Horror comics made a huge impact on the comic book culture in the 1950s until Congress and religious shop owners began to believe these mags were contributing to the delinquency of minors. Horror went out of the limelight for many years until Marvel and DC began to explore the subgenre once again. There are benefits to having horror in comics outside of simple sales.
Tales From the Crypt
When discussing horror comics, the first area we need to look at is the benefit for the reader. The essence of horror is to take a common fear and exploit it. Death, the most common fear, has been exploited in horror comics since their inception. We worry about what will happen to us when we die and we worry about painful deaths. These issues are explored en masse in the printed pages of scary comic books.
By reading stories which exploit our fears, we are able to collectively face them. If you pick up an old copy of EC, chances are going to be good that you will come across a fear you either deal with on a daily basis or one stuck in your subconscious. The brain is able to bring these fears up to the surface and deal with them which can help you overcome at least some of your fears eventually.
Say you are afraid of rats, for example, but you try to keep this fear surprised as much as possible. A short story horror comic on the H.P. Lovecraft tale “The Rats in the Walls” might bring these fears to light in your mind. When you realize the horrors facing the Last de La Poer in the story are simply made for the story, you might realize how silly your fear of rats has become over the years.
Horror comics are often black and white so comic book publishers do not have to hire an inker for the title and can save a little money on ink when printing each copy. Of course, the publishers still charge the same cover price as the full-color titles in their lineups, so a few cents might be saved per issue. If a publisher is able to keep decent profits coming in, it stays strong and is able to stay around for many years to come.
Comic book publishers can push the envelope further in horror comics than in superhero titles. When Michonne attacked The Governor in The Walking Dead, most readers saw graphic displays of violence they had never seen in comics. Since TWD is a horror comic by nature, it is more fitting to see a stressed woman torture the man who raped her than it would be to see Peter Parker torture one of his adversaries.
By pushing the envelope in horror comics, publishers can gauge what level of violence they can place in other titles. In the early to mid-1970s when Marvel began to produce titles such as Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf By Night, the publisher filled the pages with more graphic content than seen in The Incredible Hulk or Daredevil. The other superhero titles began to tilt slightly up in violent content as readers became accustomed to seeing death in the horror titles. I am a firm believer that we would have never seen Electra graphically killed in Daredevil had the envelope not been pushed by the horror comics.
Horror comics benefit the reader, the publishers, and the market as well. They have helped us to deal with our fears, helped publishers keep some costs down, and allowed publishers to make their titles more realistic over the years. Celebrate horror comics as they are an important part of the base which the comic book industry was built upon.
