In a recent posting on Notes from the Junkyard, Spiros Xenos discussed the censorship of horror comics in Why were some horror comic stories censored by Australian publishers, while other equally explicit stories – sometimes published by the same company – seemingly went unnoticed?
And why was there such an explosive proliferation of locally-printed horror comics in
The answers to such questions are by no means clear-cut, as they can be attributed – equally, or in part – to a sometimes complex mix of changing social attitudes, commercial opportunism and fleeting popular culture ‘fads’.
Horror comics have always attracted some measure of controversy in
Horror comics, or at least some horrific elements of comic book stories, were often singled out in Australian media accounts of the anti-comics campaigns taking place in
Yet it seems only a handful of horror comic books were available to
Some Australian editions of Classics Illustrated (published by Ayers & James in
Even Horwitz Publications tried its hand at locally-produced horror comics, publishing Tales of Mystery in 1959. The comic was presided over by ‘The Cloak’, a mysterious narrator who introduced each issue’s stories. Crudely drawn by Royce Bradford, Tales of Mystery emphasised clever ‘twist endings’ over explicit gore and violence.
Yet the near-complete absence of locally-published horror comics didn’t stop contemporary critics railing against them. The 30 April 1955 edition of the Methodist accused Australia’s “moguls of press, commercial radio, film industry [and] horror comics” of being society’s “real delinquents” by “commercialising evil” and “[preferring] rape to love, criminals to heroes.”[i]
By the late 1960s, however, the horror genre had moved from the margins of popular entertainment and towards broader, mainstream acceptance.
During the 1960s, Horwitz Publications remained as one of
Popular novels with supernatural themes, such as Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967) and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971) became international bestsellers – and were, in turn, adapted into popular mainstream films. With the publication of Carrie in 1974, Stephen King became the first bestselling American novelist to establish himself exclusively within the horror genre – a field in which King remains a dominant, and prolific, figure.
Horror was steadily creeping back into Australian living rooms, courtesy of television. Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone (1959-64), returned to the small-screen in Night Gallery (1970-73), which favoured horror and fantasy motifs over science-fiction. Even British author Roald Dahl’s acerbic mysteries were adapted for television in Tales of the Unexpected (1979-84).
Children, too, could enjoy the fruits of the ‘horror’ revival. A generation of Aussie kids grew up chortling at the on-screen ravings of Deadly Earnest, the ghoulish television host who aired classic horror movies on Channels 0 and 10 during the late 1960s and early 1970s, where he was portrayed by different actors.
Children’s pastimes also took on a distinctly more sinister tone as the 1970s progressed. The Australian toy company, Toltoys, unveiled their new ‘Monster Series’ line of 8-inch action figures, which starred ‘The Dreadful Dracula’ and ‘The Human Werewolf’. Scanlens, best known for its range of Australian Rules football swap cards, released its Monster Initials chewing gum/swap card range in 1974, depicting ghoulish monsters in each letter of the alphabet. (These were, in fact, local versions of the original trading card series produced in
By the early 1970s, Australian comic publishers were ideally placed to capitalise on the growing public appetite for horror entertainments. American comics had, by this time, begun to free themselves from the constraints of the Comics Code Authority, which was created by the Comic Magazine Association of America in 1954 to eradicate explicit horror themes from comic books.
Others, such as Marvel Comics and DC Comics, chose to work within their industry-imposed guidelines by publishing Code-approved horror comics like Tower of Shadows (1969) and House of Secrets (relaunched in 1969), or sought amendments to the Code that allowed previously forbidden subjects (such as vampires and werewolves) to be depicted in newsstand comics once again. (Marvel Comics, for its part, also sought to emulate the Warren Magazines strategy by publishing its own line of black & white ‘adult’ titles, commencing with Savage Tales in 1971.)
This meant that, by the time that the KG Murray Publishing Company (KGM), then Australia’s largest comics publisher, was ready to launch its own line of horror comics, beginning with Doomsday in 1971, it could draw on a backlog of both ‘pre-Code’ and ‘post-Code’ horror comic strips available from a variety of American publishers.
The Sydney-based publisher expanded its horror comics range, adding Weird Mystery Tales and Haunted Tales to its line-up in 1971 and 1974, respectively. KGM next turned, not to DC Comics (its traditional source of overseas comic material[iii]), but to the New York-based Warren Publishing, as the company launched Australian editions of Warren’s trilogy of horror magazines – Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella – in 1974.
While their eye-grabbing (and, in the case of Vampirella, raunchy) covers should have left no doubt that they weren’t intended for little kiddies, KGM nonetheless saw fit to adorn these new comics with advisory labels, which stated ‘This Publication is Rated M for the Mature Reader’.
The company’s decision to impose a ‘voluntary’ ratings scheme for their adult horror comics is interesting for several reasons. Although Australian comics’ publishers were never subjected to an industry-wide censorship code, some individual publishers instigated their own in-house editorial guidelines in the late 1950s, stipulating what could – and couldn’t – be depicted in their comic magazines. According to one contemporary source, “KG Murray adopted a modification of the U.S. Comics Code Authority” to govern their publications.
It’s not clear whether these guidelines, introduced in 1960, were still in place by the time KGM released its horror comic titles in the early 1970s. But as we noted earlier, KGM’s editors were occasionally prepared to censor material which it thought might be considered ‘beyond the pale’ by the general public.
KGM’s decision to use rating labels on its ‘adult’ horror comics could be interpreted as a pre-emptive measure against the various Australian states’ obscenity laws that could be potentially used to block their distribution.
Not only would such labels inform readers (and, more importantly, their parents) about the magazines’ ‘adult’ contents, but the ‘M’ rating would no doubt entice more than a few buyers with the promise of more salacious storylines and artwork.
These
The apparent popularity of these new horror comics was not lost on KGM’s Australian competitors. Marvel Comics’ superhero characters formed the backbone of
Other publishers sought to capitalise on the local horror comics ‘boom’. During the mid-1970s, Rosnock Publications of Sydney issued black & white, Australian editions of ‘mild’ supernatural comics like Ripley’s Believe It or Not – True Ghost Stories and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery (originally published in America by Gold Key/Whitman) – although these may have been intended for the domestic ‘showbag’ market.[iv]
The Australian comic artist Gerald Carr threw his hat into the ring with Vampire! in 1975, an ‘adult’ horror comic that he wrote, illustrated and published for six issues, making it one of the few new Australian comics of the 1970s to secure mass-market distribution.
Easily the biggest new entrant into the Australian comics market at this time was the
While Gredown could be regarded as the main rival to KGM’s dominance of the Australian horror comics market, there are some possible connections between the two companies.
In 1974, KGM was sold to Kerry Packer’s Australian Consolidated Press (ACP), which no doubt sought to acquire
Gredown Pty Ltd was apparently established by Greg Murray, the son of Kenneth G. Murray. It’s not currently known whether Greg Murray was working for KGM at the time it was purchased by ACP. But surely it’s by no means coincidental that a member of the Murray family should strike out on their own with a new publishing venture, so soon after the loss of the ‘family business’ to its larger rival? Especially when its earliest products were a new range of ‘adult’ horror comics clearly meant to compete with those now being published by KGM!
As discussed in a previous installment of Comics Down Under, Gredown secured the editorial content for its new horror comics from a diverse range of sources, which not only included American publishers such as Charlton Comics, Atlas/Seaboard and Skywald Magazines, but also used English-language material produced by Spanish comic art agencies, such as Selecionnes Illustradas (SI) and Creaciones Editoriales.
Gredown set out on a reasonably coherent publishing programme, launching sequentially numbered series, many of which featured new cover paintings by the company’s Art Director, Phil Belbin, who had been a mainstay of
Gredown also initially emulated the KGM practice of placing an advisory label on their horror comics, which read ‘Rated A for Adult Readers’ – and quite possibly for the same reasons that KGM used them.
Yet at some point around 1976-77, Gredown abandoned ongoing series in favour of a ‘scattergun’ programme of one-shot titles. Although the seemingly bore no connection to one another, these unnumbered comics occasionally featured recurring characters, such as Delta 99 and Five and the Infinite, both of which were Spanish-drawn series.
Today, these Gredown horror comics are much sought-after by collectors for their lush, melodramatic covers (mainly produced by European artists) and their frankly deranged choice of titles, of which Strange Mission of the Weird Brain is but one example! Taken as a whole, Gredown’s horror comics are a garish, yet delightful, example of the cultural excesses of the 1970s – the decade which, some might say, taste forgot.
Although the company gradually added war, western and science-fiction titles to its publishing roster, horror comics comprised the majority of titles produced by Gredown Pty. Ltd. until the company withdrew from the field during 1981-82.
Page Publications, which was affiliated the Yaffa Syndicate[v], was the last major publisher to enter the Australian horror comics market during the 1970s. Already well-established as an industry/trade and sports-hobbyist magazine company, Page Publications took advantage of Newton Comics’ financial collapse in 1976 to secure the Australian reprint rights for a range of Marvel Comics’ titles.
To their range of superhero, war and western comics, Page Publications added a selection of black & white horror comics, including Shock, Ghoul Tales, Scream and Psycho. Like Gredown Pty. Ltd, Page Publications reprinted content from several different American companies, including Eerie Publications, Atlas/Seaboard and Skywald Magazines. The fact that both Gredown Pty. Ltd. and Page Publications were, at times, simultaneously reprinting material produced by the same stable of American publishers suggests that both companies may have dealt with a mutual ‘third party’ that syndicated such material on a non-exclusive basis to the Australian market.[vi]
By the early 1980s, however, Page Publications had scaled back its horror comic range, preferring instead to focus on local reprints of Marvel Comics titles, including their black & white ‘adult’ magazines (such as Monsters Unleashed) and Code-approved comics like Vault of Evil.
This contraction coincided with an overall downturn in the Australian market for black & white reprint comics. As one fanzine noted, “Yaffa [Page Publications] seems to have trimmed its line or its schedule, as well cutting the size of most of its line to digest size. No doubt the fact that Marvel titles are regularly on sale here makes the competition too strong.”[vii]
The 1980s not only saw Australian comic publishers having to fend off competition from full-colour, imported American comics, but also having to contend with new forms of electronic entertainment, which gradually chipped away at the children’s leisure reading market.
This seems borne out by a contemporary newspaper report, which quoted a
Horror comics weren’t immune from the impact of electronic media, either. They faded from Australian newsstands just as a new wave of explicit horror films, such as Halloween and Friday the 13th, made their way, not only into Australian cinemas but, more importantly, into people’s homes, courtesy of the videocassette recorder. When placed alongside this new generation of vivid ‘splatter movies’,
[i] Cited in Maddox,
[ii] For further details, see: Flanagan, Graeme (1994), Australian Vintage Paperback Guide;
[iii] As Spiros Xenos points out, KG Murray could have dealt with Carrol Rheinstrom, whose company, McFadden Publications International, syndicated DC Comics’ editorial content to international markets from the 1940s onwards.
[iv] Showbags were – and still are – sold at agricultural fairs held in Australian capital cities and country towns, and typically featured an assortment of confectionery, toys and comics, along with ‘free’ product samples issued by individual showbag sponsors.
[v] Yaffa Syndicate was established by David Yaffa in 1928 to sell comic strips, news stories and other editorial content produced by
[vi] Daniel Best puts forward a plausible argument that Israel Waldman of Super Comics could have been the main supplier of horror comics’ material to Australian publishers during the mid-1970s. Waldman specialised in repackaging editorial content purchased cheaply from defunct American publishers and selling them through ‘non-traditional’ retail outlets, such as discount and variety stores. The fact that Waldman was also the co-founder of Skywald Magazines certainly gives weight to this theory.
[vii] Anon., (1980), The Australian Comic Collector; Vol.4, No.11; pg.26
[viii] Porter, Liz (1981), ‘TV takes over from comics’, Sunday Telegraph; 4 January; pg.30
3 comments:
Very well researched article. For most small companies, the monthly sales and profit margins are vital. If they were printing something, it was only because the sales were justified.
The question of why something sells and then stops being popular is what marketing companies have been trying to figure out for many decades. The Cold War supposedly contributed to the popularity of science fiction and horror. I don't know what it is, but I always have enjoyed the kind of horror from that era. Some gore, but nothing like the modern SAW movies or similar fare in which the victims are dismembered and tortured.
Thanks for the interesting article.
Iron-man - Thanks for your comments & glad you enjoyed the article. Yes, I've heard the theory that horror comics were a subliminal expression of postwar/Cold War-era anxieties - and I think it's a theory well worth exploring further (if someone hasn't already done so). Similar theories have been suggested as to the resonance that 'Night of the Living Dead' had back in the late 1960s, as a reflection of the chaos of the Vietnam War & its effect on American society/politics. But such theories only go some way towards explaining the upsurge of horror comics popularity from the early 1970s onwards. And, yes, commercial success & profitability does help fuel and sustain such media fads, as rival companies attempt to cash in on seemingly successful fads/trends. My intent was to try & at least touch on some of these issues in my article...but I daresay that I, and others, will have more to say on this subject down the track.
I hadn't realised there was such a plethora of horror comics at this time.
I recall a lot of the American comics went for "soft" horror themes; ACG used to have a lot of references to "the unknown", a sort of euphemism for death or limbo.
Post a Comment