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EC Archives
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<p>The <i>EC Archives</i> are an ongoing series of American hardcover collections of full-color <a href="/facts/Comic_book/xGFkPrMT">comic book</a> reprints of <a href="/facts/EC_Comics/qvyPMelX">EC Comics</a>, published by <a href="/facts/Russ_Cochran_(publisher)/sg3JLlmr">Russ Cochran</a> and <a href="/facts/Gemstone_Publishing/D3EwnYUo">Gemstone Publishing</a> from 2006 to 2008, and then continued by Cochran and <a href="/facts/Grant_Geissman/fUojPsGC">Grant Geissman</a>'s GC imprint (2011–2012), and finally taken over by <a href="/facts/Dark_Horse_Comics/fTal0C6o">Dark Horse</a> in 2013. </p><p>The output of <a href="/facts/William_Gaines/xYkAQdXU">Bill Gaines</a>' <a href="/facts/EC_Comics/qvyPMelX">EC Comics</a> line in the 1940s and 1950s is one of the most critically acclaimed of the pre-<a href="/facts/Comics_Code/Nj8Q0hlq">Comics Code</a> comics publishers (and one of the major casualties of the Comics Code). Such <a href="/facts/EC_Comics/qvyPMelX">EC Comics</a> titles as <i>Tales from the Crypt</i>, <i>The Vault of Horror</i> and <i><a href="/facts/Weird_Science_(comic)/3qqDKBqk">Weird Science</a></i> are known even to people unfamiliar with the source material, due to movie and television adaptations. </p><p>Numerous reprints throughout the decades have also kept EC alive on book store shelves, starting with <a href="/facts/Woody_Gelman/s4SVW1mz">Nostalgia Press</a>'s <i>EC Horror Comics Of The 1950s</i> tome (1971), followed by publisher Cochran's six <i>EC Portfolio</i>s (1971–1977), but primarily because of his <i><a href="/facts/Russ_Cochran_(publisher)/sg3JLlmr">Complete EC Library</a></i>, printing all of the 'New Trend' comic titles (although missing the unique stories from the three <i><a href="/facts/Three_Dimensional_E.C._Classics/90k7HyED">3-D EC Classics</a></i> issues), as well as all of the 'New Direction' and 'Picto-Fiction' titles, and some of the 'Pre-Trend' title issues, in a series of 18 b&w box sets (19 if you include the fact that the <i>Mad</i> set was done in both color and b&w editions) containing a total of 66 hardcover books, all shot directly from the original art, mostly published from 1979 to 1996, with the Picto-Fiction box being delayed until 2006. Between 1992 and 2000, Cochran and <a href="/facts/Gemstone_Publishing/D3EwnYUo">Gemstone Publishing</a> also produced 295 different <a href="/facts/Russ_Cochran_(publisher)/sg3JLlmr">full-color individual issue reproductions</a> of all the "New Trend' (except <i>Mad</i>) and 'New Direction' EC Comics, and subsequently 63 <i><a href="/facts/Russ_Cochran_(publisher)/sg3JLlmr">EC Annuals</a></i> which glued together titled chronological overstock copies of those individual issues in a new outer wrapper, in a nod to the original unsold-stock content of the <i>EC Annual</i>s of the 50s, although back in the 1950s there was no specification as to what issues may have been contained inside the covers to those various <i>Annual</i>s, which could vary from copy to copy. </p>