Blood Type V!

I discovered the wonderful, warped world of EC (Entertaining) Comics in May of 1990, stumbling upon Gladstone Comics first reprint in Gordon's Grocery in Glasgow.  ECs were infamous in the 1950s, accused of encouraging (or, according to crackpot Dr. Frederick Wertham, outright causing) juvenile delinquency among America's youth.  If their detractors had actually read the stories they sought to cease, they might have noticed that EC embraced a strict moral code:  adulterers, murderers, thieves, and other assorted do-badders were routinely punished, usually at the hands of vampires, werewolves, or EC's famous walking or resurrected corpses.  Though the three horror comics that led the EC charge -- Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and my personal favorite, The Haunt of Fear -- ceased publication after five short years, their resurrection, as I had noticed at the impressionable age of eleven, captivated by the promenading mummy and her two-headed ghoulish admirer in that long ago grocery store magazine rack, came about due to HBO's Tales from the Crypt television series, which began in 1989 and ended up running for seven seasons.  Publisher Russ Cochran has kept the EC flame alive over the past thirty years or so, offering beautiful (and durable!) black and white hardcover reprints of the entire run of Crypt, Vault, and Haunt, color comic reprints in the 90s, and now offers "annuals" at his website (which you can access by clicking on his name). 

Here is one of my favorite EC stories from an early issue of Crypt; though not introduced by the Old Witch, the "Ghoulunatic" host I love the best, it is nevertheless illustrated by "Ghastly" Graham Ingels, whose style remains unique, even today.  (I absolutely love the detail of the victim's hat dangling off the hook of the vampire's wing!)  "Blood Type V" -- enjoy, as the Crypt Keeper would cackle, kiddies!