Johnny Craig is one of the great lost talents of comics. Frank Miller (SIN CITY, 300), possibly the most well-known graphic novelist alive today, credits Craig as a prime influence — "I’ve really studied Johnny Craig, and bought some of his originals and studied them. too. He just takes me to school every time I look at him... A lot of people who think Sin City is shocking and new should really study Johnny Craig..."
Craig was a visual storyteller of tremendous skill. He had a knack for drawing a shocking scene and underplaying it in a way that gave it all the more impact. One of his short stories for EC, "When The Cat's Away," depicts a man pushing a woman backwards off her feet by her face. It's shown in no-frills medium shot, but it's still one of the most brutal things ever seen in comics.
Craig did most of his memorable work in the EC comics of the 1950s, drawing short crime stories and working on their horror books — they of the ghoulish horror hosts, the Tales From The Crypt, etc. Those comics had their melodramatic elements, as you can see in the artwork below.
Those heavy blacks, the eerie lighting, that staccatto storytelling style — the above sequence is a wonderful encapsulation of the feel of the EC horror comics. The only problem is, the art isn't taken from an EC book, or a horror comic of any kind. It comes from an issue of the Marvel superhero comic IRON MAN, which Craig worked on briefly in the 1960s. According to comics historian Mark Evanier, editor Stan Lee felt that Craig's style didn't fit in at Marvel, and Craig had difficulty making the deadlines on a monthly book.
That goes a long way towards explaining why Craig isn't as greatly-honoured today as he rightly should be. He had difficulty fitting into the superhero-dominated comics industry that resulted after Estes Kefauver's Senate committee brought the EC horror line down in 1954, and the slow pace at which he produced work meant that he basically faded from view when his tenure on IRON MAN was over.
Stan may not have liked it, but some of Craig's Marvel work is excellent. Check out this awesome splash image, mistakenly attributed to "Johhny Craig".
And look at this. Shock lines with shadows!
Indie cartoonist Seth (IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN, WIMBLEDON GREEN) once remarked that he found it difficult to draw violence in his comics without it looking like "comic book violence" — more redolent of a Jack Kirby drawing of a punch than of the real thing. It's true that Kirby-style fight staging has had an inordinate influence in North American comics — characters throwing brute-force haymakers, bodies flying across the room. Craig had a different approach:
And here's a nice last example: writer Archie Goodwin and Craig show a character slowly regaining consciousness within the space of a single panel.
Craig's EC material is by far his most influential and well-remembered, but he was still bringing new things to the table with the largely-forgotten work he did later at Marvel. It's minor work, sure, but minor work from one of the all-time greats.