After Bill Gaines got clobbered by the Comics Code Authority, which I've always considered an own goal because of the prurient quality (but brilliantly drawn art) of his New Direction comics I wondered what the Picto-Fiction titles actually looked like so I bought this book.
Gaines's problem was to produce a publication that used comic book ingredients but didn't look like a comic, otherwise, the CCA would need to get involved. His solution was a magazine with a rather loose format of text and image panels and in black and white. It sort of works, in a half-hearted way and was probably like nothing else on the newsstands but comic book readers expect color and an exclamation mark at the end of every bit of copy in a speech bubble.
The fifteen stories are nothing special, each can be read in less than twenty minutes. Full of cliches and a predictable soggy writing style with an essential plot twist in the last few lines. This leaves the art and really the only reason to look at Picto-Fiction. 'Screenplay for murder' has some excellent Jack Davis art (unfortunately his only work in the book) Wally Wood uses tints to good effect in 'Repeat performance' (the Contents page says incorrectly the art is by Reed Crandal). All the artists probably regarded their work for Picto as an opportunity to create illustrations free from the rigid comic book format, Nearly all the art has no squared-up sides but uses a floating style.
The nine Picto-Fiction magazines (1955 to 1956) weren't a success leaving Gaines with Mad, which became increasingly successful reaching a sales peak of 2,435, 220 in September 1973. A minor point, the Contents page obviously has page numbers but none in the rest of the book.
UK The EC Archives: Crime Illustrated: Amazon.co.uk: Artists, EC: 9781506719764: Books
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