EC Comics

Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in crime fiction, horror fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the 1950s, until censorship pressures prompted it to concentrate on the seminal humor magazine Mad. It was privately owned by Maxwell Gaines and later by his son, William Gaines. The firm, first known as Educational Comics, was founded by Max Gaines, former editor of the comic-book company All-American Publications. When that company merged with DC Comics in 1944, Gaines retained rights to the comic book, Picture Stories from the Bible, and began his new company with a dubious plan to market comics about science, history and the Bible to schools and churches. A decade earlier, Max Gaines had been one of the pioneers of the comic book form, with Eastern Color Printing's proto-comic book Funnies on Parade, and with Dell Publishing's Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics,... full article at wikipedia