The Patriots

[cyberghostface]

 
As a change of pace and per request I'm going to see if I can post a few EC stories that weren't part of the horror lineup.

This is from Shock SuspenStories #2.

During a parade celebrating war veterans, a group of men spot a man with an apparent sneer on his face and suspect he harbors communist sympathies. When he doesn't take his hat off, they grow enraged.



A brawl ensues.



The man's wife returns and discovers her husband is dead.

Comments

[lego_joker]

The concept is good, but I feel the "he was blind!" part is a bit overegging the twist-omelet, and raises more questions than it's worth. Like, even if they couldn't afford a seeing-dog or a cane, surely they could've posted an "AM BLIND" sign on his hat or something? Not just to ward off jackasses like these, but in case an emergency broke out at the parade and people started stampeding?

[icon_uk]

"He should have had something to say he was blind on his person" does rather come across as victim blaming, no?

That onus was not on him, and he did have his wife there to accompany him if required.

[lego_joker]

Apologies, apologies. I should've made clearer that I was criticizing the script, not the character.

I felt it came off as a bit clunky, storytelling-wise, for the "he was blind!" twist to be crammed into a single line at the very end; something like the wife exposing an "AM BLIND" tag on his hat (or, perhaps, the rioters finding it themselves after they've calmed down) would've carried more punch and been easier to foreshadow in the earlier pages.

[alicemacher]

This was the first of what the EC staff, among themselves, affectionately called the "preachies": social issue stories of a decidedly progressive bent (especially for 1950s America). These quickly became staples of Shock SuspenStories. Nearly all were written by editor Al Feldstein with plotting assistance by publisher Bill Gaines.

A blogger, whose name I unfortunately don't remember, once covered this story, pointing out the main flaw with its moral. Namely, that even if the man had in fact been a communist who was disrespecting the military, it still would've been reprehensible to beat him to death on the spot.

[bradygirl_12]

These are horror stories after all.