Captain America's Weird Tales?

[samurainoir]

Marvel Zombies wasn't the first time they tried to meld Superheroes and Horror.

[cjefferys]

Yeah, that was during the period when superhero comics were almost dead and horror comics were becoming all the rage. And back then, it was common for comic companies to change titles and keep the numbering rather than create a whole new title at #1 (something about them saving money on postage rates doing it that way). I don't think Cap even appeared in the second of the two issues, it was straight horror.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Marvel had a heroine named Venus who was popular enough to have her own mag. They did the same thing toward the end of her run.

Heck DC ALMOST did this in the early 70s. When House of Mystery and it's brethern were at the top of their game, 4 out of 5 DC comics a month could be mistaken for a horror/mystery title. Even Teen Titans!

Chris

[johnnystorm]

Black Cat Mystery from Harvey. Sensation Mystery at DC.
And heroes like The Phantom Stranger.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

I think this is another thing that comes and goes. Marvel had a slew of horror comics in the early 70's, and a lot of horror aspects krept into their regular books. (I think the Defenders fought just as many demons as supervillains.) DC too; but they had kept their horror anthologies prior, so it was only natural that they follow the drift. (A lot of the early 70's Batman books borrowed technique from the horror comics, in both layout and design.) And Harvey did an issue or two of "Tales of Horror;" an anthology comic hosted by Sabrina the teenage witch.

Horror was pretty popular in the 50's, (B-movie-palooza) and the 70's, (with the exploitation films, and the Exorcist) and I suspect we WOULD have seen another go for horror-esque comics in the 90's but the superheroes were co-opted by huge biceps and gritted teeth. (ALTHOUGH a lot of 90's comics featured horror and superantural aspects, so maybe it DID come around again.)

Don C.

[cjefferys]

The very late 40's to 1955 seem to be a (so far) unique period of comics history since 1938 where superhero comics almost died out completely (only Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman's comics were continuously published throughout this period). The vast majority of titles were in the horror, SF, crime, humour and funny animal genres during this period. Horror has indeed gone in and out of vogue over the years since the fifties (even after being nearly crippled by the Comics Code), but the superhero genre has never again had such a small percent of the comics market that they had during that period.

[ctc]

>The very late 40's to 1955 seem to be a (so far) unique period of comics history since 1938 where superhero comics almost died out completely

Yeah; folks lost interest right after the war, maybe because the superheroes had been so tied into the war effort? Maybe a bit of hyper-saturation as well. (Stan Lee once said of the golden era: "It seemed like the same tired heroes showed up every month in slightly different costumes.")

>the superhero genre has never again had such a small percent of the comics market that they had during that period.

Well.... the average Marvel/DC comic has a run of about 75,000 issues, so maybe that's not QUITE true.

Don C.