EC Comics

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E.C. Publications, Inc.

Trade name	EC Comics
Company type	Private
Industry	Publishing
Genre	Romance crime War Fantasy Western Talking animal Horror Science fiction Satire Adventure
Founded	1944; 80 years ago (1944)
Founder	Max Gaines
Defunct	1956 (1956)[a]
Headquarters	New York City, New York , U.S.
Key people	Max Gaines William Gaines
Products	Comics
Owner	Gaines family[1]

E.C. Publications, Inc., (doing business as EC Comics) is an American comic book publisher specialized in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction, dark fantasy, and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series. Initially, EC was founded as Educational Comics by Maxwell Gaines and specialized in educational and child-oriented stories. After Max Gaines died in a boating accident in 1947, his son William Gaines took over the company and renamed it Entertaining Comics. He printed more mature stories, delving into horror, war, fantasy, science-fiction, adventure, and other genres. Noted for their high quality and shock endings,^[2] these stories were also unique in their socially conscious, progressive themes (including racial equality, anti-war advocacy, nuclear disarmament, and environmentalism) that anticipated the Civil Rights Movement and the dawn of the 1960s counterculture.^[3] In 1954–55, censorship pressures prompted it to concentrate on the humor magazine Mad, leading to the company's greatest and most enduring success. Consequently, by 1956, the company ceased publishing all its comic lines except Mad.

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