Dates
- Cover date
- December 1953 - January 1954
- On sale
- September 24, 1953
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- Deadline · 8 pages
An alcoholic ex-reporter tries to get back on his feet after meeting a girl, and his old boss says he can have his job back if he brings in a story. While sitting in a diner he hears violence occuring in the next room, and the diner owner comes out and confesses to murder. Larry thinks he's found his story and takes down all the details, then checks on the girl and discovers two things about her: she is still alive and she is the girl he had met earlier!
- The Monkey · 7 pages
A drug addict murders his father in order to get his fix.
- Last Laugh! · 1 pages
Major Clagg was a parachute corps pilot that liked to take real risks when parachuting from a plane, and every feat he accomplished was accompanied by a practical joke of some kind. His crowning gag was to drop a life-sized doll from a plane before he himself parachuted out. Unfortunately, the Major forgot one important thing during that final exploit: to don his parachute!
- The Kidnapper · 6 pages
A man's baby is kidnapped and when his wife's mental health grows so bad that he desperately attempts to steal another baby, he is beaten to death by a crowd of onlookers for attempting to kidnap...his own son.
- Fall Guy · 7 pages
A hotel clerk steals $100,000 from a diamond merchant and then rents a safety deposit box years in advance under the name 'Brad Gilbert'. He serves 15 years for the theft, then meets with the girl who promised to wait for him because she wants the money. Unable to remember the name he used, the girl berates his inability to recall the name, and he slashes her face with a steak knife. As the police close in on him, he jumps off a roof, clutching at letters of a sign, and, as he lies dying on the pavement, he sees the remaining neon letters spell out 'Brad Gilbert'.
Reprinted in
E.C. Classic Reprint (1973), Shock Suspenstories (1981), Shock Suspenstories (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012), The EC Archives: Shock Suspenstories (2021), EC Lives! (1972)