Just as the “shudder pulps” flourished for a short period and then vanished due partly to the threat of censorship, horror comics were king in the early 1950s and then disappeared due entirely to the censor’s pressure. Here are a few covers from the era that will give you some idea about what was upsetting all the parents.
Shifting the subject matter from titles such as “Picture Stories From the Bible” to “The Crypt of Terror” (which became “Tales From the Crypt”), Bill Gaines assembled a great group of artists and gave them a completely free hand. The result was an outrageous mix of great storytelling and disturbing imagery. Parents were not amused.
These three covers by Johnny Craig might give you an idea of what all the fuss was about.
I can definitely see why parents were a little bothered by these. I can't lie, I'd have to take a peek inside.
ReplyDeleteI would like to read these type of comics. I am not into comic books unless they are worth a lot of money. However these comics look like they would be very interesting and entertaining!
ReplyDeleteI love these pres-code horror comics. Great stuff! To think they were done close to 60 years ago...!
ReplyDeleteThe more I become educated the less I try to say words like "EWWWW" but that cover of the hanged man with the broken neck bone compelled me to say ewwwwwwwwww!
ReplyDeleteThe first shot of the eyeball instantly brought to mind my childhood adventure with weirdness captured in MAD magazine. A little research, and I now learn the magazine was preceded by a comic started in 1952
ReplyDelete"...Say "Mad," and most people will think of the magazine, or the TV show, not Harvey Kurtzman's inestimably more original and insurrectionist comic book, which existed for 23 glorious issues from 1952 to 1955.
Dreaming up and writing Mad at EC Comics, Kurtzman virtually invented what would become the era's dominant tone of irreverent self-reference: one form of pop culture mocking all other forms, and itself. Kurtzman inspired several of the artists in this show, including Crumb, whose exemplarily twisted panels first appeared in Kurtzman's post-Mad magazine Help!, and Art Spiegelman, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus in 1986 spurred a lot of high-minded people toward a belated appreciation of the form. (A comic book about the Holocaust — that must somehow be important!)"
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1585726,00.html#ixzz1t6FDqDZU