EC - More Blessed to Give... (Krigstein)

More Blessed to Give...
art by Bernard Krigstein, story by Jack Oleck
Crime SuspenStories #24 (1954)

A pretty conventional story about a married couple who simultaneously decide to kill each other, made a little more interesting by some of the split-page narration tracing the murder plans (rat poison in the liquor and a bomb in a cake, exchanged on their anniversary. Not the most subtle couple). Even more of interest is some of Krigstein's artwork, as this is one of the stories where he somewhat rebelled against the strict layouts and tight page counts of the EC house style and played around with cutting single panels into multiple frames to get some different effects. Of course he'd continue that kind of experimentation in later stories, so that's the kind of thing he's best known for now, as well as the usual sharply detailed artwork.

Of course the story ends with the kind of unlikely twist that you'd expect, but the trip there both in writing and art makes it better than the usual such story.