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Product Description
Product Description
The Horror! The Horror! uncovers a rare treasury of some of the most important and neglected stories in American literature—the pre-Code horror comics of the 1950s. These outrageous comic book images, censored by Congress in an infamous televised U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency in 1954, have rarely been seen since they were first published—and are revealed once again in all of their eye-popping glory. Jim Trombetta, in his commentary and informative text, provides a detailed history and context for these stories and their creators, spinning a tale of horror and government censorship as scary as the stories themselves.
Bonus DVD--Confidential File, a rare 25-minute TV show that first aired on October 9, 1955, about the "evils" of comic books and their effect on juvenile delinquency is included with the book.
Please note that the enclosed DVD begins with a 58-second test pattern, followed by the tv show.
Praise for The Horror! The Horror!:
"In addition to offering a generous helping of controversial comics . . . Trombetta's book provides insightful history."
-New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Jim Trombetta has been a Shakespearean scholar, a reporter and editor for Crawdaddy, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications, and a writer of numerous TV shows, including Miami Vice, The Flash, and Star Trek. He lives in Los Angeles.
R. L. Stine is the bestselling author of hundreds of horror novels, including the Goosebumps and Fear Street series.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent compilation! The Horror! The Horror!,
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This review is from: The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You To Read (with DVD) (Paperback)
Love this book. Excellent collection of pre-Code horror comic covers, as well as complete stories.Also, a good chapter by chapter write-up on the history and effect of these comics. I was surprised at how large a volume it is. Worth a try,excellent deal for the price.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
This review is from: The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You To Read (with DVD) (Paperback)
This is a nice book, which provides insight into the Comics Code Authority in the 50's and how it came about. Inside you will find older comic covers and complete comic stories, with the histotical points made in each chapter in a fun way.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lost Horrors,
By
This review is from: The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You To Read (with DVD) (Paperback)
Once upon a time, in the early 1950's, comic books created the sort of hysteria in the United States now only reserved for violent videogames and sexual innuendo on Gossip Girl. Horror, crime and war comics ruled the newsstands in the early 1950's, with superheroes gradually fading away.Then, psychologist Frederick Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent came out, with its condemnation of comic books as causing everything from illiteracy to homosexuality to, well, lesbianism and probably more homosexuality. Wertham really had a bee in his bonnet about homosexuality, bondage and the then-popular 'Injury to Eye' motif. A sensational murder case in Dawson involving kids and comic books gradually came into the public eye in the U.S. (it also spawned the "crime comics" section the Canadian criminal code). Government hearings were held. And American publishers caved, instituting their own censorship body, the Comics Code Authority (blessedly defunct since 2008). Comics would never be the same again, as their immense post-war, non-superheroic popularity began waning, and continues to wane to this day as anything other than a provider of ideas to Hollywood.The reign of the comic book as the preeminent form of children's entertainment had ended. Here, Trombetta focuses on the war, crime and horror comic books from 1946 to 1954 that weren't from the illustrious and much-loved EC line, delving instead into comic book stories and covers that in most cases haven't ever been reprinted. Historically, this is valuable; as reading material, this is astonishing. It's not just the violence, implied and otherwise, that amazes -- it's the nightmarish quality of the best of these stories, some of which seem to have come gushing out of some primal, nightmare-filled reservoir of the collective unconscious, some of which are firmly rooted in the terrors of the time. Trombetta's contextual essays, though occasionally a bit thin in convincingly connecting certain historical events with certain horror tropes, are nonetheless valuable and fascinating overall. His contextualization of the rise of the idea of the menacing zombie horde within certain new and horrifying Chinese combat tactics during the Korean War is quite convincing. What a dandy, entertaining, enlightening book this is both as a cultural study and as a collection of great covers and stories from a truncated period of comic-book hyperrelevance. Kudos to Trombetta! I want more!
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