EC Comics and Mad Magazine great Al Feldstein has died at age 88.  He died Tuesday in his home in Livingston, Montana.  No cause of death was released.
 
Feldstein spent five years at William Gaines’ EC Comics, as editor-writer for Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, The Vault of Horror and other titles.  His titles tackled social issues of the day in a serious way, and he worked with many other fine creators.  Tales from the Crypt was later adapted into a TV anthology for HBO, where it ran for seven seasons.
 
Though he left EC when most of the titles were forced off the shelves, he returned to helm Mad Magazine in 1956, where he would spend 28 years as editor.  During his tenure, the magazine boomed, reaching sales of almost 3 million copies.  He retired in 1984 and devoted the rest of his life to painting, which he described as his “first love.”
 
Last year IDW released The MAD Life and Fantastic Art of Al Feldstein (see “'MAD' for Feldstein”). 
 
Feldstein had recently been involved in attempts to regain copyright control of his early EC Comics work (see “Al Feldstein & Kurtzman Estate Attempt to Regain EC Copyrights”).