Horror comics are comic books, graphic novels, black-and-white comics magazines, and manga focusing on horror fiction. In the US market, horror comic books reached a peak in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, when concern over content and the imposition of the self-censorship Comics Code Authority contributed to the demise of many titles and the toning down of others. Black-and-white horror-comics magazines, which did not fall under the Code, flourished from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s from a variety of publishers. Mainstream American color comic books experienced a horror resurgence in the 1970s, following a loosening of the Code. While the genre has had greater and lesser periods of popularity, it occupies a firm niche in comics as of the 2010s.
Precursors to horror comics include detective and crime comics that incorporated horror motifs into their graphics, and early superhero stories that sometimes included the likes of ghouls and vampires. Individual horror stories appeared as early as 1940. The first dedicated horror comic books appear to be Gilberton Publications' Classic Comics #13 (August 1943), with its full-length adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Avon Publications' anthology Eerie #1 (January 1947), the first horror comic with original content. The first horror-comics series is the anthology Adventures into the Unknown, premiering in 1948 from American Comics Group, initially under the imprint B&I Publishing.
Precursors The horror tradition in sequential-art narrative traces back to at least the 12th-century Heian period Japanese scroll "Gaki Zoshi", or the scroll of hungry ghosts (紙本著色餓鬼草紙). .. .Bissette, Stephen R., and Rupert Bottenberg, "Description: Stephen R. Bissette's Journeys into Fear", FantasiaFest.com, July 16–17, 2005. WebCitation archive. and the 16th-century Mixtec codices.
In the early 20th-century, pulp magazines developed the horror subgenre "weird menace", which featured sadistic villains and graphic scenes of torture and brutality. The first such title, Popular Publications' Dime Mystery, began as a straight crime fiction magazine but evolved by 1933 under the influence of Grand Guignol theater. Other publishers eventually joined in, though Popular dominated the field with Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, and Terror Tales. While most weird-menace stories were resolved with rational explanations, some involved the supernatural.
After the fledgling medium of comic books became established by the late 1930s, horror-fiction elements began appearing in superhero stories, with vampires, misshapen creatures, mad scientists and other tropes that bore the influence of the Universal horror films of the 1930s and other sources.Vassallo, Michael J. "The History of Atlas Horror/Fantasy" in Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Strange Tales Vol. 1 (Marvel Publishing: New York City, New York, 2007), , p. vi
In 1935, National Periodicals published the first story of Doctor Occult by Jerry Siegel (script) and Joe Shuster (Art) in New Fun Comics # 6, where he confronts Vampire Master. In Detective Comics # 31–32, Batman fights a vampire.
By the mid-1940s, some detective and crime comics had incorporated horror motifs such as spiders and eyeballs into their graphics, and occasionally featured stories adapted from the literary horror tales of Edgar Allan Poe or other writers, or stories from the pulps and radio programs., reprinted as The single-issue Harvey Comics anthologies Front Page Comic Book (1945), bearing a cover with a knife-wielding, skeletal ghoul,Front Page Comic Book at the Grand Comics Database and Strange Story (July 1946),Strange Story at the Grand Comics Database introduced writer-artist Bob Powell's character the Man in Black, an early comic-book example of the type of omniscient-observer host used in such contemporary supernatural and suspense radio dramas as Inner Sanctum, Suspense, and The Whistler.
As cultural historian David Hajdu notes, comic-book horror:
Early American scene
Issue #7 (December 1940) of publisher Prize Comics' flagship title, Prize Comics, introduced writer-artist Dick Briefer's eight-page feature "New Adventures of Frankenstein", an updated version of novelist Mary Shelley's much-adapted Frankenstein monster.Prize Comics #7 (December 1940) at the Grand Comics Database Called "America's first ongoing comic book series to fall squarely within the horror genre" by historian Don Markstein,Frankenstein (1940) at Don Markstein's Toonopedia and "[t]he first real horror series" by horror-comics historian Lawrence Watt-Evans,Watt-Evans, Alter Ego, p. 5: "...there were no horror comics as such in the earliest days. The first real horror series seems to have been the 'Frankenstein' series by Dick Briefer, in Prize Comics ... [which was] a superhero title, featuring the Black Owl, the Green Lama, and the like, except for this one aberration". the feature ran through Prize Comics #52 (April 1945)Indexers Lou Mougin/Tony R. Rose, Prize Comics #52 (April 1945) at the Grand Comics Database before becoming a humor series and then being revived in horrific form in the series Frankenstein #18-33 (March 1952 - November 1954).
Gilberton Publications' 60-page Classic Comics #12 (June 1943) adapted Washington Irving's short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as a backup feature to Irving's "Rip Van Winkle"Watt-Evans, Alter Ego, p. 7 in a package titled Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman.Cover, Classic Comics #12 at the Grand Comics Database The next issue, Classic Comics #13 (August 1943), adapted Robert Louis Stevenson's horror novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as the full-length story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, making it the earliest known dedicated horror comic book.Overstreet, Robert M., ed. The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (37th edition: Gemstone Publishing / House of Collectibles : Timonium, Maryland / New York City, New York, 2007), , p. 499. Notation at Classic Comics #13: "(1st horror comic?)"
Historian Ron Goulart, making no mention of those earlier literary adaptations, identifies Avon Publications' Eerie #1, dated January 1947Eerie (Avon, 1947 Series) at the Grand Comics Database. Eerie Comics is the title as per its cover logo; per this source, its title in its postal indicia copyright information is simply Eerie. Its January 1947 date appears in the indicia though not on its cover, and sold in late 1946, as "the first out-and-out horror comic book". Its cover featured a red-eyed, pointy-eared fiend threatening a rope-bound, beautiful young woman in a scanty red evening gown, set amid a moonlit ruin. The anthology offered six primarily occult stories involving the likes of a ghost and a zombie. While all but one writer are unknown — Edward Bellin, who teamed with young artist Joe Kubert on the nine-page "The Man-Eating Lizards" — the artists include George Roussos and Fred Kida. After this first issue, the title went dormant, but reappeared in 1951 as Eerie, beginning with a new #1 and running 17 issues (1951 - September 1954).Eerie (Avon, 1951 Series) at the Grand Comics Database
Goulart identifies the long-running Adventures into the Unknown (Fall 1948 - August 1967), from American Comics Group, initially under the imprint B&I Publishing,Adventures Into the Unknown (American Comics Group, 1948 Series) at the Grand Comics Database as "the first continuing-series horror comic". The first two issues, which included art by Fred Guardineer and others, featured horror stories of ghosts, werewolves, haunted houses, killer puppets and other supernatural beings and locales. The premiere included a seven-page, abridged adaptation of Horace Walpole's seminal gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, by an unknown writer and artist Al Ulmer.
Following the postwar crime comics vogue spearheaded by publisher Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay, which by 1948 was selling over a million copies a month,Benton, Mike. Crime Comics: The Illustrated History (Taylor Publishing Company : Dallas, Texas, 1993) pp. 19-21 came romance comics, which by 1949 outsold all other genres,"Love on a Dime", Time, August 22, 1949, p. 41 and horror comics. The same month in which Adventures into the Unknown premiered, the comic-book company EC, which would become the most prominent horror-comics publisher of the 1950s, published its first horror story, "Zombie Terror", by the then relatively unknown writer and artist Johnny Craig, in the superhero comic Moon Girl #5.Moon Girl #5 at the Grand Comics DatabaseWatt-Evans, Alter Ego, p. 8 Almost simultaneously, Trans-World Publications issued its one-and-only comic, the one-shot Mysterious Traveler Comics #1 (November 1948), based on the Mutual Broadcasting Network's radio show of that name and including amid its crime and science-fiction stories a reprint of the Edgar Allan Poe adaptation "The Tell Tale Heart", reprinted from Charlton Comics' Yellowjacket Comics #6.Mysterious Traveler Comics #1 at the Grand Comics Database Street and Smith also published two issues of "Ghost Breakers" in late 1948. (ibid GCDB)
The floodgates began to open the following year with the first horror comic from the 1950s' most prolific horror-comics publisher, Atlas Comics, the decade's forerunner of Marvel Comics. While horror had been an element in 1940s superhero stories from the original predecessor company, Timely Comics, through the war years, "when zombies, vampires, werewolves, and even pythonmen were to be found working for the Nazis and the Japanese", the publisher entered the horror arena full-tilt with Amazing Mysteries #32 (May 1949), continuing the numbering of the defunct superhero series Sub-Mariner Comics, followed by the superhero anthology Marvel Mystery Comics becoming the horror series Marvel Tales with #93 (August 1949) and the final two issues of Captain America Comics becoming the mostly horror-fiction Captain America's Weird Tales #74-75 (October 1949 & February 1950) — the latter of which did not contain Captain America at all.Captain America Comics at the Grand Comics DatabaseWatt-Evans, Alter Ego, p. 9 Harvey Comics followed suit with its costumed-crimefighter comic Black Cat by reformatting it as the horror comic Black Cat Mystery with issue #30 (August 1951).Black Cat (Harvey, Home Comics, Inc. imprint, 1946 Series) at the Grand Comics Database. This title would continue through #53 (December 1954), become a Western for three issues, return with #57 (March 1956), then become the supernatural Black Cat Mystic #58-62 (September 1956 - March 1958)
EC Comics and the horror boom
Horror comics briefly flourished from this point until the industry's self-imposed censorship board, the Comics Code Authority, was instituted in late 1954. The most influential and enduring horror-comics anthologies of this period, beginning 1950, were the 91 issues of EC Comics' three series: The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror and The Crypt of Terror, renamed Tales from the Crypt.