This weekend’s auction features the first issue of both Creepy and Eerie, the vanguard of the black and white comic magazine revolution! These are super cool pieces of comic history, but ones that newer fans might not be familiar with. Let your pals at Back to the Past explain why magazines like this came about and how they helped shape comics as we know them today.
The Comics Code Kills Horror Comics
While “superheroes” and “comic books” go hand in hand these days, demand for the genre actually dried up after World War II. Existing genres like romance, humor, true crime, and westerns rose in prominence to fill the void. But the real “next big thing” didn’t come until 1950, launched by EC Comics. That year, the company launched three new titles: Tales From The Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear. Horror, gruesome and marketed towards an older audience than superheroes, was the new craze in comics.
There was, of course, a moral panic over them. It came to a head in 1954 with the publication of Dr. Fredric Wertham’s The Seduction of the Innocent. The book inspired hearings in the U.S. Senate and that in turn inspired the industry to create the Comics Code Authority (CCA). Sponsored by the owners of major publishers, the CCA instituted harsh content restrictions on companies that submitted. In turn, many distributors refused to carry comics that didn’t bear the organization’s approval seal. Those restrictions essentially drove EC Comics out of business by forcing them to cancel their most popular titles.
Warren Publications Brings Horror Back
Adult oriented horror comics, or adult oriented comics in general, were nearly impossible to produce under the Comics Code Authority. Comics were once again solely kid friendly. In 1964, Warren Publishing found a way to remedy that. Warren had already made a name for itself in the burgeoning fan community for Famous Monsters of Filmland, a mag dedicated to horror and sci-fi cinema. They knew that there was an audience for harder-hitting horror content. They also knew that it couldn’t be published as a comic book. Their solution? Publish magazines.
Larger and more expensive than a standard comic book, not to mention printed in black and white, Warren’s first comic magazine was Creepy. It was followed in 1965 by a sister magazine, Eerie. The stories followed the classic EC Comics format, with a wisecracking horror host introducing explicit tales of terror. Published on an alternating bi-monthly basis, the magazines were a hit and would run into the 1980s.
The Big Two Follow Suit
The wider comics industry noticed Warren’s success. In the late 60s, DC Comics revived its horror titles with horror hosts like Cain, Abel, The Three Witches, and Destiny. In 1971, the comics code relaxed its restrictions on the depiction of monsters with a “literary basis” . This led to a renaissance of “monster characters” at Marvel with the launch of Morbius The Living Vampire, Werewolf By Night, Ghost Rider, Son of Satan, and Dracula himself.
In fact, Marvel took things a step further by copying the Warren Publishing format wholesale. Under their Curtis Magazines imprint Marvel put out a line of CCA-free black-and-white comics magazines. The line launched in 1971 with Savage Tales, a potpourri of barbarian, horror, crime, and adventure tales. It was followed up by The Savage Sword of Conan (a spin-off starring Conan The Barbarian in stories too extreme for his regular series), The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (an homage to the violent Hong Kong movies being imported into grindhouse cinemas), and Vampire Tales (starring Dracula, Blade, Morbius, and more in tales too adult for spinner racks).
Black and White Comics Magazines Changed The Game
The black and white comic magazines of the 60s and 70s exposed a new generation to adult-oriented comic book storytelling. Moreover, they showed that comics could be made outside the CCA’s limitation and still be successful. Those revelations helped to fuel the indie comics market of the 1980s. Those comics, in turn, helped to fuel the creation of DC’s Vertigo line in the late 80s and the founding of Image Comics in 1994. Creepy Magazine is an early domino in shaping the comics industry as we know it today.
If you’ve got a collection of these black and white pioneers that you’re ready to sell, drop Back to the Past a line! We specialize in making sure that your collection ends up in the hands of fellow fans and that you get the best return on your investment. And if you’re still in the “growing” phase of collecting, follow us on social media @b2pcollect to keep track of all the cool collections coming through our doors.