Johnny Craig was one of EC’s prime movers, an unusually slow-working artist who did several versions of a page before settling on one. He probably only did around 1000 comic book pages in his entire career, but he left enough of a legacy to win a place in the Will Eisner Hall of Fame. He preferred to write his own stories and was, for the 1950’s, a relative rarity, a writer artist.
He probably has two main claims to fame for the modern reader, the creator of the Vault Keeper (along with Drusilla) and the guy who did that cover with the woman’s head chopped off that Senator Estes Kefauver used in a nationally-televised senate hearing to show the depravity of comics, to devastating effect. This was ironic since, of all the EC artists, Craig’s horror work was the most restrained and the cleanest.
Craig was possibly EC’s best cover artist. This is a preliminary drawing for Tomb Tales, a 1990’s tribute to EC which used many EC artists. This was probably an idea for #3, but he went an entirely different (and not nearly as interesting) direction. Since Craig essentially retired from comics in the 1980's, did this circa 1997 and died in 2001, this may be about the last comic book work he ever did. I bought this from Craig’s estate.
Below is an inked version of this cover idea. I'm pretty sure this was never actually used as a cover. I'm used to seeing final versions of pencil preliminaries losing some of their goodness in the translation. This is an unusually large drop off. It's sharper but doesn't have anywhere near the oomph and sex appeal.
