Astonishing #15
July, 1952

Journey Into Unknown Worlds #22
September, 1953

Spellbound #11
January, 1953

Chamber Of Chills #13
October, 1952

Baffling Mysteries #15
May, 1953

Witches Tales #8
March, 1952

Chamber Of Chills #23
October, 1951

WEIRD GORE TALES OF THE DAMNED

Fetid flesh, moldering corpses, and rotting entrails --this was the meat and taters of children's comic book entertainment in the early to mid-fifties. Influenced by spicy and weird menace pulps of the 1930's, covers depicting hideous violence and graphic torture, promising arcane adventures and tales of torments sold quickly in a flagging post-war comic market place. With the superhero genre dying of Kryptonite poisoning, horror and it's first cousin, crime, exploded into popularity.

Although not the first to publish horror, EC Comics quickly became the undisputed leader in the field. Under the guidance of publisher Bill Gaines, EC's horror, crime, and science fiction titles attained a consistent level of story and art unsurpassed to this day, and furthered the careers of Frank Frazetta, Harvey Kurtzman, and Jack Davis to name but a very few.

The stories, while often gruesome, none-the-less extolled the virtues of right and wrong, with evildoers paying dearly for their social indiscretions. Twisted tales with ironic endings were EC's stock in trade, with an occasional adaptation from master storyteller Ray Bradbury thrown in to add credibility to their efforts.

Many imitators followed, often matching EC's quality artwork but rarely their stories. Ajax, Farrel, Star, Avon, even Harvey Comics, home to that friendly ghost Casper served up versions of their own flesh-eating, eye-gouging fun.

DC Comics shied away, but Marvel Comics, then known as Atlas Comics, produced a mountain of imitative product dwarfing EC's output. Publisher Marty Goodman and editor Stan Lee were long on quantity but short on originality--although the artwork on their titles was generally excellent and an interesting story managed to slip through the editorial cracks occasionally

Horror comics did not go unnoticed for long, and by the early 1950's were claimed by legions of the decent to be the root cause of teen-age delinquency. Comic books were the hypnotic power behind the transformation of clean white bread kids into run-amok youth, hell-bent on tire slashing, gang rumbles, petty thievery, and psychotic depravity.

At the center of the outrage was psychiatrist Frederick Wertham who's book, Seduction of the Innocent, convinced mom and pop that their children's brains were being gnawed away by an insidious four color cancer. Wertham found fault with most of the comics published at the time, with violence and sex topping his hit list.

Not merely content to condemn the obviously inappropriate, Wertham attacked the all-American straight-as-an-arrow exploits of Superman and Batman as well. A comic book, any comic book, became an immoral stake driven deep into the pure at heart.

In response, the comic book industry created a weak form of self-censorship, and Bill Gaines squared off against a senate sub-committee on juvenile delinquency. But these efforts failed to quell the fear in an atomic era drenched in paranoia.

The axe fell and the Comics Code Authority was created. The CCA imposed draconian restrictions on the editorial content of all comic books. Virtually every crime or horror convention publishers had utilized to hawk their comics was unacceptable. There was to be no overt or implied depiction of violence, sex, or drug use of any kind, pro or con. Even the use of the word horror or weird was forbidden to be part of a book's title.

Comics were canceled and publishers folded; many professionals fled the field never to return. By 1956 the CCA stamp of approval was firmly emblazoned on the cover of every comic book that managed to survive the purge.

But not all creators abandoned the form. In defiance, Gaines transformed Mad from a comic book into a b&w magazine, giving birth to a cultural icon free from CCA restrictions. In the 1960's he reprinted his classic horror stories in paperback, in the 1970's he authorized Russ Cochran to begin the hardback reprinting of every title under the EC emblem, and in the 1980's licensed his Tales from the Crypt to film and television.

Stan Lee turned to westerns and romance and transformed Atlas' horror titles into mystery and suspense comics, which abided by the Code. In a few short years he would go on to co-create Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, and a pantheon of Marvel characters forever changing the sensibility of superhero comics.

Wertham and his cohorts had succeeded in pulling the teeth of editorial freedom. The result was a juvenilization of comics and years of mediocrity in non-superhero titles that would last until the 1970's, when Stan Lee bucked the Code, printing a story in his Spider-Man title dealing with drug abuse.

Atom Age Cover Gallery