Horror comics

 ( Comics Genres ) 

In response to public pressure and bad press, an industry trade group, the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers (ACMP) was formed with the intent of prodding the industry to police itself. The Association proved ineffective as few publishers joined and those who did exercised little restraint over the content of their titles.

Wertham alleged comics stimulated deviant sexual behavior. He noted female breasts in comics protruded in a provocative way and special attention was lavished upon the female genital region. A cover by Matt Baker from Phantom Lady was reprinted in the book with the caption, "Sexual stimulation by combining 'headlights' with the Sadomasochism dream of tying up a woman". Boys interviewed by Wertham said they used comic book images for masturbation purposes, and one young comics reader confessed he wanted to be a sex maniac. Wertham contended comics promoted homosexuality by pointing to the Batman–Robin relationship and calling it a homosexual wish dream of two men living together. He observed that Robin was often pictured standing with his legs spread and the genital region evident.

Most alarmingly, Wertham contended that comic books fostered deceitfulness in children, who might read funny animal comics in front of their parents but then turn to horror comics the moment their parents left the room. Wertham warned of suspicious stores and their clandestine back rooms where second hand comics of the worst sort were peddled to children. The language used evoked images of children prowling about gambling dens and whorehouses, and anxious parents felt helpless in the face of such a powerful force as the comics industry. Excerpts from the book were published in Ladies' Home Journal and Reader's Digest, lending respectability and credibility to Wertham's arguments.

A 14-page portfolio of panels and covers from across the entire comic book industry displayed murder, torture and sexual titillation for the reader's consideration. The most widely discussed art was that from "Foul Play", a horror story from EC about a dishonest baseball player whose head and intestines are used by his teammates in a game. Seduction of the Innocent sparked a firestorm of controversy and created alarm in parents, teachers and others interested in the welfare of children; the concerned were galvanized into campaigning for censorship.

The low-rent Warren imitator Eerie Publications also jumped into the black-and-white horror magazine business, mixing new material with reprints from pre-Comics Code horror comics, most notably in its flagship title Weird (1966–1981), as well as the magazines Tales of Voodoo (1968–1974), Horror Tales (1969–1979), Tales from the Tomb (1969–1975), and Terror Tales (1969–1979). Stanley Publications also published a line of black-and-white horror magazines from 1966 to 1971, including the titles Shock and Chilling Tales of Horror.

In 1971, the Comics Code Authority relaxed some of its longstanding rules regarding horror comics, which opened the door to more possibilities in the genre:

Following this, Marvel returned to publishing true horror by first introducing a scientifically created, vampire-like character, Morbius, Comic Book Legends Revealed #216 , Comic Book Resources followed by the introduction of Dracula in Tomb of Dracula. This opened the floodgates for more horror titles, such as the anthology Supernatural Thrillers, Werewolf by Night, and two series in which Satan or a Satan-like lord of Hell figured, Ghost Rider and the feature "Daimon Hellstrom." In addition, following Warren Publishing's longtime lead, Marvel's parent company in 1971 began a black-and-white magazine imprint, which published a number of horror titles, including Dracula Lives!, Monsters Unleashed, Vampire Tales, Tales of the Zombie, Haunt of Horror, and Masters of Terror. Additionally, Skywald Publications offered the black-and-white horror-comics magazines Nightmare, Psycho, and Scream.

DC during this time continued to publish its existing supernatural fiction and added new horror series such as Ghosts, The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love (later titled Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion), Secrets of Haunted House, Secrets of Sinister House, Swamp Thing, Weird Mystery Tales, Weird War Tales, and Tales of Ghost Castle. Charlton continued in this vein as well, with Ghostly Haunts, Haunted, Midnight Tales, Haunted Love, and Scary Tales.

Underground cartoonists, many of them strongly influenced by 1950s EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt,Sabin, Roger (1996). "Going underground". Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History Of Comic Art. London, United Kingdom: Phaidon Press. pp. 92; 94–95; 103–107; 110; 111; 116; 119; 124–126; 128. . also tried their hands at horror. Titles like Skull (Rip Off Press/Last Gasp, 1970–1972), Bogeyman (Company & Sons/San Francisco Comic Book Company, 1969), Fantagor (Richard Corben, 1970), Insect Fear (Print Mint, 1970), Up From The Deep (Rip Off Press, 1971), Death Rattle (Kitchen Sink Press, 1972), Gory Stories (Shroud, 1972), Deviant Slice (Print Mint, 1972) and Two-Fisted Zombies (Last Gasp, 1973) appeared in the early 1970s.

By the mid-1970s, the horror comics boomlet slowed and various titles were cancelled. Only a few of the DC titles persevered by the end of the decade, the long-running Gold Key mystery comic series ceased during the early 1980s, and some predominantly-reprint Charlton series managed to survive to the mid-1980s. DC's traditional titles sputtered out during the early 1980s, and its transformed anthology "Elvira's House of Mystery" was the final code-approved traditional anthology title to be produced, lasting only a dozen issues around 1987. As these and Warren publications disappeared, new titles from the 1980s onward would all be in new formats (i.e. glossy paper, not code-approved) or sporadically produced by small independent companies.

In 1982, Pacific Comics produced two series that, while admittedly inspired by the EC Comics of the 1950s, foresaw the form that horror comics would take in the coming decades. Printed in color on high-quality paper stock despite a higher cover price, the series Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds were short-lived and hard-pressed to keep to a regular production schedule, but offered some of the most explicitly brutal and sexual stories yet to be widely distributed in a mainstream ("non-underground") format. Both series eventually moved to Eclipse Comics, which also produced similar titles such as The Twisted Tales of Bruce Jones and Alien Encounters (which they inherited from Fantaco). Later horror titles from DC's Vertigo line had more in common with these Pacific/Eclipse efforts, and more success, than DC's sporadic efforts to revive or maintain the traditional horror comic title (e.g. Elvira's House of Mystery). Wasteland (DC Comics) was a pre-vertigo, non-Code horror series from DC in the late 1980s.

In 1982, DC Comics revived the Swamp Thing series, attempting to capitalize on the summer 1982 release of the Wes Craven film of the same name. In 1984, Briton Alan Moore took over the writing chores on the title, and when Karen Berger became editor, she gave Moore free rein to revamp the title and the character as he saw fit. Moore reconfigured Swamp Thing's origin to make him a true monster as opposed to a human transformed into a monster. Moore's (and artists Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben's) Swamp Thing was a critical and commercial success, and in 1988 spun off the ongoing series Hellblazer, starring occult detective John Constantine.

In 1993, DC introduced its mature-readers Vertigo line, which folded in a number of popular horror titles, including Hellblazer and Swamp Thing. One of Vertigo's early successes was Neil Gaiman's Sandman, which reworked a number of DC's old horror characters and added fantasy to the mix. A number of other horror titles carried on at Vertigo, like Deadman, House of Mystery and Haunted Tank, or were given a horror spin or an update like Kid Eternity and Jonah Hex.

In the mid-1990s Harris Publications also revived Vampirella, and Marvel, after mostly taking the 1980s off, published its "Midnight Sons" line of horror comics that included such series as a revived Ghost Rider, Nightstalkers, and Midnight Sons Unlimited.

At Image Comics, Robert Kirkman has created The Walking Dead. Steve Niles predominantly writes horror comics, and his 30 Days of Night has spawned a range of mini-series released by IDW Publishing. STEVE NILES WEEK, Day 3: The IDW Books, Comic Book Resources, October 30, 2003 At Dark Horse, Mike Mignola has been working on Hellboy, and has created a large fictional universe with spin-off titles like BPRD and Lobster Johnson. Mignola on Hellboy's Extended Universe, Comic Book Resources (March 3, 2008).

There had been also superhero horror comics like with Spawn, Venom, and Ghost Rider.

In the 2000s and 2010s, Marvel produced Blade and the Marvel Zombies franchise. Marvel's adult imprint MAX, introduced in 2001, has also provided a venue for reinterpretations of Marvel horror characters where more violence can be used, leading to the Dead of Night miniseries based on Devil-Slayer,Richards, Dave WW Philly: Devil-Slayer Returns in "Dead of Night", Comic Book Resources, May 31, 2008 Warren Simons & Brian Keene On Max's Devil-Slayer, Newsarama, June 3, 2008 Werewolf by Night Swierczynski on "Werewolf By Night", Comic Book Resources, December 19, 2008 and Man-Thing, Aguirre-Sacasa talks "Dead of Night featuring Man-Thing", Comic Book Resources, February 13, 2008 as well as a reworking of Zombie and . Shout at the Devil: Irvine talks "Son of Satan", Comic Book Resources, June 2, 2006 WW Philadelphia - Axel Alonso on The Return of Hellstorm , Newsarama, June 2, 2006 Richard Corben has also been writing Haunt of Horror, a number of series based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Corben and Lovecraft at Marvel in June , Newsarama, March 20, 2008

In the early 1970s there were a couple of horror comics — IPC Magazines's Shiver and Shake and Monster Fun — but these were also humour titles pitched at younger children. It was only during the boom in British comics in the late 1970s and early 1980s that there were horror comics pitched at older boys and girls —IPC/Fleetway's Scream! and Misty, respectively. Whether it was because of fears over the content, or the difficult financial times in the mid-1980s, Scream! stopped publishing in 1985, with only two of its stories being merged with the Eagle.Jordan, Darren. "Scream! the Eighties British Horror comic mystery...", Comic Book Review (April 17, 2008). Lord Horror also was published.

After the comic industry bust in the mid-1990s, the only mainstream venue was 2000 AD, which featured stories like Chiaroscuro and Cradlegrave, as well as those drawing on the Cthulhu Mythos, like Necronauts and Caballistics, Inc..

The British small press also publishes horror comics, like the comics anthology Something Wicked.

In 2008, the London Horror Comic launched, becoming the first full-colour UK horror comic to be shipped worldwide through Diamond Comic Distributors.Editor, The. "British Horror Invasion," Comic Book Bin (June 22, 2008).

Since 2018 Annexia has been publishing one-shots, featuring brand new adventures of Ulula, Jakula, Sukia and Zora, among others, and in 2020 Editoriale Cosmo has reprinted some of the original stories in their "Classics of Italian Erotica" series.

In the late 1980s, the genre became again popular, spearheaded by the Italian horror comic series Dylan Dog, created by veteran comic-writer Tiziano Sclavi, visually defined by cover artist Claudio Villa and published by Sergio Bonelli. It has achieved great success, both in its homeland and abroad, with translations in the US (by Dark Horse Comics, with brand new covers by Mike Mignola), Germany, Spain, Serbia, Croatia, Denmark, Poland, Turkey and India. In the early 1990s, other publishers tried to emulate the success of Dylan Dog. Among them was ACME, which published two monthly horror anthologies titled Splatter and Mostri, which featured both original stories by promising young Italian artists (such as Bruno Brindisi, Roberto De Angelis and Luigi Siniscalchi, who later went to work for Bonelli, some of them even on Dylan Dog) and translated material. A selection of stories from the Splatter anthology has been collected and reprinted in two volumes, published in 2017 and 2018 by Editoriale Cosmo.

Among the most recent and noteworthy original horror comics series are The Cannibal Family, created in 2013 by writer Stefano Fantelli and artist Stefano Piccioni and published by Edizioni Inkiostro, and the anthology Mostri, published since 2015 by Bugs Comics, featuring work by young artists and later also established ones, such as Elena Casagrande.

According to manga author and critic Yoshihiro Yonezawa, the first boom of horror manga with the success of the Kaiki Shōsetsu Zenshū' and the success of the British horror films from Hammer Films which began circulating in Japan and gaining popularity. In 1958, the first magazine devoted exclusively to horror and mystery was Kaidan which appeared at Kashi-hon (lending libraries), which had 101 issues published by Tsubame until 1968. A sister publication to it, titled Ōru kaidan also began and lasted 84 volumes. Among the authors to these stories were Shinichi Koga, Hama Shinji, Sanpei Shirato, Goseki Kojima, Kazuo Umezu and Miki Ibara. Due to the circulation of these magazines, a growing interest in the supernatural developed, inspired by traditional Japanese ghost stories ( kaidan) such as Yotsuya Kaidan as well as classical Japanese woodcut prints with themes of Japanese ghosts. The stories within these publications fall into two stories set in the Tokugawa era and those set in the a Tokyo filled with skyscrapers, amidst murders and eerire demonic presences. These stories began circulating with themes of vengesful spirits or ghosts, storied linked to tragic karmic fate, and both original and retelling of ancient ghost stories. Stories from around the world began influencing the stories, with narratives being set in the United States and France, as well the appearing of other horrific-traits such as bats, lizard-men, Frankenstein's monster-like creatures. American writers such as H.P. Lovecraft was repedeatly paid homage to by Japanese manga authors.

Following the birth and the weekly magazines, and a new style known as both kyōfu (恐怖) and kowai (怖い) manga (terror and scary respectively) began appearing that attracted a younger audience than Kaidan (怪談) and Oru kaidan (オール怪談) which appealed to teenagers. These included long series such as Hakaba Kitarō by Shigeru Mizuki where characters from Japanese folklore coexist with the themes from teenage manga from the period. The popularity of these stories led to similarly styled anime series Humanoid Monster Bem (1968). Throughou the 1960s and 1970s, different publishers continued horror titles in mainstream magazines, without devoting specific publication to them, with titles like Devilman (1972). Smaller publishers released Hibari Hit series allowed their authors to complete freedom, in which Hideshi Hino got his start. The influence of these smaller published was felt in late 1980s published magazines such as Halloween published from 1986-1995, Suspiria (1987-2012), and the 1990s with Horror M. As it had in the 1960s and 1970s, the genre returned in magazines aimed at women with young women, with some authors such as Hino and Jiro returning along with newcomers like Narumi Kakinouchi and Kanako Inuki.

In the 21st century, series based around zombies and the undead appeared with titles like Highschool of the Dead and Junji Itos Gyo.

Among the sub-genres of comics is the guro, meaning grotesque, bizarre, horrific. Horror manga sometimes dedicated an entire page or two to a guro scene, as unlike films which can have music to play to enhance a narrative, horror manga often had these pages to shock the reader at the exact moment of turning a page. Among the major ero-guro (erotic grotesque) manga creators was Suehiro Maruo, described by Thierry Groensteen as "the De Sade of contemporary manga."

Horror comics have also been sources for horror films, such as 30 Days of Night, Hellboy and Blade, and, from horror manga, such films as Uzumaki (2000), Z ~Zed~ (2014) and two 1980s movies directed by comics creator Hideshi Hino adapted from his manga Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood and Guinea Pig: Mermaid in a Manhole. Robert Kirkman's comic-book series The Walking Dead was adapted in 2010 into an ongoing TV series on the AMC cable network.

Some horror films and television programs have had comic-book sequels, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, as well as or interstitial stories, such as and , respectively.

EC Comics utilized the conceit of a character who "hosted" the book, often starring in a framing sequence at the beginning of each issue. The most notorious EC hosts were the "GhouLunatics": The Crypt Keeper, The Old Witch, and The Vault-Keeper. In the 1960s, Warren came up with the hosts Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie, and DC followed suit with their hosts Cain and Abel (as well as such minor hosts as Eve, Destiny, Lucien, and the Mad Mod Witch). Charlton had a large cast of hosts for their horror/suspense titles. Marvel Comics for the most part did not, though the publisher briefly used the characters of Digger and Headstone P. Gravely.

The following is a list of hosts from various horror comics titles from over the years.

• Lovecraftian horror comics
• Racism in horror films
• Vampire comics
• Weird West comics
• Werewolf comics
• Zombie comics

• Martin Barker (1992). 9780878055944, University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9780878055944
• Mike Benton (1992). 9780878337347, Taylor Publishing. ISBN 9780878337347
• (2025). 9781611720181, Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 9781611720181
• Ron Goulart (1986). 9780809250455, Contemporary Books : Chicago, Illinois. ISBN 9780809250455
• David Hajdu (2025). 9780374187675, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374187675

• Beaty, Bart. Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture. University Press of Mississippi, 2005. .
• Juvenile Delinquency (Comic Books) hearings before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee To Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in the U.S., Eighty-Third Congress, second session, on April 21, 22, June 4, 1954. (OCLC Worldcat link to )
• Nyberg, Ami Kiste. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code, University Press of Mississippi, 1998. .

• Sparrow, A. E. "Top 10 Horror/Thriller Manga", IGN.com, October 30, 2007. WebCitation archive.
• 1954 Senate Interim Report: Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency.
• 1954 Senate Subcommittee Transcripts