Graham Ingels

Started in 2011, the Ghastly Awards adopted their name from Ingels's non-de-plume. The award, which honors excellence in horror comics, is presented annually. Ghastly Graham Ingels was the first Hall of Fame inductee.

"Poetic Justice" in the 12th issue was adapted for the 1972 Tales From the Crypt film from Amicus studios in England, with Peter Cushing as the kindly old junk collector, and Ingels' "Wish You Were Here" (The Haunt of Fear #22) was also adapted.

"Horror We? How's Bayou?" in The Haunt of Fear issue #17 won an award as best EC horror art at the 1972 EC Fan-Addict Convention. In 2004, the webcomic Is This Tomorrow? featured Ingels in its series of comic book trading cards.

After EC ceased publication in the mid-1950s, Ingels contributed to Classics Illustrated but otherwise found little work, as discussed by Nostrand in Foul Play: "He was kind of a sad case, because when the horror stuff went out, Graham went out with it. His forte was strictly doing horror comics, and there weren't any more horror comics being done".

In 1948, Ingels was hired by Al Feldstein, the editor of EC Comics, to provide artwork for their titles which included Gunfighter, Saddle Justice, Saddle Romances, War Against Crime, Modern Love and A Moon, A Girl... Romance. The company's Western and romance comics were later canceled or converted to horror and science-fiction titles. In Grant Geissman's Foul Play, Feldstein explained that Ingels' early work for EC was disappointing, but publisher Bill Gaines was fiercely loyal to everybody, which is why Ingels remained at the company. When EC introduced Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear, it soon became apparent to both Gaines and Feldstein that Ingels was an ideal choice as an illustrator of horror.

Ingels drew crime comics for Magazine Enterprises (Manhunt, Killers) and Westerns for a variety of companies, including Magazine Enterprises (Guns), Youthful Magazines (Gunsmoke), Hillman Periodicals (Western Fighters) and D.S. Publishing Co. (Outlaws). D.S. also published crime stories drawn by Ingels in Underworld, Gangsters Can't Win and Exposed. There were also short stories and one painted cover by Ingels in Dell Comics' Heroic Comics around 1947.

Born in Cincinnati, Ingels began working at age 14 after the death of his father, commercial artist Don Ingels. Graham was 16 when he entered the art field drawing theater displays. He studied at New York's Hawthorne School of Art Graham and Gertrude Ingels married when he was starting as a freelancer at age 20. He entered the U.S. Navy in 1943, and he began working that same year for Fiction House Publications, both in their pulp magazines and their comic book division. Black and white illustrations signed G. Ingels appeared in Planet Stories, Jungle Stories, North-West Romances and Wings. He contributed one painted cover to a 1944 issue of Planet Stories as well. For Planet Comics, he illustrated stories in the "Hunt Bowman" series and the "Aura, Lord of Jupiter" series. He also painted a mural at the United Nations building.

A regular in Planet Comics and Rangers Comics in the late 1940s, Ingels worked for Magazine Enterprises and other publishers of comic books and pulps. He became an art director at Better Publications (Ned Pine's Comics Group later known as Nedor), where he gave early comic book assignments to George Evans, with whom he would form a long friendship, and a young Frank Frazetta, who credited Ingels as the first in the business to recognize his talent. During this period, Ingels created covers and stories for the company's Startling Comics and Wonder Comics; these and other Better Publications comics reveal certain panels by other artists have been redrawn by Ingels to improve the artwork.

The Ingels had two children, Deanna (born 1937) and Robby (born 1946), who was named after a character created by child impersonator Lenore Ledoux for the Baby Snooks radio program. Artist Howard Nostrand, a friend of Ingels, recalled:

Graham J. Ingels (/ˈɪŋɡəlz/; June 7, 1915 – April 4, 1991) was a comic book and magazine illustrator best known for his work in EC Comics during the 1950s, notably on The Haunt of Fear and Tales from the Crypt, horror titles written and edited by Al Feldstein, and The Vault of Horror, written and edited by Feldstein and Johnny Craig. Ingels' flair for horror led EC to promote him as Ghastly Graham Ingels, and he began signing his work "Ghastly" in 1952.