Tales from the Fridge (1973) #1 by Russ Jones and Bhob Stewart

From the cover and the first page, complete with Crypt Keeper and all, I expected this to be a collection of EC horror parodies…

… but it’s not: It’s just one 24 page story. I mean, the story does have EC horror flourishes, and Jones carries off emulating a number of 50s artists, but the story itself isn’t very EC-ish.

The main gag is that the guy is fat, really fat, have I mentioned fat? But there’s also other comedy gems here like the lawyer called “Heebert L. Kiker”. *sigh*

We’re not talking comedy genius here.

And then for a couple of pages (after the fat guy has smoked The Reefer), we get a couple of pages of comic strip parodies.

Before we lurk back into an EC denouement, but more extreme.

Jones is obviously talented, and this book has some charms, but it’s hard to like.

We round off with a bunch of one pagers that… are like this.

The book has not been reprinted:

As EC homages go, Tales from the Fridge isn’t especially bad, as it incorporates some of the tried-and-true comic tropes that EC pioneered, but after the novelty of tales from the fridge wears off, there’s not much happening beyond the fridge.

Bill Sherman writes in The Comics Journal #44, page 52:

He didn’t like it.

This is the twenty-sixth post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.