Number 2249: You’d have to be crazy not to like horror comics

 I have a couple of cute horror stories from 1950s Atlas Comics. “Cute horror” may sound like an oxymoron, but these have a light tone, and are also amusing.

I love stories from comic books that are about comic books; artists, editors, anything that makes me feel I am getting a look inside the busy atmosphere of a comic book publishing company. In “Raving Maniac” from Suspense #29 (1953), drawn by Joe Maneely, an irate critic of comics invades the office to complain about showing monsters, and the editor refutes his criticism. Frankly, if this is a poke at those who were publicly criticizing comic books at the time, then it would bounce off any comic book hater. As I have found out, it is nearly impossible to get past a prejudice with examples, facts, or even humor. Whoever wrote the story was preaching to the choir about comics; no one who hated them would be dissuaded from their hatred. They might also be upset about how the title is a pun on the resolution of the story, “Raving Maniac.”

I showed Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott’s “The Witch in the Woods” in a blog post from 2007, so I made some new scans. It is a funny story about a dad angry with his son for reading comic books when he should be reading “good” books, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I always thought “Hansel and Gretel” was a gruesome story, not that it bothered me. My mother regretted taking me to a puppet version of it when I was six or seven. Like the story, she didn’t think fare that included parents abandoning their children in the woods and having a cannibal witch was wholesome enough for me. Ha-ha. Little did she know how bent I was toward this sort of horror, even at such an early age.

From Menace #7 (1953):

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