Horror has indeed spread into the pages of the capes but before it got there, one must look at the history of horror comics and how they came to be so popular and what forces tried to stop them. Just like any great inventions and movements there was an opposing force critiquing or forcefully trying to stop it. With iconic superheroes such as Batman and Superman, no one could of imagined gore and violence appearing in their stories but as times went on, editors noticed how popular and more importantly how lucrative these comics were and took initiative to include them with superheroes.
In contemporary times, it’s very natural to pick up the latest issue from Marvel Comics or DC Comics and find some type of gore content in it. Whether it be an issue where a superhero gets his hands chopped off and the blood pours all throughout the panels or a monster devouring a super villain. Gore and violence are very common with today’s comics however during the 1950’s this was not the case. Writers and editors came under attack for their brutality portrayal of horror and for corrupting youth at that time when the Senate decided it was time for a change.
Change came in the face of political power and those who claimed to be experts on what it was doing to children. However horror comics wasn’t the only scary situation in the United States. One could argue that the fear of the Reds was a cause for parents and politicians to attack horror comics as a way to show force that they would not put up with material that corrupts youth and gives bad messages. Of course at that time, horror comics was a big booming business regardless of the scary images in the cover. According to The Horror! The Horror! by Jim Trombetta, a quarter of eighty million comics that were released each month, a quarter of them belonged to horror comics. This alone suggests the power and influence horror comics had on the market and on the youth so it’s no wonder that they were challenged and basically vaporized from existence.
The success of horror comics came before pre-tv so it’s obvious that many youth would spend their time reading fantasized stories instead of sitting in front of the tube. One reason why horror comics were in the hand of every youth was because, according to Trombetta, “from about 1950 to 1955, they were so popular that fifty to one hundred horror titles were released monthly” (31). When something as big as horror comics gets in the hands of children, someone is bound to notice and take action.
In comes the senate hearing of 1954, which were held to counter-attack the growing market of horror comics and the horrible acts it was doing on the children. With writers and editors not wanting to come forward to defend their work and with the few who did, the senate quickly struck down any argument that these artists could make. Any argument the writer or editor did, was turned when the senators picked up a cover of any horror comic and questioned if it was for the best interest of the children. Being a massacre, the senate voted to create the Comic Code Authority in order to combat this growing violence and regulate it. However, horror comics did not stop there. Yeah, they took a day off but after decades when the comics code got less disciplined, horror began to rise but this time appearing in very familiar covers that people have grown accustomed to. Horror had made its way to the panels of superheroes and their universes. Horror comics came at a time when the world was fascinated with the zombie genre as a lot of films and television were adapting it.
Despite the fact that zombie are purely fiction, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, in order to understand zombies and why society is so obsessed with them, one must go back in history and learn from where they came from. Like most oppressed nations and people, zombies came from the ashes of Voodooism right when Haiti was trying to seek independence from governed control.
In order for a government to enter another nation and save them from themselves or another power, they must first make their people believe that this poor nation needs assistance. “What better way to justify the ‘civilizing’ presence of Marines in Haiti than to project the phantasm of barbarism” (13) which is exactly what the United States had to do in order to send in the troops to Haiti. The country is the subject of many wars and of great mystery. Many Americans objected to the use of Voodoo and disliked the idea of a nation governed entirely by black people. In one instance, in Better off Dead, the former French Foreign Minister Charles Talleyrand wrote to then Secretary of State James Madison “The existence of a Negro people in arms, occupying a country it has soiled by the most criminal acts, is a horrible spectacle for all white nation…. There are no reason to grant support to these brigands who have declared themselves enemies of all government” (12) which ironically, Black Panther, came to mind as he plays a vital role in Marvel Zombies. Not only is he a main character but also eventually turns into a zombie. In a way, the zombie Black Panther completely counter-attacks Talleyrand’s ignorant statement by implying that his nightmare of blacks soiling their country, is completely incompetent and misguided.
Christie, Deborah, Lauro and Sarah Juliet’ Better off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie As Post-Human, clearly supports that use of voodoo by the Haitians during their revolution and how it eventually led to Americans seeking out the truth of an unknown creature referred to the “zombie”. It wasn’t until William Seabrook went to Haiti and observed the Haitian’s folkloric rituals about the “zombie”. As he described it in, Better off Dead, “the zombie , they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life-it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive” and as he observed these zombies, he often described them as the normal zombie people get to watch in films and t.v. shows; the slow walking zombies who lack any sign of life. With Seabrooks’ observations, zombies eventually became a conduct for racism as more and more Americans became obsessed with this fascinating creature, they would eventually make films and plays and portray African-American as zombies.
The rest of this section will be based on Marvel Zombies and DC Comics “Blackest Night” I haven’t read them both entirely yet so that’s the reason why you don’t see them.