art by Jack Davis, written by Al Feldstein
Panic #2 (1954)
If I had to pick a favourite EC artist, at least on the basis of their EC work alone, I would probably pick Jack Davis. He did some great work in all the genres, and some of his best work was in the humour books, MAD and PANIC. He's got a wonderfully lush inking style and can fill his panels with details without distracting from the main action.
This story is mostly a parody of the stage production of "A Streetcar Named Desire", with a bit of "Death of a Salesman" and probably some other sources I'm missing. It's pretty amusing, a bit unusual in how it plays off the stage-play format, with jokes about the audience and stage directions (I especially liked the jokes about what happens in the intermissions between acts).
Davis really shines with the Stanley and Lola characters in this story. They're just a wonderfully comedic design for the absurd situations they're put in, wonderfully physical and expressive designs.
Overall a decent story, although of course Feldstein at this point wasn't quite as good at the parody as Kurtzman was over in MAD, but still did a good job in the best MAD rip-off mag.
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