Horror cartoon

Cover of a comic book of the 1950s.

The cartoon or horror comic or horror is one of the genres into which comic production can be divided.

Features

Themes

• His will to provoke in the reader feelings of turmoil, fear, disgust, repugnance or horror.
• His arguments frequently develop the sudden intrusion in an area of normality of some force, event or character of an evil nature, often of criminal or supernatural origin. In this supernatural dye terror, the appearance of classic ghosts and monsters such as werewolves, vampires or zombies has been frequent, who drink from the traditional superstitions and tales of fear, as well as other more modern monsters, such as the disdained human replicas in the style of Frankenstein or the modern Prometheuswhich originated in the novel of terror born in the second half of the centuryXVIII, so that they are often scarce

the authors who draw the contour of contemporary terror, few who have brought fear into the body with the ominous claustrophobia of an elevator or the reverberating silence of those modern crypts of underground parking. No one expects to find a vampire under his bed anymore, but there can be an evening vertigo lurking on the computer screen.

• They usually include what is called Gore, that is blood, body fluids and small pieces of meat explicitly.
• The typical spaces or scenarios have traditionally been the cemetery, the abandoned house, the castle, the ruins, the gloomy lab, the forest or the gloomy erial and the decadent garden, which have ended up forming a common catalogue of "places". In recent years, however, a search for the “visceral, the revulsant of the urban environment, abandoning metaphysical fears of eternal condemnation and gloomy mansions in drunken summits”.

Formal

• Its most typical structure is that of a brief account (6 to 10 p., but generally 8), with a shocking outcome, in which this impactful vignette is reserved even to the "page of the left, so that the reader could be more surprised by passing the leaf". This approach would be developed by the EC Comics in the 1950s and updated by Warren Publishing in the 60s and 70s of the past century, and today a greater variety of structures were given.
• The preeminence of realistic drawing.
• Use of the dark and white and black.

History

Frankenstein de Dick Briefer (1954)

Origins (1935-1954)

The genre was barely treated in comics for the entire first half of the XX century, as producers and distributors of the newspaper strips preferred to avoid problems with possible publishers and subscribers who would have rejected a genre that has never been considered "suitable for children", opting to please everyone.

Cover of a comic book of the '50s.

Comic books with original material appeared in 1929, in 1935, National Periodical Publications publishes the first Doctor Occult story by Jerry Siegel (script) and Joe Shuster (art), in New Fun Comics #6, where he faces & #34;Vampire Master, in Detective Comics #31-32, Batman fights a vampire, however, there were no other attempts to address the genre until the appearance of Frankenstein Comics (1945), then after the superhero subgenre declined after World War II. The most prominent were Tales from the Crypt ("Crypt Stories"), The Vault of Horror ("The Vault of Horrors& #34;) and The Haunt of Fear from EC Comics. In his 6 to 8 page stories, characters appeared with fates that were often ironic as well as gloomy. Each horror title story was always presented by one of the horror hosts, each being the "owner" from one of the series: the Crypt Keeper for "Tales from the Crypt", the Vault Keeper for "The Vault of Horror", and the Old Hag for "The Haunt of Fear". In addition to jokingly commenting on the unsavory details of the stories, these characters picked on each other, unleashing an arsenal of barbs and even insulting readers ("Greetings, boils, and walking dead,..."). Along with crime comics, their content was heavily controlled with the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, greatly limiting references to horror and terror within comics. In the same sense, restrictive legislation was generated in England and Canada.

In Spain, the most outstanding series of the genre was Inspector Dan of the Flying Patrol (1947) by Eugenio Giner.

Interlude (1955-1963)

Although this is a time of decline for the genre, we can highlight classics such as Kitaro del Cementerio (1959), by the mangaka Shigeru Mizuki, or the popular fumetto nero, which appeared in early sixties in Italy, with characters like Satanik, Kriminal and Diabolik.

There was also a resurgence of the genre in Mexico thanks to the success of Tradiciones y Leyendas de la Colonia (1963).

The "boom" from the 70s (1964-1983)

Kazuo Umezu, called the king of the horror sleeve, a title shared with Junji Ito, another great exponent of the genre.

The short surprise-ending comics that had been characteristic of EC Comic would be recreated in the black-and-white magazines Creepy (1964), Eerie (1966) and Vampirella (1969) by Warren Publishing, which were already aimed at adult audiences and therefore ignored the restrictions of the Comics Code. They were soon answered by other companies, such as Eerie Publications and Skywald Publications. Even the American publishers DC and Marvel Comics, mostly dedicated to superheroes, diversify their production with House of Secrets (1969), Swamp Thing (1971), by Len Wein/Berni Wrightson, Weird War Tales (1971), The Tomb of Dracula (1972-1979), by Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan, and Ghost Rider (1972) by Roy Thomas/Gary Friedrich/Mike Ploog.

In Hispanic America, two characters created for radio stood out: The Sinister Doctor Mortis (1966) and El Monje Loco (1967).

From 1972 to 1974 the artists of the Spanish agency Selecciones Ilustradas drew 80% of the contents of Warren's magazines as well as most of their covers, and his work, when it was later published in his country of origin, would be fundamental for the so-called rise of adult comics in Spain, thanks to magazines such as Dossier Negro (1968); Dracula and Vampus from 1971; Panic (1972); Rufus from 1973; Vampirella in 1974, or SOS (1975) and Creepy in 1979. The genre would have the same success in countries like Germany and especially Italy, where Magazines like Linus or Il Mago, from Milan, publish adaptations of Poe or Lovecraft by Dino Battaglia or Alberto Breccia.

In Japan, Gō Nagai stands out with Devilman (1972) and Kazuo Umezu with works like El Chico De Los Ojos De Cat (1967-1976) and Aula adrift (1974).

The Renewal (1984-present)

After the closure of the Warren magazines in 1983, the genre witnessed a "renewal of its nineteenth-century discourse that no longer scares anyone"hand in hand series such as Alan Moore's Swamp Thing (1984), Dylan Dog (1986), Jamie Delano's Hellblazer (1988), but thanks above all to Japanese authors, such as Hideshi Hino.

Series such as Dragon Head (1994) by Minetaro Mochizuki, Bukita-kun (1995) by Kanako Inuki, The Vampire's Smile succeed in this way. > (1998) by Suehiro Maruo or Uzumaki (1998-1999) by Junji Ito. The work of Charles Burns stands out, with his Black Hole from 1993, or Thomas Ott.

Outstanding exponents at present are the comics 30 days of darkness (2002), The Walking dead (2003), Dark Water (2004) and Crossed (2008).