The Autumn People
Ballantine Books, October 1965.
Adapted for EC Comics by Albert B. Feldstein.

Original Reprints?

The Autumn People is a Ballantine Books paperback original, which showcases eight "stories of chilling horror by the king of fantasy...illustrated in the good old comic book tradition." Ballantine had the "original" idea of collecting these comics in paperback for the first time, but the comics themselves are all reprints from the EC Comics line, published in 1952-53. The book is entirely reproduced in black and white, and the mass market paperback format tends to break up the original page layout, forcing the reader to hold the book sideways throughout. Comic book purists may lament the awkward format, but Bradbury fans will be delighted at a chance to see some prime pulp from the golden age. (The only other drawback is that the individual illustrators are not identified.)

It's important to realize that these are adaptations of previously published stories, and that Bradbury did not write them as comics. A familiarity with the original tales makes the comics even more impressive. Bradbury's style adapts perfectly for the comic format, and the folks at EC wisely kept his distinctive language intact for each and every story. This gives the work a higher literary standard than might be expected from comics, a quality which could be cited as an important step toward the more thematically complex graphic novels being published today.

The tone of The Autumn People is decidedly dark, with six of the eight stories taken from Dark Carnival. These are not cute comics for the kiddies. Unnatural death and premature burial are recurring horrors, and the shadowy artwork is as off-kilter as any film noir or Hitchcock chiller. It is not so surprising that parents and politicians pulled the plug on this type of entertainment during America's oh-so-wholesome post war years.

For more about Bradbury's EC Comics, Senate sub-committees and censorship, see Jerry Weist's Bradbury: An Illustrated Life. If you're looking for more reprints of Bradbury's EC Comics, find yourself a copy of Tomorrow Midnight. To see summaries and notes about the eight stories included in The Autumn People, simply scroll down.

Summary: Aunt Tildy considers death to be an impractical nuisance, and she’s too old and set in her ways to change her philosophy now. Those young men from the mortuary only want her for her body anyway.

Comments: The EC Comics adaptation, available in The Autumn People, is perhaps the most enjoyable version of this odd story.

Ray Bradbury Theater #17: I have said enough negative things about Ray Bradbury Theater, and I'm too old and set in my ways to change my philosophy now.

Radio: Bradbury 13 doesn't help. This story is dead and there's no reviving it.

See also: "Some Live Like Lazarus" and "Death and the Maiden" are also about old women who refuse to die.

Summary: Ten-year-old Margaret Leary hears a buried woman screaming under the empty lot behind her house. But no one believes Margaret. And surely the woman is running out of air.

Comments: In Bradbury Country children are often smarter than adults, which could account for his popularity among young readers.

Ray Bradbury Theater #5 stars Drew Barrymore in her prime.

Radio: Suspense featured Margaret O'Brien in "The Screaming Woman" on Thanksgiving 1948. The same script was shortened a bit for the March 1955 broadcast starring Sherry Jackson. Both versions are set on Thanksgiving and use a doll as an important clue. The Bradbury 13 episode sticks to the song clue from the original story.

See also: "Zero Hour" is a more sinister example of what happens when parents don't listen to their children.

Summary: Struggling writer William Acton commits murder and becomes obsessed with the fear of leaving behind fingerprints.

Comments: In 1965 this was included in The Vintage Bradbury as one of twenty-six stories selected by the author himself as being his best, but by 1980 it was not included among the 100 best in The Stories of Ray Bradbury. In fact, several of the "Vintage" stories failed to make the list fifteen years later.

The EC Comics version of this story, available in The Autumn People as "Touch and Go," omits some of the back-story and all of the motivation behind the murder. This is the only serious alteration made in that collection of comic adaptations.

Ray Bradbury Theater #7 was the first episode produced for the USA network.

Summary: Is it possible for a newborn baby to hate its mother? Does a baby resent being forced from its peaceful womb into the chaotic outside world? Does it want revenge? Alice Leiber thinks so. She thinks her baby is trying to kill her.

Comments: Bradbury repeatedly claims to remember his own birth and circumcision a few days later. (See "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle.") In the Gauntlet edition of Dark Carnival he says this is because he was a ten-month baby. No one believes this story except for Bradbury, but he's made the most of it with "The Small Assassin."

What is interesting about this story is wondering what happens afterward. If Dr. Jeffers kills the evil baby, how will he convince anyone that the baby murdered the parents? The doctor would be especially suspicious in Ray Bradbury Theater #12 where he finds both parents dead at the same time. In the story, the mother dies the day before the father. Jeffers may draw additional suspicion because he's played by Cyril Cusack, who had previously portrayed the antagonistic fire chief in Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451.

Summary: Mr. Benedict almost relishes the scorn and ridicule the townspeople dump on him. Let them have their jokes. If there's anything an undertaker knows it's how to handle people.

Comments: Bradbury Stories contains the same version from the rare Dark Carnival collection.

Ray Bradbury Theater #62 stars Michael J. Pollard, an actor who is weird in anything.

Summary: Harold and Margaret take their delayed honeymoon back East, where Harold has a haunting experience on the beach where his childhood sweetheart Tally drowned many years before.

Comments: This is classic Bradbury. The end-of-summer sadness of the beach scenes is terrifically evocative. Setting and subject are woven into a short, seamless theme of deathless love. Affecting without being sentimental. In "Drunk, and In Charge of a Bicycle," the author tells how at age twenty-two he finished this story with tears running down his face, because he knew he’d just written his first good story. Dark Carnival features an earlier version than other collections. The ominous opening paragraph is the only major change in the later versions and is clearly an improvement over the earlier innocuous one.

Ray Bradbury Theater #21

Radio: NBC's Radio City Playhouse #56 stars Fred Collins. Collins was normally an NBC announcer, and "The Lake" was his first starring role, but the majority of his acting is just narration anyway. The other half of this "duet" episode features "Collector's Item" by Roald Dahl, a story that Quentin Tarantino ripped off in the movie Four Rooms.

See also: More beach-front love and loss can be found in these superb stories.

• "The Shoreline at Sunset"
• "The Picasso Summer"
• "Long After Midnight"
• "The Fog Horn"

Summary: Meet the Braling brothers. Charlie is the older one, rich from a life as an inventor. Richard is the no-good one, living a life of leisure on Charlie’s money. Charlie's last invention is a special coffin, but Richard suspects something fishy about the casket and has Charlie buried in a plain pine box. Oh, sweet revenge!

Comments: Dark Carnival and The Stories of Ray Bradbury feature the same version of "The Coffin." The story appears in A Memory of Murder as "Wake for the Living." The text varies slightly, but not significantly.

Ray Bradbury Theater #15 is actually better than the original story. The hatred between the brothers is amplified by a backstory of Richard stealing Charlie's true love from him. Several other changes make the story more plausible and comical. One of the more enjoyable episodes.

See also: "Marionettes, Inc." is a different sort of story about Braling versus Braling.

Summary: It's been seven years since a classroom tragedy caused Mr. Howard to retire from teaching. When circumstances force him to take a substituting job he returns to the classroom to face down his demons.

Comments: The game of "poison" involves jumping over the squares of sidewalk that have names imprinted in the cement. They are the names of the contractors who paved the sidewalk, but the children claim they are graves. This is a decent story that could have used a rewrite. Unfortunately, "Poison" was not rewritten in the 56 years between Dark Carnival and Bradbury Stories. Both books feature the same text, right down to the same typographical errors. The books have different typeface and layout, but that’s the wonder of modern digital printing. This was probably taken from the same computer file as the Gauntlet edition of DC.

Could this have influenced Stephen King's story "Sometimes They Come Back," where a teacher uses black magic to save himself from evil students? Mr. Howard accuses his students of "necromancy."

Ray Bradbury Theater #49 stars Richard Benjamin as Mr. Howard.