Emergence of the Comic Book

Pretty soon after comic strips grew in popularity, longer story driven comics began to come into play. Carl Barks' work for Disney was on the rise, as well as the growth of "costumed characters"/super heroes like Batman and Captain America. Even over seas, comics like Tintin were blowing up. What really caught my eye with this weeks reading in particular was EC Comics' Tales from the Crypt collections.

Tales from the Crypt are illustrated anthologies of short horror stories. They range from the mysterious, the campy, and the outright disgusting. Sure, the "scary" stories may not be as effective now as they were back in the day when horror wasn't as normalized as it is now, but the tales sure are interesting. The style of the comic is super realistic, which I assume is to make all the horrors seem real enough that they could actually happen. From swamp zombies to murderous werewolves at summer camp, Tales from the Crypt was for our parents what Goosebumps was for us.

My favorite story from the collection had to be Madness at Manderville. It was the first comic I had read for class that featured a female lead character who wasn't hyper sexualized or only there for the male gaze. The story tells of a woman who is seemingly going crazy, hearing noises in the night and seeing strange lights through the window. Her husband pushes her to seek psychological help as he claims none of these noises or sights are real. They arrive at the asylum where it's shown that the wife isn't crazy, it's the husband for not hearing the noises which are just birds and traffic outside, and not seeing the lights in the window which are headlights from a car coming down the street. I thought it was an incredibly interesting twist seeing how women, especially mentally ill women, were treated back in the day. A lot of the main characters in the stories are women, and I found that particularly interesting. Sometimes they're the protagonist, sometimes they're the villain, but from what I read they were never put there just to be there. They're characters with motivations, drives, goals, and wants. They also have fears, and in some stories a strong will to survive.