While Bernard Krigstein’s groundbreaking work at EC Comics has been reprinted numerous times, his substantially larger output for Atlas has been unfairly neglected. The 78 stories in this volume – the vast majority restored from original photostats – will fully rectify that oversight, and provide a greater understanding of the achievement of this often-misunderstood graphic-storytelling pioneer. Krigstein was the only Golden Age artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and he approached the black-and-white idiom of comics from the perspective of a student dissecting the drawings of the old masters—in this case those old masters included Jack Kirby, Mort Meskin, Alex Raymond, Jerry Robinson, and many others. Already a seasoned comic book veteran when he arrived in mid-1951, Krigstein’s two-year tenure at Atlas can be seen as a vital bridge to his artistic maturity. Story by story, page by page, he stretches and refines the Atlas house style expected of its artists to its outer limits, then defies that convention to forge the personal aesthetic he’ll continue to refine at EC. After EC’s collapse in 1956, Krigstein returned to Atlas to create his final body of work in comics: 29 short-form experiments demonstrating the infinite possibilities inherent in the art of graphic narrative. “I used them as a medium for dramatizing the breakdown technique, to show the limitless ways that a comic book story could unfold. I wanted to show that the form was fluid and dynamic and should not be considered a static form.” Guest editor and Krigstein biographer Greg Sadowski’s introductory historical essay traces the arc of Krigstein’s development and his efforts to elevate the stature of a medium that was dismissed as disposable juvenile escapism.
