such long absences.