10/06/08

Comic books were latecomers to the horror genre. Although horror books and magazines were quite common in the mid-30s when comic books got their start, it was the escapist element of super-heroes that proved most popular. Sure, Frankenstein starred in his own series beginning in 1940 in Prize Comics (done by Dick Briefer), but he soon joined the super-hero ranks to fight the Axis and later became a comedy character. Other publishers also tried the horror waters during the war, but except for the occasional tale designated as "weird" or "suspense" that cropped up in an anthology title, they all failed.

With the end of World War II, super-hero sales began to slow. Devastation, deprivation, genocide, atomic bombs: all changed the way society viewed the world and the adventures of the über-folk just didn't have the charm they had once held for readers (that many of the heroes had been created to fight the Axis didn't help their street cred once the war was over). Searching for something to capture the attention of readers, publishers tried a number of things. In 1947, Avon publishing produced what is considered the first horror comic, Eerie Comics #1. Sales were good enough (although a second issue never materialized) that another publisher tested the waters with Adventures Into The Unknown. Adventures caught on and slowly publishers added horror titles to their lines. Captain America's
Weird Tales #75
Gene Colan
Timely-1950 By 1950, EC had started their line of (legendary) horror books, most every publisher had a horror title or two in their lines and super-heroes were, for a time set aside. Even an icon like Captain America wasn't immune from the horror trend and his title was changed to Captain America's Weird Tales with #74 and by #75, the final issue, he wasn't even in his own book anymore!

So, with the quick trip through history completed (and Halloween just around the corner), we turn our attention to what's out there today in reprint form and, sorry to say, it's kind of hit and miss. In all the years I've been collecting, I've only run across a handful of horror stories from the 40s, although I may have read some that were not identified as being from that period. Considering the huge number of titles and stories that were produced in the first half of the 50s, it is kind of surprising that, except for the EC books, so little has been reprinted (seems like a no-brainer to me!). The 60s are currently getting some attention, but, since there weren't a lot of horror books produced during this decade, there is very little material available. It isn't really until the 70s, and the Vertigo material from the 80s (and beyond), that reprints are readily available. What follows is a brief look at what reprints are currently out there listed by company.

DC

I've long been of the opinion that the older editors at DC never read a horror story, or, at least, never read one they liked. DC's early horror books are not very good and, as evidenced by this cover to House of Mystery, they were pretty downright lame-poor stories coupled with boring art-and a later addition, House of Secrets, was just more of the same. Of course, DC's strength was in super-heroes and science fiction and the horror comics weren't helped by the company-wide belief that their target audience was kids between the ages of 8 and 12...by the 60s, DC had switched both books to a science fiction format.

DC fared better in the 70s. Editor Joe Orlando revitalized both House of Mystery and House of Secrets by infusing the books with both new and seasoned artists; like Adams, Wrightson, Toth, Kane, Kaluta and others. Although the stories are still quite predictable, yet do have a sense of morality where the bad guy always gets it in the end. Orlando also used the horror host concept made famous by EC by having the characters of Cain and Abel do the introductions to the stories (see Gemstone below). The art is great in most all cases and the occasional gem surfaces, like the Wrightson/Wein prototype for Swamp Thing in House of Secrets #92. Parts of Orlando's tenure on both books is available as Showcase Presents volumes.

When talking about DC, Swamp Thing cannot be ignored, since it was the basis of the Vertigo line and features some of the best horror to be found in modern times. In 1972, Len Wein and Berni Wrightson did a 10 issue run that is collected in the trade paperback Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis. These early stories gave the origin of the character and charted a course through a bunch of monsters, creatures and hauntings; all rendered in Wrightson's best horror style. Alan Moore's take on the character has also been reprinted in a series of trades under the umbrella title of Saga of the Swamp Thing. Moore not only re-imagined the character, but brought an understated tone to the book that examined horror in all its facets. Some stories are psychological, some about monsters, while others focus on the horror of disease, insanity, or even the dark and horrifying sides of life.

Some other reprint titles from DC/Vertigo you might find of interest include Neil Gaiman's Sandman, The Books of Magic, Hellblazer, Preacher and the new series of House of Mystery.

Marvel

Marvel has always taken an odd approach to their horror output from the 50s. Back in the 70s, they reprinted lots of the work, with no credits for the creators or list of sources, in their reprint comics and some of their black and white magazines. Currently, they have only released a Masterwork each of Strange Tales and Journey Into Mystery. From the examples I've seen from this period, the Marvel horror stories were pretty much predictable. There's the usual mixture of monsters, ghouls and werewolves, the bad guy gets his just deserts by the end of the story and you can usually guess the end of the story by reading the first panel. The art, however, is where the Marvel horror from the 50s shines and I place it on a par just below EC. Whether it was Bill Everett, John Romita or Joe Maneely (there were plenty of others) the Marvel horror books all had an insane look to them.Journey Into Mystery #5
Bill Everett
Timely-1953 Eyeballs bulge from their sockets. Characters don't laugh, their faces contort into hysterical laughter. Most all the stories have a wild, impressionistic quality to them, as if one's vision is distorted by high fever or some form of drug. The stories from the later 50s never had this quality to them and Marvel eventually shifted to giant monster/science fiction stories that were only borderline horror.

Once the Comics Code relaxed in the 70s, Marvel added horror back to their line-up on a couple of fronts. They tried a couple of anthology books where they adapted horror stories by name authors with some other originals. These were quite good, but they have not been reprinted. Tomb of Dracula #48
Gene Colan/Tom Palmer
Marvel-1976Marvel's other tact was to create a number of horror books that featured a single character: sort of a supernatural super-hero idea. Of these, most were flops and are not worth mentioning, but a couple did produce some remarkable stories.

Tomb of Dracula has been reprinted in its entirety in a series of Essentials volumes as well an Omnibus edition that does the first half in color. Under the scripting of Marv Wolfman, the TOD managed to stand way above the other titles of the time and derived its horror from Dracula himself, as he reveled in the power he wielded as a vampire, but also lamented his loss of humanity. The first Essential Man-Thing is also worth a look as writer Steve Gerber created a number of eerie stories that focus on character with, the Man-Thing only in the story as a sort of observer. Essential Monster of Frankenstein is also worth a look, since the first part of the book features a great adaption of the Mary Shelley novel by Gary Friedrich and Mike Ploog.

Gemstone

Around 1950, Bill Gaines took the comic company he had inherited as the result of his father's death, cancelled the existing books and started a new line that included some of the best horror comics to ever hit the stands. Gemstone has begun to reprint Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror as part of their EC Archives series and all three volumes are worth adding to your collection. The EC books were basically a synthesis of what had gone before. Some stories are adaptations of classic horror stories, some used classic situations as a springboard for a new story (the gruesome Grim Fairy Tales are one example) while others are well written original stories. All featured some sort of twist ending: a sort of EC signature style. Rotting corpses, vampires, ghouls, werewolves and witches all abound within the EC books, but there are also axe murderers, crazed killers and the threat of being buried alive that are added to the horror mix.

Editorially, the EC books were cynical at their heart; the main viewpoint seeming to be that human beings will act as badly as they can in any given situation. EC saw marriage as a struggle between the spouses that would often lead to murder. If killing one's boss could advance your career...well, why not? Steal from the poor-hey, that's an idea. Yet amongst all this cynicism is an underlying moral tone, where the person who has done the bad thing is punished at the end of the story is some grisly fashion. This type of ending is what makes EC books so much fun to read, since you not only get caught up in the story, you also get to guess how the malefactor will meet their end (and as the EC line matured, the comeuppance of the villain became more grisly and more graphic over time). In the world of EC, even a moonlight kiss may have a rotting corpse in the background waiting to...

Reportedly, EC paid the highest page rates of their time and had some of the best artists of the time producing some very visceral artwork. High body counts, gore, detached limbs and entrails were all lovingly rendered by Al Feldstein, Jack Kamen, Jack Davis and Graham Ingels, among others (Joe Orlando, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, Reed Crandall...I could go on all day). Gaines and Feldstein, also, had the sense to assign stories to their artists based on their artistic strengths, so a moody story would go to one artist, while an out and out gore-fest would go to another. Of course, since the work was finely rendered, it would almost be too much if it weren't for one other feature that EC brought in to make the books work. Each story was introduced by a horror host (an idea Gaines took from old radio shows like The Witch's Tale and Inner Sanctum). The Crypt Keeper, the Old Witch and the Vault Keeper would appear in the splash panel to set up the story and poke fun at it. At the story's end, the host would appear once again, mocking the body count and, usually, making an outrageous pun: as if all that the reader has just experienced was really just one big joke.

Needless to say, the EC books function on many levels and are well worth reading for the horror fan. They don't get much better than this and they certainly get a lot worse.

Dark Horse

Dark Horse has done a lot of modern horror material in recent years and collected most all of it in reprint volumes, but I must admit that most of it leaves me cold. In fact, I probably would dismiss the company out of hand, if it weren't for their Creepy and (coming soon) Eerie Archives.

Creepy and Eerie arrived in the early 60s from Warren Publishing. Warren had originally entered the magazine field in 1957 with a clone of Playboy called After Hours. This was soon followed by other titles, most notably Famous Monsters of Filmland, which featured some comic stories on occasion. Russ Jones, an employee of Warren, convinced publisher James Warren, who was also a fan of the EC Comics to publish a full magazine of illustrated horror stories. After a bit of hemming and hawing, Warren decided to give the idea a go and Creepy #1 came out in late 1964 (for more background on Warren Publishing and detailed listings of all the Warren Magazines, you might want to check out Richard Arndt's exhaustive overview entitled, The Warren Magazines). Two years later, Eerie arrived and the Warren age of horror was up and running.

By publishing black and white magazines instead of color comics, Warren had an advantage over the other comic publishers of the time. Most publishers had abandoned horror comics due to the constraints of the Comics Code, which had been established in the mid-50s, and there were very few titles on the market. The Code had lots of stringent rules for color comics, including such caveats as the words "Horror" or "Terror" could not appear on the cover. Creepy #7
Frank Frazetta
Warren-1966Vampires, werewolves, ghouls, zombies, Frankenstein and Dracula (the horror versions) were similarly banned, as was most anything of substance. One has only to look at the cover to the first issue of Creepy to see that Warren was making a statement his magazine's place in the marketplace. Not only are all the forbidden characters on the cover, but the cover was also done by Jack Davis: someone instantly recognizable to fans of EC. Later issues had covers by Frank Frazetta and featured many of the "forbidden" subjects.

With the Creepy Archives, Dark Horse has taken great pains to revive both the good and bad of Warren. The good-the first volume reprints the first 5 issues of Creepy and these issues are a veritable who's who of EC artists and others. Frazetta covers are on #2-5 along with some rare interiors. Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, Joe Orlando and Alex Toth are the EC alums along for the ride nearly all the stories are written by EC alum Otto Binder or Archie Goodwin (who also steps in as editor with #2). And Uncle Creepy makes his appearances as your horror host in the style of the EC hosts.

The bad-well I've always considered Warren to be EC-lite. While the stories tend towards the EC style (Goodwin was a big fan) they lack the sense of fair play that were evident in the EC titles. The bad guy sometimes gets away with his plan under Warren. Also, in something that predates the Stephen King style of horror (Sh*t Happens), the people who get caught up in a horrifying situation are often just minding their own business, which, I guess, is a reflection of the 60s as much as anything else.

These flaws aside, the current Creepy Archives are worth a look, particularly if you want more EC style tales, or find the original EC Comics to be a bit dated. The art is very strong and future volumes should feature some marvelous work by Steve Ditko, Gene Colan and Neal Adams.

So, there you have it. I'm sure I've missed some favorites along the way, but to do a really exhaustive survey would have taken much more space (and time!) than I have available. Take a look for the titles I've mentioned on the shelves of Pulp Fiction and, if you don't find what you are looking for, talk to Mike and he can order it for you!

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