Action and adventure
Action and adventure |
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Page 24 of 42  Cover and splash pages from Captain America (Marvel Comics, 1968). The 'Cap' was revived in the 1960s, but his patriotism seemed decidedly out of tune with the Vietnam era. The artist for this issue was the great Jim Steranko who would be a major influence on the next generation of superhero creators Science fiction also took off. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were given their own comics in 1940 (Famous Funnies) and 1943 (Dell), but other titles moved away from simple heroics, and tapped into post-war American fears about UFOs and aliens, which has been interpreted today as a metaphor for the 'red scare'. Once more, EC led the field in terms of quality, with Weird Science and Weird Fantasy (both 1950) which featured Wally Wood's wild depictions of space hardware and 'borrowed' plots from top science fiction authors like Ray Bradbury. The final kind of American comic in this early 1950s period were undoubtedly the most notorious - the horror comics. Technically, they had been around since the early 1940s, when individual 'monster' titles had been popular. But they really came into their own in the 1950s, when they became a recognizable genre, notable mainly for their sanguine story lines. Indeed, many titles went further than contemporary horror films, and featured beheadings, eviscerations, gouged eyes and so on, in gleeful detail.  Cover and splash pages from Captain America (Marvel Comics, 1968). The 'Cap' was revived in the 1960s, but his patriotism seemed decidedly out of tune with the Vietnam era. The artist for this issue was the great Jim Steranko who would be a major influence on the next generation of superhero creators  Cover. Jesse James (Avon, 1951) . Art for both: Anon. Westerns were extremely popular in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and fed from pulp novels, movies, and television. |