The comics code authority, formed in 1954, did substantial damage to horror in comics. The criteria for all things horrific was basically banned as can be seen from this set of guidelines from the original version of the code:
- No comic magazine shall use the words “horror” or “terror” in its title.
- All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.
- All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
- Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
- Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.
A lot of these rules were specifically aimed at the publications of EC Comics, which were dominated by titles like Tales From The Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear and Shock SuspenStories.
The code essentially put EC Comics out of business with only a few titles such as Mad surviving the purge. For years, horror comics just did not exist in the United States or only existed in underground publications. It was so bad that the code even rejected stories written by Marv Wolfman because his name could be confused with lycanthropy!
During the 1950s and Early 1960s the only monsters you would find in comics would be gaints, aliens and atomic mutations with names like Oog, Rro, Shagg, Grogg and Groot (yes, the original Groot was a tree monster later adapted into the heroic character we know today).
This all changed in the 1960s when Warren Publications circumvented the Comics Code by publishing their horror comics as black and white magazines. These were larger in format than standard comics and printed on different paper without color so they did not fall under the jurisdiction of the code. The first of these was Monster World.
This originally started as a publication much like their own Famous Monsters of Filmland but began to include original comic stories about the monsters featured in the issues. With that success, Warren launched Eerie and Creepy as new showcases for illustrated horror in 1964.
Their success created imitators such as the much, much more lurid and cheaply produced magazine from Eerie Publications (not to be confused with Warren’s own Eerie Magazine). These were often spiced up reprints of Pre-Code horror tales redrawn with more blood and gore. Their covers were especially, often ludicrously, blood-spattered.
Not one to buck a trend, Marvel Comics got into the horror magazine craze as well with black and white magazine comics like Vampire Tales, Tales of the Zombie and Dracula Lives!
Marvel was also beginning to buck the code. They published a Spider-Man story about drugs in 1971, which was NOT approved by the Comics Code Authority due to a specific prohibition against any mention of drugs or drug use in comics. Something needed to change and thus, the code was amended to allow sometimes sympathetic portrayals of criminals, drugs when used in a cautionary fashion and “vampires, ghouls and werewolves… when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high calibre literary works written by Edgar Allan Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle and other respected authors whose works are read in schools around the world”
This lead to Marvel publishing several mainstream comics that were not or could not be approved by the code previously such as Tomb of Dracula, The Monster of Frankenstein and Werewolf By Night.
Zombies were still right out under the new rules, which is why Tales of the Zombie would remain a black and white magazine only series. However, the floodgates had been opened and monsters were back in a big way. Dracula became such an integrated part of the Marvel Universe that he fought everyone from Spider-Man and Doctor Strange to the Silver Surfer and the X-Men! Recently (well from 2010 to 2011) a new X-Men series was even launched with a storyline called Curse of the Mutants where the vampires wanted to turn all of the remaining mutants into undead to bolster their ranks in a bid to take over the world!
The storyline even had long-term repercussions as X-Men member Jubilee was left as a vampire for several years after the end of the arc. Over at DC, they had a comic called I, Vampire which was picked up again as one of the launch titles for the failed New 52 relaunch in 2011. I quite enjoyed the comic but poor sales meant it was cancelled soon after.
So, though the Authority once tried to ban them, the sheer popularity of horror elements, supernatural monsters and my beloved undead managed to once more claw their way back from oblivion to rise and take their place as an important part of mainstream comics.
