Comic books
In the post-World War II years, Evans began working for comic books, including an in-house staff position at Fiction House until 1949. Originally hired to rule panel borders, erase pencils and fill in blacks for other illustrators, he sat next the teenaged artist Frank Frazetta. Evans eventually got up the nerve to show his portfolio to the editor where the surprised staffer exclaimed, "What the hell are you doing this job for, when you can draw like this?" After that, Evans was given feature stories to draw in 1947. Among the features he illustrated were "The Lost World in Planet Comics and "Tigerman" in Rangers Comics. His favorite work from this period was for Fiction House's Wings Comics and he did a few illustrations for the company's pulp line as well. He picked up odd jobs while still attending art classes, including some farmed out to him by Better Publications' art editor Graham Ingels, who would later join Evans at Fiction House and at EC Comics. Evans' titles for Fawcett included the When Worlds Collide film adaptation and the Captain Video television adaptation, plus horror stories for Strange Suspense Stories, This Magazine Is Haunted, and Worlds of Fear. He contributed to the company's westerns and romance titles as well. Until the end of his life, Evans believed his work for Fawcett was better than any other in his career. He liked the people there and assembled a team of inkers and assistants after becoming one of Fawcett's top illustrators in 1950.
His work for EC Comics in the early 1950s included powerful covers and crime stories for Crime SuspenStories and memorable World War I aviation covers and stories for Aces High. He was a semi-regular contributor to The Haunt of Fear, Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales and Shock SuspenStories (the latter of which also had three covers by Evans). Evans' shocking cover for Crime Suspenstories #23 was held up at the Senate Hearings On Juvenile Delinquency in 1954, among many other comic book covers from a variety of publishers. He stayed with EC through their new direction and Picto-Fiction experiments, contributing to M.D., Impact, Piracy, Terror Illustrated, Crime Illustrated and Shock Illustrated, among others. After EC, he contributed to Gilberton's Classics Illustrated, Dell and Gold Key. His books for Classics Illustrated included Romeo and Juliet (No. 134, September 1956); Lord Jim (No. 136, January 1957); The Little Savage (No. 137, March 1957); In the Reign of Terror (No. 139, July 1957); The Crisis (No. 145, July 1958); The Buccaneer (No. 148, January 1959); The Three Musketeers (No. 1, revised, May 1959); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (No. 18, revised, with Reed Crandall, Fall 1960); Oliver Twist (No. 23, revised, with Reed Crandall, Fall 1961); Julius Caesar (No. 68, revised, with Reed Crandall, 1962); and In Freedom's Cause (No. 168, with Reed Crandall, 1962; published UK 1963; published US 1969).[3]
