Saturday, January 10, 2009

The Horror Of It All

Although they were dying as the result of censorship by the time I came into the world, I’ve always had a soft spot for the old horror comics, which flourished in the 1950s. Often cheesy, they reveled in surprising graphic (which is what did them in) stories of revenge, monsters and comeuppance. The best known were EC Comic’s titles such as Tales from the Crypt, but there were many others. In the wake of public attacks on their lurid violence and supposed immorality (although the vast majority were morality tales, with greed and lust leading to horrible fates), they were supplanted almost completely by superheroes in the comics of the 1950s.

If you wish to check out these four-color nasties for yourself, an excellent blog titled The Horror Of It All is posting a story a day from the golden age of horror comics. Give it a look, I think you’ll be delighted. Thanks to Mark Justice for clueing me in on this site.

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