Have recently been reading a book called A Haunt of Fears by Martin Barker , published in 1984, which documents the role of a small number of individuals within the British Communist Party in creating the "campaign" to ban "American" (ie British reprinted Horror comics) back in the first half of the 1950s. I touched on this subject in a post back 2022, which discussed the impact of British-reprinted horror comics in the UK in the 1950s.
A Haunt of Fears first relates the story of the campaign as reported in the popular press at the time, and then gets under the covers of the motives of the people behind the campaign.
The focus of the book is firmly on the cultural aspects of the ban, the prevailing attitudes of the public and the Establishment and the role of the BCP in creating/responding to a manufactured uproar. There is limited focus on the role of L. Miller, Arnold, Streamline and T&P, in producing and distributing these comics, but it is certainly worth a read. It does contain a list of the comics targeted by the ban campaign.
Although it is a pretty dry, academic read, the book is also a nice companion piece to "The 10-Cent Plague", which documents the campaign to ban horror comics in the US.
I find it interesting that the campaign in the UK was driven by the political left, whereas it was the right in the US.
 |
| List of books identified as unsuitable |
Thanks for the heads up, B, might pick this one up at some stage. Have you read my post about The Gorbals Vampire over on my blog? You might find it interesting.
ReplyDeleteJust read your Gorbals Vampire post, and I realised I had read it years ago. I'll have to see if that Radio Scotland programme is still available. I think whole era when L Miller, T&P and others decided to import horror comic matrices for re-printing in the UK must have been a very interesting time in the UK, if you were a budding comics enthusiast. I suppose because Atlas Publishing (the UK firm) had sewn up a deal with K G Murray in Australia to sell Superman and Batman reprints in the UK, the only market left for competitors was focus on EC material.
ReplyDeleteI you re-read my original blog on the topic, I printed a letter to the Portsmouth Evening News from a Mr Donald Cowd in 1950 complaining that American and Canadian newspapers had the comic sections cut out before being put on sale in Britain!
Cutting out newspaper comic sections seems a bit extreme as they were never considered part of the perceived problem (as far as I know), but after years of some people denying that comics could ever have any kind of negative effect on kids, DCT tacitly conceded the point when they changed Bash Street Fatty's name to Freddy so that readers weren't influenced into calling overweight kids fatty or fatso. Same with Spotty to prevent kids with acne being slagged off in the playground. So there's no doubt that comics (as with other things) can have negative effects, the question is, though, to exactly what extent. I'll visit your other post.
Delete