User blog:Nausiated/Oh the Horror!

So as I'm fighting my way through my vast and ever growing collection of Marvel Essential and DC Showcase Presents books, one genre that I keep running into it the horror genre. Somewhere in the middle of all the spandex clad heroes with their capes, and web-shooters, their anatomically incorrect bodies, and complex and convoluted plot lines, I get smack in the middle of horror land. A lot of it from Marvel Comics dating back to the 70's, which to me is an interesting time for horror in comic books. It's not the beginning of horror in comics, before the advent of the Comic Book Authority code all the major publishers had horror books. Timely/Atlas comics (Who became Marvel) and National Comics (Which became DC of course) and of course you had EC and a billion other publishers all vying for a part of the comic magazine pie. Then along comes a bunch of religious nuts, "concerned" parents, and politicians who thought comic books were utter trash and were corrupting the youth of America (sound familiar?) and it became this whole contentious issue that even went up before US congress. The US Government (who were probably more busy on Communist witch-hunts to worry about funny books, it was the 50's after all) said "Okay, govern yourselves or we'll do it." Thus the over-conservative Comic Book Authority code was put into place. The Code by todays standards (which is only carried by Archie and DC Comics) is a joke these days because the Code doesn't really have much swaying power, and concerned parents and religious nut jobs have more important demons to fight (like rap music, and violent video games) and their power isn't that great. Marvel back in 2000 pretty much told the Code to go eff themselves and that they could rate their own comics. DC still does it as a matter of having "family appropriate reading", but anything they'll publish whatever the hell they want. Fact is, the direct market has eliminated the need for comic book companies to thrive in a magazine rack market where mom's and dad's can look and see what little Junior is pulling off the rack. In the 1950's it killed just about everything but romance, western, adventure, science fiction and super-heroes. Horror was pretty much scrapped, EC Comics (owners of Tales from the Crypt) tanked, and everyone else shifted to men in long underwear because it was becoming popular again and it was the safest bet. DC Comics still churned out House of Secret and House of Mystery, but the stories were very much watered down to abide by the CAC rules. Then along comes the 70's, and the start of the direct market comic industry, and most important of all: Resurgence in popularity in horror films. The 1950's and early 60's brought about a boom in popular horror films: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, but by the end of the 60's most really scary horror movies vanished and all that was left was nothing but dreck and parodies. Anyone who's seen The Three Stoogest Meet Dracula (Or was it Frankenstein?) or Spooks Gone Wild (Which features a probably really embarrassed Bela Lugosi going up against the Bowery Boys) The 70's brought back the fight into horror films. Most popular were the ghost stories, stories about Satan possessing people, vampires, werewolves, and the dead coming to life. Marvel Comics then decided to dabble in horror comics, starting with Tomb of Dracula, Frankenstein and they branched off with other books like Son of Satan and Werewolf by Night. They would also start injecting horror inspired characters into their super-hero books, the Man-Wolf and Morbius appearing in the pages of Spider-Man is a great example. Of course with these horror books, they had to work around the guidelines of the CAC, which at that point was a little more lax, however not lax enough for some really brutal horror stories. So Marvel decided to print some magazines. Thus Dracula Lives, Tales of the Zombie, Haunt of Horror, Monsters Unleashed! and other horror mags started appearing. A lot of the material would feature reprints of stories that appeared in pre-CAC Timely and Atlas comics horror books, but also it would feature newly created (or recycled) characters as well. The art was stunning, the stories -- while some of the concepts lifted from popular movies like the Exorcist -- were entertaining, and they were written with an older audience in mind. Since they were published as magazines instead of comic books, they were also not subject to CAC rulings and so there was no censorship. But if you're looking for wall-to-wall gore, copious amounts of swearing, and bare breasts on every page you will be disappointed (If you want that sort of tripe, go read of the garbage Brian Pullido pulls out of his @$$ on a monthly basis and has the audacity of calling horror) These were written and drawn by some of the best in the industry at the time. You'll find grate bits by Chris Claremont, Steve Gerber and Roy Thomas. If you thought that Claremont could only write X-books, take a look at his work on Satana, great stuff. The horror magazines were short lived unfortunately, a lot of them didn't last more than 10 issues, Dracula Lives! being the longest running one, but even that soon faded out. All these characters got sucked into the regular Marvel universe where they were watered down and made more accessible to younger readers. Which was a kick in the pants I think for a lot of these characters. The worst of them all was Satanna who got the bum deal the whole time due to issues getting the artist to draw the work (which was a beaut) and then having her get killed off in Marvel Team-Up was a bit of a slap in the face to the character... OF course in the age old Marvel tradition, Satanna has been resurrected so I guess it's not quite so indignant... Even Son of Satan, who didn't get his own magazine treatment, was somewhat entertaining even though he was stuck in the super-hero dynamic with his stupid cape, stretch pants and pentagram birthmark.. Who the hell (pardon the pun) designed that look and said "THERE! THIS IS A MEAN SATAN GUY!" He looked like a really flamboyant wrestler really... But I digress... Steve Gerber was at least able to give him some dignity.... Anyway, I can talk about this for hours, but seriously do yourselves a favour, the entire run of Tomb of Dracula and Dracula Lives have been reprinted in Essential volumes (and I think a good chunk of the original series is now in a Marvel Omnibus edition also) get Essential Marvel Horror and Tales of the Zombie, you'll love them. Although fair warning, because the Essential books are targeted at an all-ages audience the nudity (and probably any swearing) has been edited out of the artwork. It's shame, but hey, you're reading it for the stories right... Right? A lot of these characters have been brought back in Marvel MAX titles, but I haven't brought myself to read them yet, but I don't think they'd have the same charm. A good horror comic is always printed in black and white.