AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Comic books in the 1950s were full of superheroes swishing about in their capes and masks, but another genre was gaining ground fast - horror. These comics featured vampires, werewolves, axe murderers and gory depictions of violence. They triggered a full-blown moral panic. In response, the Comics Code Authority, a self-regulating industry body, was forced to act.
MICHAEL DEAN: They actually outlawed the word horror, and they forbade the use of vampires, werewolves. It was really a strong effort to kind of make comics kind of antiseptic.
RASCOE: That's Michael Dean, editor of a new collection of long-forgotten Marvel horror comics called "Lost Marvels No. 1: Tower Of Shadows." They were first published in 1969, by which time social attitudes had begun to shift. I started our conversation by asking Dean how the horror ban played out more than a decade earlier.
DEAN: There was a big backlash against comics. Parents boycotted them. There was a book called "Seduction Of The Innocent" by Fredric Wertham which focused on comics as a cause of juvenile delinquency. And there was a Senate subcommittee hearing, and one of their primary targets was a line of comics called EC Comics. Those are known today as some of the best artists and writers in the history of comics, but they were also very horrific. Even by today's standards, people would be kind of shocked by some of the stories that they told.
RASCOE: And were these like "Tales From The Crypt" and stuff like that a lot, or...
DEAN: That's exactly right.
RASCOE: Yes, which - most people remember that HBO series and the Cryptkeeper and all that stuff.
DEAN: That's right. Today, we appreciate them probably a lot more than Fredric Wertham did back then.
RASCOE: (Laughter) The first story in the "Lost Marvels No. 1: Tower Of Shadows" is called "At The Stroke Of Midnight!" And...
DEAN: Yeah.
RASCOE: ...Of course, it was edited by Stan Lee. This story - it starts the collection off very strongly. Is that one of your favorites out of this?
DEAN: I would say it is. It's probably my favorite story. There's a lot of really good stories in there, and especially because of the artists. These are the top line of Marvel's artists. All the ones that made their superhero comics famous are also here in this "Tower Of Shadows." Steranko really stood out.
RASCOE: And you're talking about Jim Steranko.
DEAN: That's correct.
RASCOE: Jim Steranko - he's the artist. Yeah.
DEAN: But he drew them in such a way that - they used a lot of cinematic elements, but they also used narrative devices that you could only do in comics because in comics, time gets translated spatially. So he will slow things down. He'll break a panel up, a single image into several panels.
RASCOE: Yeah. I'm looking at one right now. 'Cause this is about a couple - these couples are never happy in these stories. It's kind of like "The Twilight Zone" or...
DEAN: That's right.
RASCOE: ...Those stories, so...
DEAN: Very similar, yeah.
RASCOE: ...Sort of serious. They're on their way to this house. They want the inheritance. That's the other thing. They always want the inheritance. And so (laughter)...
DEAN: Yes.
RASCOE: ...They want some money. And so they end up in this old spooky house. And so I'm looking at one where you see, like, the steps and the shadow is in, like, the last frame and all this stuff.
DEAN: Yeah.
RASCOE: But it's all, like, broken up but beautifully broken up.
DEAN: Yes, that's exactly right. The panels will stretch, or they'll shrink depending on how he wants us to feel the time. So it's very effective, and it uses devices that are particular to comics.
RASCOE: What I found was, while some of the stories feel dated, they have some problematic references...
DEAN: Yeah, yeah.
RASCOE: ...That we wouldn't use these days. One of the stories about the fear of technology - it was basically, like, a minor who was, like, look, I'm not going to let these robots take my job. We got to be careful. I mean, people are still feeling that way, right?
DEAN: Yeah.
RASCOE: What stood out to you about these stories?
DEAN: Well, they're somewhat in the vein of the old EC stories in that the characters are not heroic. They're sort of lousy characters that did terrible things and deserved all the awful things that happened to them. When I first started reading "Tower Of Shadows" - because, you know, I grew up with comics - I was, at that point, ready to move on from superheroes. You know, I like the superheroes. I like Spider-Man, et cetera. But I was looking for something a little more sophisticated. And so when I ran across "Tower Of Shadows," I was delighted because it was something different.
RASCOE: Did you run across it back in the day, or are you talking about running across it now?
DEAN: Back in the day, I ran across it. I...
RASCOE: Back in the day - so you actually were reading these back in the day.
DEAN: I still got those comics.
RASCOE: Oh, wow. You were looking for something more sophisticated. And is that why you had these comic book greats like Neal Adams, like Jim Steranko, like John Buscema - like, they appear in this collection. Is that why they would want to get into this, is because it gave them some more freedom to explore their own art?
DEAN: That's a good point because these are artists that have been drawing these superhero stories, so this is an opportunity for them to do their own writing. Sometimes they were artists who normally either only do the penciling or only do the inking. And here, they were allowed to both pencil and ink their own work. And using different kind of genre conventions - they weren't limited to the kind of flashy, clattering kind of superhero battles that they were normally having to depict.
RASCOE: That's Michael Dean, editor of "Lost Marvels No. 1, Tower Of Shadows," which is out now. Thank you so much for joining us.
DEAN: Thank you.
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