Bernard Krigstein
Encyclopedia
Bernard Krigstein was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 illustrator and gallery artist who received acclaim for his innovative and influential approach to comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 art, notably in EC Comics
EC Comics
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series...

. He was known as Bernie Krigstein, and his artwork usually displayed the signature B. Krigstein.

He was posthumously inducted into the comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2005.

Born in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, Krigstein was trained as a classical painter.

Krigstein's best known work in comic books is the short story "Master Race
Impact (comic)
Impact was a short-lived comic book series published by EC Comics in 1955 as the first title in its New Direction line. The bi-monthly comic, published by Bill Gaines and edited by Al Feldstein, began with an issue cover-dated March-April, 1955. It ran for five issues, ending with the...

", originally published in the debut issue (April 1955) of EC Comics' Impact
Impact (comic)
Impact was a short-lived comic book series published by EC Comics in 1955 as the first title in its New Direction line. The bi-monthly comic, published by Bill Gaines and edited by Al Feldstein, began with an issue cover-dated March-April, 1955. It ran for five issues, ending with the...

. The protagonist is a former Nazi death camp commandant named Reissman who had managed to elude justice until he is spotted ten years later riding a New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 subway
Rapid transit
A rapid transit, underground, subway, elevated railway, metro or metropolitan railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with a high capacity and frequency, and grade separation from other traffic. Rapid transit systems are typically located either in underground tunnels or on...

. This story was remarkable for its subject matter, since the Holocaust was rarely discussed in popular media of the 1950s, as indicated by the controversy that same year surrounding Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...

's Night and Fog
Night and Fog (film)
Night and Fog is a 1955 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was...

(1955).
Krigstein, who sometimes chafed at the limits of the material EC gave him to illustrate, expanded what had been planned for six-pages into an eight-page story. The results were so striking that the company reworked the issue to accommodate the two extra pages. Krigstein had stretched out certain sequences in purely visual terms; repetitive strobe-like drawings mimic the motion of a passing train, and Commandant Reissman's final moment of life is broken down into four individual poses of desperate physical struggle. Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...

 described the effect in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

: "The two tiers of wordless staccato panels that climax the story... have often been described as 'cinematic', a phrase thoroughly inadequate to the achievement: Krigstein condenses and distends time itself... Reissman's life floats in space like the suspended matter in a lava lamp. The cumulative effect carries an impact—simultaneously visceral and intellectual—that is unique to comics."

Mad

Krigstein also did humor, such as "From Eternity Back to Here" in Mad
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...

#12, "Bringing Back Father" in Mad #17 and "Crash McCool" in Mad #26. His wife, Natalie, wrote romance comics during the genre's peak. They had a daughter, Cora, in 1949.

In the early 1960s, Krigstein left comics in order to draw and paint illustrations for magazines, book jackets and record albums, eventually turning away from commercial assignments in order to focus on fine art
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....

. In 1962, he took a position at the High School of Art and Design
High School of Art and Design
The High School of Art and Design is a Career and Technical Education high school located at 1075 Second Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets in Manhattan, New York City, New York.It is operated by the New York City Department of Education...

 in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, where he taught for 20 years.

As he told a 1962 interviewer, "It's what happens between these panels that's so fascinating. Look at all that dramatic action that one never gets a chance to see. It's between these panels that the fascinating stuff takes place. And unless the artist would be permitted to delve into that, the form must remain infantile."

Awards

He was posthumously inducted into the comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2005.

Greg Sadowski's book B. Krigstein, Vol. 1 won the Harvey Award
Harvey Award
The Harvey Awards, named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman and founded by Gary Groth, President of the publisher Fantagraphics, are given for achievement in comic books. The Harveys were created as part of a successor to the Kirby Awards which were discontinued after 1987.The Harvey Awards are...

 for Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation in 2003, and was also nominated for the Harvey Special Award for Excellence in Presentation in 2003.

Further reading

  • B. Krigstein: Comics by Bernard Krigstein, edited by Greg Sadowski. Fantagraphics Books
    Fantagraphics Books
    Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...

    , 2004. ISBN 1-56097-573-3 A collection of comics stories by Krigstein.

External links

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