A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign

• DOI: 10.2307/368217
• Publication Date: 2006-05-04T09:11:39Z
• Authors: Timothy Lang; Martin Barker
• Keywords: 0508 media and communications; 05 social sciences

Between 1949 and 1955 Britain was swept by a rising tide of panic about American-style or horror comics. The British press cried out in alarm: Now Ban This Filth That Poisons Our Children, Drive Out the Horror Comics. As one frenzied columnist protested: I feel as though have been trudging through sewer. Here is terrible twilight zone between sanity madness . peopled monsters, grave robbers, human flesh eaters. A campaign against ghoulish comic books climaxed an Act Parliament making it illegal to publish sell any material form deemed be harmful children. But behind facade concern for protection children, another very different story lurked. book explores asking some rather questions. Who were people at heart anti-comics campaign? Why how did Communist Party come play central role, yet end up attacking group comics which on their side assaulting rationality McCarthyism? reveals inadequacy conventional assessments anti-media panics. In showing curious gap private concerns campaigners public rhetoric, Haunt Fears, originally published 1983, raises serious questions state culture during this era.