Comic Book Cats, number 118: The Vault of Horror #25, drawn by Graham Ingels and written by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines, published by EC Comics in June 1952.“Collection Completed” is the tale of Anita Tillman, a middle-aged woman who loves animals. Unfortunately for Anita, her husband Jonah despises them. When Anita adopts a stray cat who she names Mew-Mew, it’s the last straw for the hateful Jonah. He learns taxidermy and begins stuffing animals solely to torment Anita. Unfortunately for Jonah, he goes too far, killing and stuffing her beloved Mew-Mew. A vengeful Anita kills her sadistic husband, turning him into the final piece in his beloved collection.
“Ghastly” Graham Ingels was a regular contributor to EC’s horror anthologies and designed the Old Witch, the host of The Haunt of Fear. Ingels’ style was incredibly well suited to rendering grotesque creatures and macabre settings. Regrettably, Ingels all but left comic books in the mid-1950s after EC ceased publication and the Comics Code killed horror comics, working on only a handful of jabs for other publishers in the second half of the decade. Ingels then became a painter and an art instructor, and for many years refused to discuss his time in comic books. He was finally convinced by publisher Russ Cochrane to create new paintings based on his old EC horror work. Sadly Ingels passed away only two years later in April 1991 at the age of 75.
This page from “Collection Complete is scanned from The EC Archives: The Vault of Horror Volume 3, published by Dark Horse in 2014.
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