chronicles the period's rich stew of graphic insanity. Often produced by uncredited illustrators, the comic books eventually attracted congressional attention. In 1954, Senate hearings concluded that pulp fiction posed a threat to the mental health of youthful readers. The Judiciary Committee's investigation into juvenile delinquency summed up the genre as a compendium of "murder, mayhem, robbery, rape, cannibalism, carnage, necrophilia, sex, sadism, masochism ... and virtually every other form of crime, degeneracy, bestiality and horror."

Publishers then formed the Comics Code Authority, which forbade "lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations."

Here's a sampling of pre-Code comic-book art culled from the pages of The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read!.

Above:

The Horror! The Horror!

Written by Jim Trombetta (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), with an introduction by R.L. Stine, The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read! comes bundled with a DVD of a 1955 TV documentary, Confidential File, that focused on horror comic books.

Images courtesy Abrams ComicArts.
All rights reserved.

Authors: Hugh Hart

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