I’m just back from Long Island, where I went to take part in the Stoker Awards weekend, and I’ve got lots to say and neither the time nor the energy to say it all now. But one thing I want to make sure I do before the work week begins is share the remarks I made to present Al Feldstein with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association.

I may have deviated from the script below as I moved through my speech, but I think you’ll get the gist of it—to explain in 3-5 minutes to all those present the reasons why Feldstein deserved to be honored by the organization. (Fingers crossed that I haven’t deviated from fact.)

And so …

Those familiar with the Golden Age of horror comics our Lifetime Achievement Awards recipient Al Feldstein was responsible for back in the 1950s know that if HE had scripted the Stoker Awards weekend, it would start off with a punning title like, “I’m Fine, Horror You?” It would culminate in a banquet at which one of our Guests of Honor would mysteriously fail to show and meanwhile the steaks would taste REAL good. And once all the speechifying was over and we’d start rushing out of here to party, we’d find the halls lined with razor blades … and then some idiot would turn off the lights.

Feldstein was born in Brooklyn in 1925, and when he was 15, barely able to afford the subway fare to the High School of Music and Art which he attended in Manhattan, he learned that a friend was earning some money in the comic book business. Feldstein was hired by Jerry Iger of the Eisner and Iger shop, which created content for the comics publishing companies of the day, to do the scut work of ruling panel border, inking pointers on word balloons, and erasing pencils once pages were done … for three bucks a week.

He enlisted in the Air Force in 1943, where, among other thing, he designed flight jackets and painted squadron insignias, and after his discharge, he started freelancing for Fox Comics. But there was something missing about those assignments. Something like … getting paid in a timely manner, which I think many of you here in this room are all too familiar with. But he heard about another publishing company that treated its freelancers a little better, one called Entertaining Comics, owned by a guy named Bill Gaines.

So in 1948 Feldstein began working for Gaines first as an artist and then as a writer as well on such titles as A Moon, A Girl, A Romance, and Crime Patrol, and Saddle Romances. But one day, realizing that both he and Gaines loved the spooky radio series such as Inner Sanctum and Lights Out, Feldstein thought, hey, why don’t we give horror a try. And when they did, it turned a struggling company into a huge success.

They started by sneaking gruesome tales into the company’s non-horror titles, introducing sardonic horror hosts such as The Crypt Keeper in a title called Crime Patrol and The Vault Keeper in War Against Crime. Sales were phenomenal, resulting in dedicated horror titles like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear. Feldstein drew some of his own stories, but couldn’t draw them all, and he had the best artists in the business working for him, artists such as Jack Davis and Graham Ingels and Wally Wood and Johnny Craig and … and here’s where Feldstein gets points not just for being a great horror artist and writer, but also a great horror editor. Because unlike other comics companies of the day, he encouraged his artists to maintain their personal styles, not forcing them to conform to a stultifying house style.

From 1950 through 1953, Feldstein edited seven titles for EC and wrote the stories for many of them, including (get ready for some of those punning titles I was talking about) “Taint the Meat, It’s the Humanity,” about a black market butcher selling horse meat who ends up on the menu, “Lover, Come Hack to Me” (you can probably guess what that ones about), and the classic baseball story “Foul Play,” in which a crooked pitcher ends up in a very special game, with his intestines stretched out as the baselines, his lungs and liver used for the bases, his heart for home plate, and his head for the ball. That one was given special attention by Frederic Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent, when it came time to blame horror comics for causing juvenile delinquency.

What Wertham never realized was that Feldstein’s horror comics didn’t create juvenile delinquents? What Feldstein’s horror comics created … was us.

Which come to think of it, as I look around the room, may be the same thing.

But seriously—he did influence a generation of writers, artists, and filmmakers.

After horror comics were strangled by the Comics Code, which also killed all the other titles Feldstein was editing for EC, he moved on to edit EC’s last surviving title, MAD magazine from 1956 to 1985, where among other things he gave a name to the magazine’s gap-toothed previously unnamed mascot and dubbed him Alfred E. Neumann.

I’m particularly pleased to present this award to Al Feldstein so I can thank him, not just for scaring the Hell out of me, but also for showing me a path to follow when I wrote my own EC-inspired horror comics for DC Comics 30 years later. They were but a pale shadow of his, but no one who ever wrote a horror comic ever did so without having Feldstein’s classics in the back of their mind. So thanks for inspiring us, thanks for leading the way, and thanks for so many moments that left us speechless, and unable to say anything more than what so many of his punished protagonists said at the end of their stories, which is, “Good Lord! Gasp! Choke!”

Mr. Feldstein would have loved to have been here had his health not prevented it, but he did say, “I am flattered beyond belief and deeply appreciative of the very special honor that you have bestowed upon me … mainly your organization’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be named the recipient of this Award.”

I am pleased to accept the award on his behalf.