Russ Cochran, 82, West Plains, Missouri passed away at 6:30 a.m., Sunday, February 23, 2020. Arrangements are pending under the direction of Robertson-Drago Funeral Home.
The follow article was posted yesterday from CBR.com
With censorship issues shuttering much of Silver Age publisher EC Comics‘ output, its classic horror comics would have been lost to the ravages of time if not for the timely intervention of Ross Cochran. The physics professor turned prolific archivist of comic books and newspaper comic strips passed away over the weekend at age 82.
Cochran’s passing was announced in a Facebook post by his brother Michael, with a photograph of Cochran playing a guitar in April 1964. No cause of death has been provided by the family.
Cochran learned to read from comic books in the 1940s and professed his love for comics across all genres. Leaving his professorship, Cochran began compiling archived comics from pages of original artwork, including EC, Disney and more. From these archives, Cochran published reprints of long out-of-print comics starting with the EC Portfolios, published by Cochran himself from 1971 to 1977.
By 1978, Cochran’s reprints expanded to virtually every comic book published by EC in The Complete EC Library, across a staggering 66 collected volumes. Complete with contemporary house ads, commentary from comic creators and historians, editorial notes and letter pages, the collections served as the definitive compilation of EC Comics’ catalogue. After working with various publishers reprinting select EC titles, such as Tales from the Crypt and Weird Science, in a variety of formats, Cochran spent the past several years reprinting old newspaper strips in collected compilations.
At a time when comic book history was a niche field of study at best, Cochran’s tireless work as a publisher and archivist helped preserve an entire vital era of the Silver Age by compiling EC’s horror, sci-fi and romance offerings, while reprinting them for future generations to discover and enjoy.
https://www.cbr.com/ec-comics-russ-cochran-death/
Russ Cochran, 82, West Plains, Missouri passed away at 6:30 a.m., Sunday, February 23, 2020. Arrangements are pending under the direction of Robertson-Drago Funeral Home.
