Three Dimensional E.C. Classics was a quarterly comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 anthology

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 series published by EC Comics

EC Comics

Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series...

 in 1954. It began publication with its Spring 1954 issue and ceased with its March 1954 issue, producing a total of two issues. The stories it contained were classics in that they were recyclings of stories that had already appeared in earlier EC comic books. They were three-dimensional because they were presented in Anaglyph 3-D

Anaglyph image

Anaglyph images are used to provide a stereoscopic 3D effect, when viewed with glasses where the two lenses are different colors, such as red and cyan. Images are made up of two color layers, superimposed, but offset with respect to each other to produce a depth effect...

. Two 3-D viewers were included with each issue.

Conception and characteristics

Three Dimensional E.C. Classics was conceived in 1953, when 3-D comic books were enjoying a period of great popularity. Its conception was a direct response to the popularity of the form. When Three Dimension Comics, the "World's First" 3-D comic book, sold a million copies, other comic book publishers were naturally eager to carve out their own pieces of the market pie. EC Comics was no exception. They began to lay plans for a 3-D comic series of their own.

That series, Three Dimensional E.C. Classics, was launched in early 1954. One could argue that it was two one-shots instead of a series. Only the first issue was called Three Dimensional E.C. Classics. It was a general EC sampler, recycling stories from EC's non-horror lines: Crime SuspenStories

Crime SuspenStories

Crime SuspenStories was a bi-monthly anthology crime comic published by EC Comics in the early 1950s. The title first arrived on newsstands with its October/November 1950 issue and ceased publication with its February/March 1955 issue, producing a total of 27 issues...

, Frontline Combat

Frontline Combat

Frontline Combat was a bi-monthly, anthology war comic edited by Harvey Kurtzman and published by EC Comics. The first issue was cover dated July/August, 1951. Over a three-year span, the title ran for 15 issues, ending with the January, 1954 issue...

, Mad

Mad (magazine)

Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...

and Weird Science. The second issue changed its name to Three Dimensional Tales from the Crypt of Terror. It recycled stories from EC's horror lines exclusively: Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. It also recycled the Tales from the Crypt Crypt-Keeper as host. But in all other essentials these books were the same: new packages of old stories recreated for the 3-D format. The issues were numbered sequentially: "3-D No. 1" and "3-D No. 2."

Three-dimensional comics

The stories were presented in Anaglyph 3-D. Anaglyph comics employed the same technology that Anaglyph movies did. A 3-D camera photographed a subject from two different positions and angles, corresponding to the points of view of the left and right human eye. The two photographic images were presented overlapping on a single field, with the images differentiated by color, commonly red for the left image and green for the right. The 3-D viewing device had two filters with the colors reversed, green for the left eye and red for the right. The filters separated the images, the green filter blocking the green image and browning the red, and the red filter blocking the red image and browning the green. Thus the left eye saw only the left image and the right eye saw only the right, and the brain behind the eyes combined these 2-D images into a single 3-D view.

But 3-D comics had challenges all their own. A 3-D view of a flat drawing would still look flat. For the view to look otherwise, the drawing had itself to be a 3-D object. This required more labor than 2-D comics did. A 2-D panel had only to be penciled and inked. A 3-D panel had to have its elements separated according to which visual plane or level (fore-, middle- or background) the elements were intended to occupy. The elements had to be drawn on clear acetate cels corresponding to those levels, with the solid parts of the elements opaqued. Then the cels had to be stacked and aligned to assemble the finished panel, with enough separation between the cels to produce the desired 3-D effect.

3-D comics had another challenge as well. A 2-D panel could be elaborately colored, but the limitations of Anaglyph printing of the time dictated that the 3-D panel remain monochrome brown and white.

Artists and writers

Even recycled stories had to be completely redrawn for their 3-D incarnations. The artists who redrew these were all EC regulars: Johnny Craig, Jack Davis

Jack Davis (cartoonist)

Jack Davis is an American cartoonist and illustrator, known for his advertising art, magazine covers, film posters, record album art and numerous comic book stories...

, Bill Elder

Will Elder

William Elder was an American illustrator and comic book artist who worked in numerous areas of commercial art, but is best known for a zany cartoon style that helped launch Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comic book in 1952....

, George Evans, Graham Ingels

Graham Ingels

Graham Ingels was a comic book and magazine illustrator best known for his work in EC Comics during the 1950s, notably on The Haunt of Fear and Tales from the Crypt, horror titles written and edited by Al Feldstein, and The Vault of Horror, written and edited by Feldstein and Johnny Craig...

, Bernard Krigstein

Bernard Krigstein

Bernard Krigstein , was an American illustrator and gallery artist who received acclaim for his innovative and influential approach to comic book art, notably in EC Comics. He was known as Bernie Krigstein, and his artwork usually displayed the signature B...

, Joe Orlando

Joe Orlando

Joseph Orlando was a prolific illustrator, writer, editor and cartoonist during a lengthy career spanning six decades...

 and Wally Wood

Wally Wood

Wallace Allan Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work in EC Comics and Mad. He was one of Mads founding cartoonists in 1952. Although much of his early professional artwork is signed Wallace Wood, he became known as Wally Wood, a name he...

. Some of them had drawn the original versions of these stories, while others were interpreting them for the first time. This gives the reader with access to the originals a rare opportunity to see how different artists handled the same scripts, and how the same artists handled the same scripts to meet different requirements. The scripts were themselves at least partly rewritten. The writers were not credited but were probably Harvey Kurtzman

Harvey Kurtzman

Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic...

, the writer and editor of Frontline Combat and Mad, and Al Feldstein

Al Feldstein

Albert B. Feldstein is an American writer, editor, and artist, best known for his work at EC Comics and, from 1956 to 1985, as the editor of the satirical magazine Mad. Since retiring from Mad, Feldstein has concentrated on American paintings of Western wildlife...

, the writer and editor of practically every other EC comic book of the period.

The 2-D covers were new to these publications and perfectly embodied their 3-D theme. The first, by Kurtzman, showed a skull-littered corridor collapsing into the distance. The second, by Feldstein, showed a pair of hands reaching out of an open comic book to threaten its 3-D viewer-wearing reader, while the Crypt-Keeper and his friends look on approvingly.

Reception and Demise

A third issue of Three Dimensional E.C. Classics, with a science fiction emphasis, was prepared but never printed. Although the EC books are today considered excellent, superior to most others in the field or even by far the best of their time, they came at a time when the market was oversaturated. The books barely sold at all, with only 300,000 copies of each being printed. But the 3-D comic fad itself lasted less than a year. A number of factors may have contributed to its demise. One factor was price: 3-D comic books commonly cost a quarter instead of the usual dime. Another was societal pressure: monochrome 3-D comics were better suited to darker stories at a time when these were beginning to attract unfavorable public attention. But the greatest factor may well have been the fact that it was a fad. Most people purchased only one 3-D comic book before concluding, "If you've seen one, you've seen them all."

Issue guide

#	Date	Cover Artist	Story	Story Artist	Original Publication	Original Artist
1	Spring 1954	Harvey Kurtzman	V-Vampires!	Wally Wood	Mad #3	Wally Wood
			The Monster from the Fourth Dimension	Bernard Krigstein	Weird Science #7	Al Feldstein
			Frank Luke	George Evans	Frontline Combat #13	George Evans
			Mr. Biddy, Killer	Graham Ingels	Crime SuspenStories #5	Jack Davis
2	March 1954	Al Feldstein	The Trophy	Jack Davis	Tales from the Crypt #25	Jack Davis
			The Strange Couple	Bill Elder	The Vault of Horror #14	Al Feldstein
			Bats in My Belfry	Johnny Craig	Tales from the Crypt #24	Jack Davis
			The Thing from the Grave	Joe Orlando	Tales from the Crypt #22	Al Feldstein