Investigating the Seduction of the Innocent
The New Yorker has a revealing feature on the comic book witch hunts of the 1950s that brought an end to the classic horror comics style spearheaded by EC. Not only does it go in-depth in regards to some of the personalities involved, including EC publisher Bill Gaines and Fredric Wertham, who penned the notorious polemic against comics Seduction of the Innocent, it also shows that it was not such a clear case of zealots trampling on freedom of speech. If you’re a comic book and/or horror fan, it’s an important history lesson.
Read it here.
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[...] Boingboing posted a link to this brief but awesome slide-show of nasty vintage horror comic book covers. The one with the severed head was made an example of during the inquiry that gave birth to the Comics Code Authority, as detailed in the story from this recent post. To borrow a term from our own Gore-met, those artists had some big gore-nads on ‘em. [...]