Printing Terror: American Horror Comics as Cold War Commentary and Critique

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Description

Printing Terror places horror comics of the Cold War in dialogue with the anxieties of their age. It rejects the narrative of horror comics as inherently, and necessarily, subversive and explores, instead, the ways in which these texts manifest white male fears over America's changing sociological landscape. It examines two eras: the pre-CCA period of the 1940s up to 1954, and the post-CCA era to 1975. The book examines each of these periods through the lenses of war, gender, and race, demonstrating that horror comics at this time were centered on white male victimhood and the monstrosity of the gendered and/or racialised other. It is of interest to scholars of horror, comics studies, and American history. -- .

Reviews

'The six main chapters incorporate a broad range of texts, and in these Goodrum and Smith read comics from two distinct periodsthe periods before and after the formation of the Comics Code Authority (CCA) in 1954through the lenses of trauma, race, and gender.'
Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association

'The authors robustly show the extent to which horror comics appear to indict racism and misogyny while consistently presenting women and people of colour as endangering white men and societal structures.'
Dianne Kirby, Twentieth Century Communism

Author Bio

Michael Goodrum is Reader in Cultural History at Canterbury Christ Church University

Philip Smith is Associate Chair of Liberal Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design