Martin Barker. A Haunt of Fears, The Strange Story of The British Horror Comics Campain. Jackson and London: University of Mississipi Press, 1992.
This book is about the campain between 1949 and 1955 which led to the passing of the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publication) Act of 1955. Two people had very important roles in the elaboration of the Act, George Pumphey (British school headmaster) and Frederic Wertham (American critic).
(1) Comics grab children. They have enticing pictures, colours, covers and titles.
(2) children are seduced into reading them without the proper intelectual defence to their 'messages' they identify with characters.
(3) It function as a direct message into the children's world, not just as an imaginary alternative.
(4) the comics invade all the parts of chidren's lives: police are stupid, women sex-objects, power is joy, natives sub-moronic, crime attractive, pain fun.
This conception pressuposes children approach comic books looking for adequate role-models for their behaviour, in order words, seeking figures to emulate. The main characters whose 'heroism' is a model for the reader always bypasse the law. The problem of typicality is central to breakdown this reading. There cannot be a single way in which children 'identify' with different comic strips - then we will become entitled to ask what different relations of reading the different categories of comics offer (crime, sci-fi, superhero, war, horror, space).
To challenge this view on 'effects' is necessarily to challenge the 'perceptions' of the content. Horror comic books contain motifs, formulaic most of the time. The formula can be used well or badly. The motifs can be mixed freely but the more they suceed in involving the readers, (and they agree to be involved), the less we are certain where we stand in relation to the strip.
1) Appearance v Reality
2) Human relatively stories
3) Object come to life stories
4) Parody stories
5) Subversion of stereotypes stories
This pressuposes that we can say how a child could identify with a character in a horror comic book. This fact is impossible unless we revise the notion of identification. Typically the horror comic puts us firmily in a situation. The concept of identification proves inadequate for understanding the process into whic comic strips invites us in. Horror comics are not an exercise in degradation but in doubt. They work on suggestibilities about the supernatural and the like. Of, course there are tremendous variations in what they leave us in doubt about. Not all of them achieve the effect operating only at the level of surprise at the workings of the narrative itself.
