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‘This collection on horror comics does the essential work of bridging the
gap between the well-beaten path of EC horror and the much-needed study
of independent and international horror. The dominant orientation in the
chapters is effectively based in cultural studies but they also make over-
tures to other theories – demonstrating an aspect of this collection that is
very welcome. Finally, Darowski and Pagnoni Berns’ organizational scheme
highlights a rightly expanding focus of horror comics studies (on race and
gender) and enlarges the general discussion in a truly important way (with
horror and philosophy). Scary good and strongly recommended.’
– Terrence Wandtke, author of The Comics Scare Returns: The
Contemporary Resurgence of Horror Comics, 2018
Critical Approaches to Horror
Comic Books

This volume explores how horror comic books have negotiated with the
social and cultural anxieties framing a specifc era and geographical space.
Paying attention to academic gaps in comics’ scholarship, these chapters
engage with the study of comics from varying interdisciplinary perspectives,
such as Marxism; posthumanism; and theories of adaptation, sociology,
existentialism, and psychology. Without neglecting the classical era, the
book presents case studies ranging from the mainstream comics to the
independents, simultaneously offering new critical insights on zones of
vacancy within the study of horror comic books while examining a global
selection of horror comics from countries such as India (City of Sorrows),
France (Zombillénium), Spain (Creepy), Italy (Dylan Dog), and Japan (Tanabe
Gou’s Manga Adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft), as well as the United States.
One of the frst books centered exclusively on close readings of an
under-studied feld, this collection will have an appeal to scholars and
students of horror comics studies, visual rhetoric, philosophy, sociology,
media studies, pop culture, and flm studies. It will also appeal to anyone
interested in comic books in general and to those interested in investigating
the intricacies of the horror genre.

John Darowski is a PhD candidate in Comparative Humanities at the

University of Louisville, USA. He has edited an essay collection on Superman
adaptations (2021) and has published several essays on the history of
superheroes.

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (PhD) works at the Universidad de Buenos

Aires (UBA), Argentina. He teaches courses on international horror flms
and has authored a book about Spanish horror TV series Historias para no
Dormir (2019) and has edited a book on James Wan’s flms.
Routledge Advances in Comics Studies
Edited by Randy Duncan, Henderson State University
Matthew J. Smith, Radford University

Batman and the Multiplicity of Identity

The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero as Cultural Nexus
Jeffrey A. Brown

Contexts of Violence in Comics

Edited by Ian Hague, Ian Horton and Nina Mickwitz

Representing Acts of Violence in Comics

Edited by Ian Hague, Ian Horton and Nina Mickwitz

Performativity, Cultural Construction, and the Graphic Narrative

Edited by Leigh Anne Howard and Susanna Hoeness-Krupsaw

Immigrants and Comics

Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis
Edited by Nhora Lucía Serrano

Superheroes and Excess

A Philosophical Adventure
Edited by Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds

Vertigo Comics
British Creators, US Editors, and the Making of a Transformational
Imprint
Isabelle Licari-Guillaume

Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books

Red Ink in the Gutter
Edited by John Darowski and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.

com/Routledge-Advances-in-Comics-Studies/book-series/RACS
Critical Approaches to Horror
Comic Books
Red Ink in the Gutter

Edited by John Darowski and Fernando

Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, John Darowski and Fernando
Gabriel Pagnoni Berns; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of John Darowski and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns
to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Darowski, John, editor. | Pagnoni Berns, Fernando Gabriel,
1975– editor.
Title: Critical approaches to horror comic books : red ink in the
gutter / edited by John Darowski and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni
Berns.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2023. | Series:
Routledge advances in comics book studies | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2022006759 (print) | LCCN 2022006760 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032195704 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032199443
(paperback) | ISBN 9781003261551 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Horror comic books, strips, etc.—History and
criticism. | Comic books, strips, etc.—Social aspects. | Horror in
literature. | Horror in art.
Classifcation: LCC PN6714 .C75 2023 (print) | LCC PN6714
(ebook) | DDC 741.5/9—dc23/eng/20220321
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006759
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006760
ISBN: 978-1-032-19570-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-19944-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-26155-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

Acknowledgments x
List of Figures xi
List of Contributors xii

1 Introduction 1
JOHN DAROWSKI AND FERNANDO GABRIEL PAGNONI BERNS

PART I
Horror Comic Books in a Socio-Historical Context 7

2 From Caligari to Wertham: When EC’s Horror

Comics Feared for Their Own Survival 9
RUI LOPES

3 “Men Have Sentenced This Fen to Death”:

Marvel’s Man-Thing and the Liberation Politics
of the 1970s 22
HENRY KAMERLING

4 The Horrors Haunting the City of Joy: Analyzing

the Traumas of the Counterinsurgency in City of
Sorrows 35
DEBADITYA MUKHOPADHYAY

5 Spanish Creepy: Historical Amnesia in “Las mil

caras de Jack el destripador” 50
FERNANDO GABRIEL PAGNONI BERNS
viii Contents
PART II
Race and Gender in Horror Comic Books 63

6 “A Sight to Dream of, Not to Tell!”: Orality and

Power in Marguerite Bennett and
Ariela Kristantina’s InSEXts 65
LAUREN CHOCHINOV

7 Gendered Violence and the Abject Body in Junji

Itō’s Tomie 78
TOSHA R. TAYLOR

8 Lily Renée’s The Werewolf Hunter and the Secret

Origin of Horror Comics 89
BLAIR DAVIS

9 The Wolf Only Needs to Find You Once: Food,

Feeding, and Fear in the Dark Fairy Tales of
Emily Carroll 105
ALEXANDRE DESBIENS-BRASSARD AND GABRIELLA COLOMBO
MACHADO

10 Borderland Werewolves: The Horrifc Representation

of the U.S.–Mexico Border in Feeding Ground 116
ANNA MARTA MARINI

PART III
Adaptation in Horror Comic Books 129

11 Flesh and Blood: Zombies, Vampires, and George A.

Romero’s Transmedia Expansion of the Dead 131
TREVOR SNYDER

12 An Alien World: A Comic Book Adaptation of

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood 143
YELENA NOVITSKAYA

13 Horror Transformed: Tanabe Gou’s Manga

Adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft 156
ANDREW SMITH

14 Mutant Gothic: Marvel’s Mainstreaming of

Horror in Uncanny X-Men 167
JOSEPH J. DAROWSKI
 Contents ix
15 Franken-Castle: Monster Hunters, Monstrous
Masculinities, and the Punisher 179
JOHN DAROWSKI

PART IV
Horror Comic Books and Philosophy 193

16 Dylan Dog’s Nightmares: The Unheimlich

Experience of the Doppelgänger in Dylan
Dog’s World 195
MARCO FAVARO

17 Messages of Death: Haunted Media in “Kaine:

Endorphins – Between Life and Death” 214
INGRID BUTLER

18 Heterotopia and Horror at Show’s End 223

CHRISTINA M. KNOPF

19 The Hell Economics of Zombillénium 235

ANNICK PELLEGRIN

Index 248
Acknowledgments

John Darowski: To my parents, for their constant love and support. And to
Kerry Soper, Carl Sederholm, and Charlotte Stanford, who introduced me to
the studies of comic books and horror.
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns: To Nestor for his unwavering support.
To Eduardo, Emiliano and Elsa for being such good friends. To Maribel
Ortiz for her generosity. And, as always, to my mother Irma and my sister
Fabiana. And thanks John Darowski for being such an amazing coeditor!
Figures

4.1 The terrifying image of the Mahabhairavi 38

4.2 Niyogi reveals the skinned corpse of Basab Roy 43
5.1 The bloody corpse of one of Jack’s victims horrifes and
excites as well 56
5.2 Even rich women can be the new Jack the Ripper 57
5.3 The corruption of the common citizen continues here with
the old landlady 58
8.1 “The Werewolf Hunter” frst page 92
8.2 The Witch Queen and her human puppets 97
8.3 The evil Spider Woman 98
8.4 A mysterious woman rides moonbeams down to earth 100
16.1 Dylan faces the personifcation of nightmare 197
16.2 Nightmares are bulletproof! 198
16.3 Dylan Dog and his loyal assistant Groucho 199
16.4 A familiar scene: Dylan is fghting a zombie 201
16.5 Dylan talks with his trusted friend, Inspector Bloch, while
a witch fies above their heads 203
16.6 Dylan meets his Doppelgänger! 205
16.7 Xabaras, between good and evil, life and death 207
Contributors

Ingrid Butler is a second-year Master of Library and Information Science

student at the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA. She holds an
MPhil in Education (specializing in children’s and young adult literature)
from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor of Art in English from
the University of California, Davis, USA.
Lauren Chochinov is an instructor at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada
and holds a PhD in Medieval Literature from the University of Edinburgh.
She is a member of the Comics Studies Society and the Canadian Society
for the Study of Comics and has recently presented papers on queer repre-
sentation in comic books and popular culture at both annual conferences.
Gabriella Colombo Machado is a PhD candidate in English Studies at the
University of Montreal. Her dissertation is on the Politics of Female
Friendship in Contemporary Speculative Fiction Across Media. She
earned an MA in Comparative Literature from Western University and
an MA in Literatures in English from VU University Amsterdam. Her
research interests are feminist theory, care ethics, science fction, and
graphic novels.
John Darowski is a PhD candidate in Comparative Humanities at the Uni-
versity of Louisville, Louisville, USA. He has edited an essay collection on
Superman adaptations (McFarland) and has published several essays on
the history of superheroes.
Joseph J. Darowski teaches English at Brigham Young University, Utah,
USA. He is a member of the editorial board of The Journal of Popu-
lar Culture and has previously edited essay collections on the ages of
Superman, Wonder Woman, the X-Men, the Avengers, Iron Man, the
Incredible Hulk, the Flash, the Justice League, and Black Panther. Addi-
tionally, he has coauthored with Kate Darowski volumes on the television
series Cheers and Frasier.
Blair Davis is Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies in the
College of Communication at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois,
 List of Contributors xiii
USA. His books include The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and
the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema (Rutgers UP, 2012); Movie Com-
ics: Page to Screen/Screen to Page (Rutgers UP, 2017); and Comic Book
Movies (Rutgers UP, 2018). His newest book, Of Comics and Women:
Characters, Creators, Culture, 1935–1960, was published by University
of Texas Press in 2021. He has written about comics and pop culture
for USA Today, The Washington Post, and Ms. Magazine and has writ-
ten comics-related essays in numerous anthologies, including Comics and
Pop Culture (2019), Working Class Comic Book Heroes (2018), and the
Eisner-Award-winning The Blacker the Ink (2015).
Alexandre Desbiens-Brassard has recently obtained his PhD in Comparative
Literature from the Western University (London, Ontario, Canada). His
doctoral thesis explored the use of monsters to criticize or comment on
the intersection of scientifc research and capitalism. He also earned his
MA in Comparative Canadian Literature from the University of Sher-
brooke (Québec, Canada).
Marco Favaro obtained his doctorate in Human Sciences and Cultural Stud-
ies at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg in cooperation with the phi-
losophy department at the Università degli Studi di Verona. His thesis, The
Mask of the Antihero, defnes the structures of the contemporary super-
hero’s genre and its implicit philosophical concepts. In 2020 and 2021, he
worked as Lecturer at Bamberg University, presenting a seminar on the
“antihero.” Many of his numerous conference presentations, courses, and
papers are available online on: https://bamberg.academia.edu/MFavaro.
Henry Kamerling is Senior Instructor in the History Department at Seattle
University, Seattle, Washington, USA. He is a historian of crime and pun-
ishment in American history and a scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century social and cultural history. Kamerling is also the author of Capital
and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America
(University of Virginia Press, 2017). Dr Kamerling is currently working
on a manuscript examining the pantheon of Marvel’s comic book mon-
sters from the 1970s.
Christina M. Knopf (PhD) is Associate Professor of Communication and
Media Studies at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland.
Dr Knopf’s teaching and research broadly focuses on the intersections
of popular culture and political communication. She is Distinguished
Research Fellow of the Eastern Communication Association.
Rui Lopes is Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, and Assistant
Researcher at Lisbon’s Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA-FCSH,
specializing in Cold War visual culture.
Anna Marta Marini is a PhD Research Fellow at Universidad de Alcalá,
where she works on the representation of border-crossing and the “other
xiv List of Contributors
side” in American cinema. Her main research interests are: critical dis-
course analysis related to violence; representations of the US borderlands
and Mexican American heritage; otherness re/construction in flm and
comics, particularly in the noir, horror, and weird western genres.
Debaditya Mukhopadhyay is Assistant Professor of English at Manikchak
College, affliated with the University of Gour Banga, West Bengal, India.
He has contributed chapters to the collections entitled Parenting Through
Pop Culture (McFarland, 2020), Excavating Indiana Jones (McFarland,
2020), Critical Insights: Life of Pi (Salem Press, 2020), and Children and
Childhood in the Works of Stephen King (Lexington, 2020).
Yelena Novitskaya is Archives and Special Collections Librarian and
Assistant Professor at the City University of New York. She is also a
book editor and a translator specializing in cross-disciplinary studies,
twentieth-century Russian literary heritage, scholarly works on art his-
tory, and philological studies. Her previous publications include essays by
Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde and books by Hugh Lofting and other
authors translated from English into Russian. Weird and horror literature
is one of her special interests.
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (PhD in Cinema Studies, PhD candidate
in History) works at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). He teaches
courses on international horror flm and has authored a book about Span-
ish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir (Universidad de Cádiz)
and has edited a book on James Wan’s flms and one on Japanese horror
culture (Lexington).
Annick Pellegrin graduated from The University of Sydney after completing
a doctoral thesis comparing representations of Latin America in Franco-
Belgian, Mexican, and Argentinian comics. She is a columns and articles
editor for the Comics Forum and sits on the editorial board of Studies in
Comics. Her research has been published in French, English, and Spanish
and she works as a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of French, His-
panic and Italian Studies at The University of British Columbia.
Andrew Smith (PhD in Literature) works for the University of Central Flor-
ida in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric. His dissertation, What
Do Manga Depict?, attempted to bridge the gap between general, out-
dated visions of Japanese manga and draw modern critical attention to
one of the largest comic cultures in the world. His interests include comic
studies, visual arts, video games, horror, Victorian literature, and Asian
literature.
Trevor Snyder is Instructor in the Department of English at Virginia Tech
University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Since 2015, he has co-hosted a pod-
cast concerning the cultural impact of X-Men comics, and in 2019 he
delivered the presentation “The Darkest Knight: Batman as Gotham’s
 List of Contributors xv
Greatest Villain” at Bowling Green State University’s Batman in Popular
Culture Conference.
Tosha R. Taylor is a researcher in horror flm and comics who teaches in
the greater New York area. She has published a number of book chapters
and articles on horror and superhero comics, with a particular focus on
representations of gender and otherness. She holds a PhD from Lough-
borough University, where she studied the intersection of problematised
“American” identity and captivity in horror flms.
1 Introduction
John Darowski and Fernando
Gabriel Pagnoni Berns

Horror is a universal genre. Every culture throughout history has had a

storytelling tradition of terrifying thrills and frightening chills. Unlike most
other genres, horror is not tied to a narrative formula but defned by its
emotional effect. Fred Botting describes this genre’s negative aesthetic as:
“Bound up with feelings of revulsion, disgust, and loathing, horror induces
states of shuddering or paralysis, the loss of one’s faculties, particularly con-
sciousness and speech, or a general physical powerlessness and mental con-
fusion” (185). What a society deems scary constantly transforms and adapts
to address the cultural anxieties framing a specifc era and geography. As
such, horror, much like its related genre of the gothic, must be “a highly
unstable genre” that is “pliable and malleable” (Hogle 1–2). Since it is an
affective genre, its fexibility allows it to easily mix, cross, and blend with
other genres so that elements of horror may appear almost anywhere.
The appeal of horror is an intriguing contradiction. Noël Carroll sums
up this paradox in A Philosophy of Horror (1990) as “1) how can anyone
be frightened by what they know does not exist and 2) why would any-
one be interested in horror, since being horrifed is unpleasant?” (8). As to
the frst, at a basic level, horror is part of the human condition. The feel-
ings of disgust, revulsion, or abjection most commonly rely on a materi-
ality that places before the audience something from which they want to
avert their gaze, which is best accomplished through a visual medium like
comic books, flm, and television. The most powerful images that evoke a
negative emotional response are those that involve bodily harm, which can
range from violence to decay, because it is a vicarious reminder of mortality.
On a more existential level, horror can reveal the inherent contradictions
and instability of a society. And yet, and this is to Carroll’s latter question,
horror can subversively reinforce social mores. These moral messages can
be made through “an ironic distance that would distinguish the ‘preachies’
from actual preaching” (Whitted 84). The audience is then able to experi-
ence the thrill of breaking cultural taboos and the catharsis of witnessing
the perpetrator be punished. As Jeffrey A. Brown puts it: “Horror is meant
to be frightening and disruptive even if it ultimately manages to reestablish
the status quo however precariously” (197). This is not to say that horror

DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-1
2 Darowski and Pagnoni Berns
presents a simple Manichean paradigm. In recent decades, postmodern hor-
ror has seen a more nihilistic approach where good people are harmed and
evil is left unpunished.
Horror comic books have had a turbulent history, waxing and waning
in popularity according to changing cultural anxieties; at times, they have
been a source of that anxiety. The historiography of American horror comic
books has been well documented. Mike Benton’s Horror Comics: An Illus-
trated History (1991) and Richard Arndt’s Horror Comics in Black and
White: A History and Catalogue, 1964–2004 (2014) offer guides and over-
views to the many titles devoted to the genre. The Horror Comic Never
Dies: A Grisly History (2019) by Michael Walton presents a historical anal-
ysis of the near-80 years of the genre’s publication. The Horror Comics:
Fiends, Freaks, and Fantastic Creatures, 1940s–1980s (2014) by William
Schoell gives a more in-depth examination of the frst half of that timeline
while Comic Scare Returns: The Contemporary Resurgence of Horror Com-
ics (2019) by Terrance R. Wandtke devotes itself to analysis of the latter
half. Particular attention is made to one of the most signifcant publishers
of horror in Qiana Whitted’s EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest
(2019), which examines how EC Comics engaged with the prejudices and
social issues of the early 1950s through subversive storytelling strategies.
A history of British horror comic books has also been developed. Martin
Barker’s A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Com-
ics Campaign (2014) examines the campaign against horror comics in Great
Britain in the early 1950s, mirroring the similar campaign in the United
States spearheaded by Dr. Fredric Wertham. Gothic for Girls: Misty and
British Comics (2019) by Julia Round brings into focus the production and
cultural context of the popular 1970’s series Misty, which was specifcally
targeted to young female readers.
While the histories of horror comics in non-English countries still need
to be written, having a historiography established offers the opportunity to
apply other theoretical approaches. Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels
(2014) by Julia Round applies not only historicism but also narratology and
cultural studies to both American and British comic books. Scott Bukat-
man’s Hellboy’s World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins (2016) is a
study focused on one creator, Mike Mignola, and his most famous creation,
Hellboy. Monstrous Women in Comics (2020), edited by Samantha Langs-
dale and Elizabeth Rae Coody, applies gender studies to a variety of genres
with an emphasis on horror comic books. Though all the books listed before
only represent a sample and are also not meant to preclude the essays pub-
lished in various journals on the topic, there does appear to be a perpetual
American- and Anglo-centrism within comic book studies.
There are three main areas in the study of horror comic books and
graphic novels which require academic attention: frst, a lack of close read-
ings analyzing the many meanings and themes within a particular work or
by specifc creators from an interdisciplinary perspective; second, too much
 Introduction 3
focus on specifc periods in the historiography, such as the classic boom era
in the early 1950s, which marginalizes other periods; and third, the under-
representation of non-English texts. This edited collection addresses these
issues and will fll in many gaps with content aimed not only at various
eras but also at geographies. Though the majority of essays focus on Ameri-
can publications, attention is divided between mainstream and independ-
ent series while also providing ample analysis of diverse titles published in
Spain, France, Italy, India, and Japan. These essays apply a variety of inter-
disciplinary perspectives to the study of horror comics, varying from post-
humanism, politics, and psychology to adaptation studies, gender studies,
and economic theory. This volume thus offers new critical insights address-
ing zones of vacancy within comic book studies.
The frst section, “Horror Comic Books in a Socio-Historical Context,”
investigates how the horror comic genre taps into its cultural situation by
encoding and negotiating societal fears, anxieties, and national traumas. As
such, these comics address readers with depictions of monstrosity and hor-
ror which allegorize conficts and times of crisis. The section opens with
Rui Lopes’ “From Caligari to Wertham: When EC’s Horror Comics Feared
for Their Own Survival.” Lopes makes a close reading of two classic EC’s
horror comics to analyze how the Red Scare and the moral panics regard-
ing horror comics are addressed, revealing a self-conscious attitude about
the impeding and potential death of horror comics in the 1950s. Henry
Kamerling’s “‘Men have Sentenced this Fen to Death’: Marvel’s Man-Thing
and the Liberation Politics of the 1970s” traces how the countercultural
and leftist ideas delineating part of the American 1970s, including the green
agenda, are metaphorized into the monstrous body of Marvel’s bog man,
the Man-Thing. Not only the monstrous nature of the green creature but
also his adventures tapped into an effervescent climate of anti-bourgeois
culture. In “The Horrors Haunting the City of Joy: Analyzing the Trau-
mas of the Counterinsurgency in City of Sorrows,” Debaditya Mukhopad-
hyay addresses the fact that Indian horror comics mostly eschew talking
about national issues, with City of Sorrows being an exception. The story
offers a remarkable portrayal of real-life horrors from 1970’s counterinsur-
gency movements and their lingering trauma. Closing the section, Fernando
Gabriel Pagnoni Berns’ “Spanish Creepy: Historical Amnesia in ‘Las mil
caras de Jack el destripador’ ” investigates how one of the most overlooked
periods of Spain’s history, “la movida,” is refected, through a dark glass,
in the eternal return of Jack the Ripper, a metaphor for the end of history
dominating the country in the frst half of the 1980s.
The next section, “Race and Gender in Horror Comic Books,” explores
the horror comic genre and its monsters form an intersectional perspec-
tive with an emphasis on issues of race and gender, offering an analysis on
the processes of marginalization that defnes monstrosity. Lauren Chochi-
nov’s “‘A Sight to Dream of, Not to Tell!’: Orality and Power in Margue-
rite Bennett and Ariela Kristantina’s InSEXts” investigates forms of female
4 Darowski and Pagnoni Berns
empowerment and the feminine voice. Drawing on Gothic inspirations
to subvert expectations regarding vampirism and body horror, the comic
defes Victorian ideologies pertaining to motherhood, marriage, and sexu-
ality. Tosha R. Taylor’s “Gendered Violence and the Abject Body in Junji
Itō’s Tomie” explores Itō’s horror manga and its questions about the nature
of patriarchal violence, invoking popular discourses of such violence while
complicating victim/villain dichotomies via body horror and grotesque
abjection. Blair Davis’s “Lily Renée’s The Werewolf Hunter and the Secret
Origin of Horror Comics” brings from obscurity one of the frst female art-
ists of horror comics, Lily Renée, and explores how her infuence is felt in
the period of classic horror in the 1940s. Giving visibility to female agency,
Renée’s oeuvre lies at the roots of the horror comics’ phenomenon. Gender
issues are central in Alexandre Desbiens-Brassard and Gabriella Colombo
Machado’s “The Wolf Only Needs to Find You Once: Food, Feeding, and
Fear in the Dark Fairy Tales of Emily Carroll.” Through an interdiscipli-
nary investigation that unites food studies and fairy tale studies, the authors
address the interlinking of monstrosity and actions such as feeding, biting,
and chewing as the primary vectors of otherness. Closing this section, Anna
Marta Marini investigates issues of race in “Borderland Werewolves: The
Horrifc Representation of the U.S.–Mexico Border in Feeding Ground.”
Through an interdisciplinary lens linking border studies and horror comics,
the author explores how the werewolf trope is used as an allegory of the
tensions marking the limits dividing the United States from Mexico and the
normal from the abnormal.
“Adaptation in Horror Comic Books” investigates how a source text is
transformed in the passage to illustration and panels, varying from respect-
ful takes on classics by authors such as H. P. Lovecraft to an irreverent
rewriting of the Frankenstein’s myth. Using transmedia studies, Trevor Sny-
der investigates one of the most overlooked facets in horror master George
Romero’s body of work: his comic books. In “Flesh and Blood: Zombies,
Vampires, and George A. Romero’s Transmedia Expansion of the Dead,”
Snyder analyzes how Romero continues and expands his “living dead”
universe in the comic books’ medium. In “An Alien World: A Comic Book
Adaptation of The Willows by Algernon Blackwood,” Yelena Novitskaya
explores how a comic book’s adaptation of Blackwood’s novella bleeds
into H. P. Lovecraft’s mythology, producing a complex text that taps into
the imaginative universes of both authors. Andrew Smith’s “Horror Trans-
formed: Tanabe Gou’s Manga Adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft” offers a new
take on the many diffculties found at the moment of translating Lovecraft’s
horrors into another medium, using Tanabe Gou’s manga as a case study.
“Mutant Gothic: Marvel’s Mainstreaming of Horror in Uncanny X-Men”
from Joseph J. Darowski traces the presence of Gothic horror in the popular
X-Men comics. According the author, the inception of this Gothic thread
is found in Dracula’s frst intervention in the now classic Uncanny X-Men
#159, a story blending superhero tropes with horror. The section closes with
 Introduction 5
John Darowski’s “Franken-Castle: Monster Hunters, Monstrous Masculini-
ties, and the Punisher,” an adaptation of ideas and narratives from Mary
Shelley’s immortal novel. This new take revolves around Marvel’s favorite
anti-hero, the Punisher, being turned into one of the most famous anti-
heroes of literature, the Frankenstein monster. This shift emphasizes issues
of monstrosity and toxic masculinity inherent to the Marvel’s character.
At the end, “Horror Comic Books and Philosophy” explores the juncture
between philosophy and comics, offering new insights on the ontology of
horror and being. Marco Favaro investigates the fgure of the double and
the uncanny in one of the most long-lived – and often overlooked – hor-
ror comic series: Italy’s Dylan Dog. Using Freudian and Jungian concepts,
Favaro analyzes issues of human ontology, the Doppelgänger, and monstros-
ity. In “Messages of Death: Haunted Media in ‘Kaine: Endorphins – Between
Life and Death,’ ” Ingrid Butler offers new readings on the theme of the dou-
ble in relationship with the power of media to (re)create the human identity
in Kaori Yuki’s manga. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s philosophy, Chris-
tina M. Knopf explores issues of homogeneity and difference in her chapter
“Heterotopia and Horror at Show’s End.” Knopf reveals that the circus life
offered by the comic oscillates between transgression and warnings about
the danger of such transgressions through the concept of “freakery.” Closing
the section, Annick Pelligren explores extreme capitalism in the French hor-
ror comic Zombillénium. “The Hell Economics of Zombillénium” takes on
capitalist realism, investigating how the comic allegorizes naturalized forms
of exploitation and abuse in the contemporary world.

Conclusion
Currently, horror comic books are in the midst of a renaissance, a fact which
should not be surprising. For many, the present day is a horror story: politi-
cal crises – both neoliberal and populist – jaded cynicism, terrorism, global
pandemics, ecocide, etc. Horror comic books are only becoming more rel-
evant and successful. Mainstream superhero titles are planting a fag in the
horror landscape, with popular titles such as Marvel Comics’ Immortal
Hulk (Aug. 2018 to Dec. 2021) by writer Al Ewing and penciler Joe Bennet,
DC Comics’ DCeased (July–Dec. 2019) by writer Tom Taylor and penciler
Trevor Hairsine, and DC vs. Vampires (Oct. 2021 to present) by writers
James Tynion IV and Matthew Rosenberg and artist Otto Schmidt. DC
Comics has also found success partnering with author Joe Hill for the Hill
House Comics imprint beginning in December 2019 as well as establishing
the DC Horror imprint as of August 2021. Horror comics are being adapted
as never before, with varying degrees of success, in shows such as The Walk-
ing Dead (2010–2022, AMC) and its spin-offs, Locke and Key (2020 to pre-
sent, Netfix) and Sweet Tooth (2021 to present, Netfix). Horror comics are
also becoming more accessible in a global market. The popular web comic
app WEBTOON has a section devoted to the genre with its most popular
6 Darowski and Pagnoni Berns
title, Carnby Kim and Youngchan Hwang’s Sweet Home (14 Jan. 2018–29
Sept. 2020), having received over 17 million views. The South Korean televi-
sion adaptation of Sweet Home topped the daily viewing charts in multiple
countries when it premiered on Netfix in December 2020 (Ji-won). Horror
comics are as popular as ever, but their reach into popular culture makes
them present as never before. How they will transform to address the ongo-
ing crises and anxieties only remains to be seen.

Works Cited
Botting, Fred. “Horror.” The Handbook of the Gothic. 2nd ed., edited by Marie
Mulvey-Roberts. New York University Press, 2009, pp. 184–191.
Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart. Routledge,
1990.
Hogle, Jerrold E. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture.” The Cambridge
Companion to Gothic Fiction, edited by Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge University
Press, 2002, pp. 1–20.
Ji-won, Kim. “Korean Dramas Growing Popularity on Netfix.” UPI, 29 Janu-
ary 2021, www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/TV/2021/01/29/Korean-dramas-
growing-in-popularity-on-Netfix/3831611936669/. Accessed 1 October 2021.
Whitted, Qiana. EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest. Rutgers University
Press, 2019.
Part I

Horror Comic Books in a

Socio-Historical Context
2 From Caligari to Wertham
When EC’s Horror Comics
Feared for Their Own Survival
Rui Lopes

EC Comics’ classic horror anthologies The Haunt of Fear (cover dates May/
June 1950 to Nov./Dec. 1954), The Vault of Horror (Apr./May 1950 to Dec.
1954/Jan. 1955), and Tales from the Crypt (Oct./Nov. 1950 to Feb./Mar.
1955), to which can be added the diverse thriller-themed Shock Suspen-
Stories (Feb./Mar. 1952 to Dec. 1954/Jan. 1955), featured several recurring
sources of fear, from vampires and werewolves to ghosts and ghouls.1 Along
with supernatural monsters, much of the horror derived from human ruth-
lessness, presenting seemingly average citizens driven to murder by greed,
lust, revenge, and/or marital strife. Additionally, a prominent source of fear
was fear itself, that is, the probability that actions prompted by unthinking,
unjustifed paranoia and by exaggerated or misdirected panic could ulti-
mately prove themselves more harmful than whatever terror they sought
to placate in the frst place. The villains of the latter stories, then, were not
those perceived by the characters themselves but by the psychological ele-
ments (prejudices, mental illness) and people (fanatics, demagogues) that
exacerbated, manipulated, and exploited their fear.
An analysis of this strand of stories reveals their engagement with two dis-
tinct, if increasingly interconnected, sociopolitical phenomena of the United
States of the early 1950s. One of them is the second Red Scare (1947–1957),
the widespread fear over the possible rise of communist forces in the United
States coupled with the perceived threat of an attack by the Soviet Union.
Cold War geopolitics, most notably the US involvement in the Korean War
(1950–1953), and domestic espionage scandals, particularly the 1951 trial
of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, gave the fear of communism a prominent
place in public imagination. This strain of fear was further exacerbated
by the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC), Senator Joseph McCarthy’s accusations of top-level communist
infltration, and the American Legion’s lobbying campaigns, leading to the
practice known as “red-baiting,” that is harassing and persecuting peo-
ple on account of their suspected – or fabricated – communist sympathies
(Schrecker 42–85, 240–65). The other phenomenon was the growing outcry
over comics’ alleged harmful infuence on children, which found expres-
sion in comic-book burnings, boycotts, bans, and publications accusing

DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-3
10 Rui Lopes
comics of promoting illiteracy and antisocial behavior, including Dr. Fre-
dric Wertham’s sensationalist book Seduction of the Innocent, published on
19 April 1954. While Wertham, a left-leaning psychiatrist, did not link his
campaign against comics to anti-communism, the two causes found com-
mon defenders and argumentative strategies, warning against the erosion
of American values and accusing their critics of fronting for hidden con-
spirators. Notably, both culminated in televised Senate hearings beginning
in April 1954: one to investigate conficting accusations between McCarthy
and the US Army, including the charge that the latter was infltrated by com-
munists (22 April to 17 June) and the other to investigate comics’ potential
impact on juvenile delinquency (21–22 April and 4 June). At the latter, Wer-
tham gave an extensive testimony as an expert witness, using imagery from
EC’s horror titles to sustain his position (Wright 86–108).
Close readings of the tales “You, Murderer” (Shock SuspenStories #14
[Apr./May 1954]), written by Otto Binder and drawn by Bernard Krigstein,
and “The Prude” from the fnal issue of The Haunt of Fear, #28 (Nov./Dec.
1954), written by Carl Wessler with art by Graham Ingles, demonstrate that
EC developed horror narratives that served to address the Red Scare and
eventually applied them to the moral panic over comics. EC thus ultimately
came to fctionalize the fear of its own extinction, appealing to readers’
identifcation with the publisher’s anxiety.

“You, Murderer”: McCarthyism as Expressionistic

Nightmare
EC’s horror comics were shaped by an antiestablishment slant from the
onset. Founded in 1944 by one of the medium’s pioneers, editor Max
Gaines, EC (originally Educational Comics) had frst been geared toward
wholesome, patriotic, and pedagogical publications such as Picture Stories
from the Bible (#1–3 [1944–1946]). Following Gaines’ death in a boating
accident on 20 August 1947, EC was inherited by Gaines’ 25-year-old son,
William “Bill” Gaines. Bill was initially disinterested in the comics’ business,
in whose studios he had been subjected to violence and humiliation by his
father. Soon, however, he developed a prolifc partnership with the editor,
writer, and artist Al Feldstein, co-plotting hundreds of stories as part of a
radical shift in content, starting with a move toward crime, romance, and
western series and with a change to a more commercially appealing com-
pany name, Entertaining Comics. In 1950, EC launched its New Trend line
of horror, crime, war, and science fction anthologies. Aimed at teenagers
rather than at the prototypical 8-year-old readers, New Trend comics stood
out not only due to their pool of talented artists with innovative styles,
but also because of their penchant for grisly, tongue-in-cheek tales desa-
cralizing the Cold War consensus and institutions like the military, police,
marriage, and racial segregation (Geissman 8–299; Jacobs 25–88; Whitted
3–24). Although not entirely devoid of ethnic stereotypes (its voodoo stories
 From Caligari to Wertham 11
betrayed an ethnocentric depiction of otherized cultures) or of misogynistic
tropes (the gold digger, the femme fatale, and the nagging wife), those com-
ics tended to combine a black sense of humor with a liberal social sensibility,
vigorously condemning mob violence and bigotry. While their caustic spirit
upset parents’ associations, it appealed to young audiences and proved to
be highly infuential in popular culture. A relatively small publisher with
a weak distribution system, the most EC ever sold of each horror comic
was about 400,000, half of the sales fgures of the average issue published
by the leading Dell (Gabilliet 39–40). Yet, its output inspired a plethora of
derivative series and a prominent place in the debate over comics’ nefarious
infuence.
Many of the Gaines/Feldstein horror stories – whose formula was often
emulated by other writers – involved abusive authority fgures receiving a
vicious, ironic comeuppance, easily lending themselves to Freudian inter-
pretations about Bill Gaines’ relationship with his father. Yet, it is just as
tempting to read a bitter commentary on McCarthyism in the way they
persistently denounced and/or mocked acts of intolerance. This connection
was not merely allegorical but sometimes quite explicit: for example, “The
Patriots!” (Shock SuspenStories #2 [April/May 1952]) is set at a military
parade for soldiers returning from the Korean War where a mob beats a
sneering man to death after having mistaken him for a communist for failing
to take off his hat in front of the fag. The fnal twist comes when the man
turns out to be a disfgured, blind war veteran himself (19–24).2 Co-plotted
by Gaines and Feldstein, with pencils and inks by Jack Davis, the story
not only denounced the undiscriminating rage of the era’s anticommunist
brand of jingoism, but it also linked it to racist xenophobia, as the mob’s
leaders assumed the man was foreign based on his nose and skin tone (21).3
Although unsubtle, “The Patriots!” is not without a subtext since the notion
that anticommunism could mobilize the masses toward displaying lethal
violence against foreigners ultimately mirrored the United States’ ongoing
mobilization for the Korean War on display in the parade. While the latter
was not necessarily challenged by this juxtaposition, the war was at the very
least presented as fueling hate crimes at home.
The depiction of the Red Scare as a dangerous trigger for misdirected
violence was given a more cynical spin in “You, Murderer,” where a stage
hypnotist, Professor Galby, hypnotizes the unnamed protagonist into beat-
ing to death Galby’s wife’s lover with an old, rusting chain. Acknowledg-
ing that hypnotism “can never force a subject to violate his own moral
code . . . commit a crime he does not himself desire to commit,” Galby
explicitly announces the need to disguise the murder’s motive, tricking the
protagonist. The villainous hypnotist therefore tells him that the victim,
John Storch, is actually “a dangerous criminal . . . a spy . . . a communist
spy . . . a saboteur.” The improvisational fow of Galby’s words suggests a
hierarchy, as if each new label is increasingly hateful. More than ideologi-
cal antagonism, the villain utilizes fear, explaining to the protagonist that
12 Rui Lopes
Storch is “assembling an atomic bomb” in order “to blow up the entire
downtown area of this city” so that “thousands upon thousands of people
will be killed.” Twisting conventionally positive values into a justifcation
for an unsympathetic act, Galby adds: “It is your patriotic duty to kill him
with the chain! . . . It will be a noble deed! You’ll save your friends . . .
countless innocent lives . . . Gain honor . . . respect. You’ll be a hero!” (19).
Unlike in “The Patriots!”, here anticommunist patriotism is no longer just
a problematic idea with unintended consequences but a weapon effectively
wielded by a callous manipulator pursuing personal aims – that is, Galby’s
marital revenge – and framing someone else for the deed: “You’ll be killing
my wife’s lover for me . . . leaving your fngerprints on the chain . . . going
to the electric chair in my place!” (20). Despite the conjugal motivation and
the literal use of hypnotism, it is not hard to discern a veiled reference to
Joseph McCarthy affrming his personal power by directing anticommunist
fear against his adversaries, a tactic on growing public display by the time
the story was published in early 1954.4
A set of key choices by writer Otto Binder, artist Bernie Krigstein, and
colorist Marie Severin added extra layers to an otherwise linear six-page
narrative. One concerns the framing device of simultaneously illustrating
the entire story from the protagonist’s viewpoint while having the narra-
tion speak to him through the second-person singular. This creates a double
identifcation in the readers: by accessing the action through a subjective
pair of eyes and seemingly being addressed by the text, readers are immersed
in the protagonist’s position rather than witnessing his tragedy from an out-
sider’s vantage point. The horror of the murder scene (21) therefore stems
from: a) graphically visualizing a brutal murder; b) knowing the victim is
innocent of the murder’s justifcation; c) facing the shock of the victim’s
lover, Irma Galby, who walks in, screams, and faints; d) feeling trapped in
the protagonist’s body without control over his unfair actions; e) knowing
the protagonist is putting himself in a position where he will be framed (by
leaving fngerprints on the chain) and probably convicted with a death pen-
alty; and f) being aware that such a vicious situation draws on real-world
attitudes, associating the ensuing unpleasantries with the existing manipula-
tion of aggressive hatred and suspicion of communists.
Marie Severin emphasized the frst and fnal elements through visual puns.
In the panel where the protagonist, killing John Storch, swears at him and
calls him “red” while the narration describes the illusion (“You fnished
your job as a loyal American . . . beating the bloody chain down”), she
colored the protagonist’s hands, clothes, and chain in an unnaturalistic red,
in contrast to John and Irma, whose skin and clothes retained realistic hues.
Thus, contrary to the protagonist’s words, the color red is not linked to a
communist enemy agent but to the vehicles of American bigotry. The fol-
lowing panel, depicting John bleeding on the foor, switches metaphors: the
whole panel is now colored in red, thus illustrating not only the narration
(“the thing on the foor was nothing but a mass of oozing scarlet pulp”),
 From Caligari to Wertham 13
but also the notion that the protagonist is possessed by uncontrollable rage,
literalizing the common expression “seeing red” (21).
The ending conveys that the narrator was Professor Galby all along,
talking near the protagonist’s bed the day after the murder, so that the
narration retroactively sounds like the villain bragging about his triumph
and the visuals like fashbacks taking place within the protagonist’s mind.
This late revelation places readers in an even more manipulated position,
which furthers the identifcation with the hypnotized protagonist. Driving
home the point that the readers themselves could be targets of jingoistic
propaganda, the penultimate panel is a close-up of the hypnotist’s right
hand pointing in the direction of the protagonist/reader in a way evocative
of Uncle Sam in the iconic World War I “I Want You for U.S. Army” recruit-
ment poster. In the fnal panel, Galby stares in the direction of the “fourth
wall” and asks “Don’t you remember me?” as if daring readers to search
their memories for the sources of their manipulation (22).
Finally, an additional layer is brought about by the comic’s allusions to
Robert Wiene’s classic of German expressionist cinema The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari (1920).That flm’s central plot concerns the titular stage hypnotist
sending out a hypnotized somnambulist, Cesare, to commit crimes for him,
including murder, in the fctional city of Holstenwall. Besides modeling Galby
after Caligari’s physiognomy and facial features, Bernie Krigstein’s artwork
appears to channel the flm’s nightmarish, angular set design, an intertextual
nod underlined by the opening splash’s signature as “Dr. Caligari Krigstein”
(17). Asked if he had emulated the movie in a later career interview, Krigstein
claimed the connection was looser: “No, it was just that I felt that there is
a similarity of genre, that’s all. Both very weird, and rather expressionistic”
(15). Nevertheless, the description of the flm’s visuals in Siegfried Kracauer’s
seminal study From Caligari to Hitler (1947) closely applies to “You, Mur-
derer,” particularly to the frst couple of panels on page 22:

the canvases of CALIGARI abounded in complexes of jagged, sharp-

pointed forms strongly reminiscent of gothic patterns. . . . With its
oblique chimneys on pell-mell roofs, its windows in the form of arrows
or kites and its treelike arabesques that were threats rather than trees,
Holstenwall resembled those visions of unheard-of cities which the
painter Lyonell Feiniger evoked through his edgy, crystalline compo-
sitions. In addition, the ornamental system in CALIGARI expanded
through space, annulling its conventional aspect by means of painted
shadows in disharmony with the lighting effects, and zigzag delinea-
tions designed to efface all rules of perspective.
(68–9)

Likewise, Severin’s palette often matched the movie’s recurrent dyes by

drenching entire panels in shades of blue or orange, along with the afore-
mentioned red one.
14 Rui Lopes
The most provocative aspect, however, was the comic’s very departure
from this source of inspiration. According to Kracauer, The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari had originally been written by the pacifsts Hans Janowitz and Carl
Mayer as “an outspoken revolutionary story” half-intentionally stigmatiz-
ing “the omnipotence of a state authority manifesting itself in universal con-
scription and declarations of war,” creating Cesare “with the dim design
of portraying the common man who, under the pressure of compulsory
military service, is drilled to kill and to be killed” (64–5). This intent had
then allegedly been perverted by Wiene’s fnal product, which had bracketed
the central story – where the hero, Francis, seeks to expose Caligari’s evil
deeds – within a framing device that reveals the story as Francis’ deluded
account. The hero is now shown to be committed to an insane asylum whose
director, played by the same actor as Caligari (Werner Krauss), is actually a
mild-mannered doctor seeking his patient’s cure. Kracauer argued: “While
the original story exposed the madness inherent in authority, Wiene’s CALI-
GARI glorifed authority and convicted its antagonist of madness” (66). If
the recovery of the original script has largely discredited Kracauer’s inter-
pretation of the story’s creative progression (Budd 28–9), “You, Murderer,”
by contrast, does ultimately fulfll the revolutionary potential undermined
by the flm’s epilogue. After all, while the comic’s main story is also a subjec-
tive fashback of a distorted mind, the distortion now stems not from a men-
tal patient unfairly rebelling against a benign authority fgure but from the
authority fgure’s own manipulative actions. Moreover, without a Francis-
like hero/narrator, readers are ushered to identify with the position of the
Cesare-like protagonist, perhaps recognizing themselves as being drilled by
powerful war-mongers into exerting the government’s aggressive agenda,
whether at home or in Korea.
Regardless of this political subtext, the reference to The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari can be understood as an effort to validate the medium of com-
ics. Biographer Greg Sadowski stresses Krigstein’s commitment to develop
the potential of graphic storytelling, placing himself in a tradition stretch-
ing back to the earliest cave drawings and arguing that the problem with
comics’ legitimation was their mass consumption: “It’s so popular it doesn’t
have artistic respect” (qtd. in 78). It therefore made sense to call back to a
horror flm that had contributed to cinema’s own historical appreciation
as an art form. Such concern was particularly noteworthy at a time when
comics appeared to be under attack and their industry accused of proft-
ing – like Galby – from exploiting insecurities and inciting heinous behavior.
In a 1973 interview, Otto Binder recounted that there “was a period right
around the Senate hearings on comics [in 1954] when you didn’t say what
you wrote for a living,” adding:

I think Wertham knew he could get attention and make money criticiz-
ing comics. Just like McCarthy and the commies. Who was going to
stick up for comics? He probably doesn’t believe a word he said about
 From Caligari to Wertham 15
comics. . . . God, he got me mad back then. He infuriated the hell out
of me.
(qtd. in Schelly, Otto Binder, 126)

Revealingly, if Prof. Galby/Dr. Caligari shared obvious traits with Sen.

McCarthy, then – in Binder’s view – so did McCarthy share traits with Dr.
Wertham, whose actions apparently weighed heavily on the writer’s mind
at the time.

“The Prude”: EC’s Final Revenge

Anticommunism was explicitly linked to the anti-comics campaign on the
pages of EC comics, even if the company’s satirical bent may have blurred
the message. Issues published in early 1954, including The Haunt of Fear
#26 (Aug./Sept. 1954), Shock SuspenStories #16 (Aug./Sept. 1954), Tales
from the Crypt #43 (Aug./Sept. 1954), and The Vault of Horror #38 (Aug./
Sept. 1954), featured a humorous editorial piece titled “Are You a Red
Dupe?” written by Bill Gaines and EC’s business manager, Lyle Stuart.
A caricature of red-baiting rhetoric, the piece ironically reversed the charges
leveled against comics’ disruptive infuence, claiming instead that “the
group most anxious to destroy comics are the communists!” The text was
accompanied by a short strip drawn by Jack Davis in a highly cartoony style
depicting comics’ censorship – and a publisher’s execution – in Soviet Rus-
sia, as well as a couple of excerpts: one from the newspaper Daily Worker,
identifed as communist between brackets, attacking comics for “brutalizing
American youth, the better to prepare them for military service in our gov-
ernment’s aims of world domination”; the other by cultural critic Gershon
Legman – mistakenly identifed as Wertham’s ghost writer – warning that
“fantasy violence” would siphon off children’s “resistance against society,
and prevent revolution.” In a tone spoofng over-the-top propaganda, the
editorial claimed that “there are some people in America who would like
to censor . . . who would like to suppress comics” – the dot-dot-dot ellipsis
suggesting that critics’ euphemistic language hid a call for censorship. The
piece bombastically concludes:

So the next time some joker gets up at a P.T.A. meeting, or starts jabber-
ing about the ‘naughty comic books’ at your local candy store, give him
the once-over. We’re not saying he is a communist! He may be innocent
of the whole thing! He may be a dupe! . . . It’s just that he’s swallowed
the red bait.
Gaines, Stewart 1

In the context of EC’s history of condemning McCarthyite attitudes, the

piece was clearly a parody, joking with the fact that comics were criticized
by both Left and Right. However, lacking such context, this did not prevent
16 Rui Lopes
the Hartford Courant from presenting it as a serious example of red-baiting
(Geissman 420–21).
The reliance on context refected the unprecedented degree of complic-
ity between EC and its readership. One of the publisher’s innovations had
been to encourage and publicize each artist’s individualistic style – in con-
trast to other companies’ standardized “house style” and uncredited work –
drawing greater attention to their creative process. Further complicity was
generated by the dialogue developed in the letter columns and by the fan
organization National EC Fan-Addict Club (Schelly, Golden Age, 17–20).
Occasional metafctional tales featured EC’s staff, such as “Horror Beneath
the Streets!” (The Haunt of Fear #17 [Sept./Oct. 1950]), where the ghoulish
hosts of the horror titles – the Crypt Keeper, the Old Witch, and the Vault
Keeper – force Al Feldstein, who wrote and drew the story, and Bill Gaines
to sign a book deal for them. Given this engaged relationship, it was reason-
able to expect fans to be aware of the publisher’s place at the center of the
pushback against comic books, which was also addressed in another, less
playful EC editorial asking readers to write letters in support of comics to
the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (Geissman 418).
Against this backdrop, writer Carl Wessler became particularly devoted
to tales of unfair persecution that resonated with EC’s general discourse
about the comic book scare. Shock SuspenStories #16 – one of the issues to
carry “Are You a Red Dupe?” – contained three Wessler-scripted tales with
variations on the same motif. Turning McCarthyism itself into an allegory,
“The Hazing” tells the story of a college student who, in order to join a
fraternity, manages to get a professor fred by falsely accusing him of being
a communist (8–14). An especially disturbing take on the topic of mob vio-
lence, in “A Kind of Justice” Sheriff Paul Judson rapes a teenage girl and
frames a vagrant for the deed, leading to the vagrant’s death at the hands of
an angry mob (16–23). Once again dramatizing the power of defamation,
“The Pen is Mightier” follows reporter Zack Hamlin, who rises from rags
to riches through slanderous lies (24–30). Like Judson, Hamlin gets away
with his crimes, including murder, culminating in a bitter-yet-resigned nar-
ration: “And so it is with ‘gods’. They stand above us mortals and they pull
the strings. They can do no wrong!” (30). A couple of months later, in Tales
from the Crypt #44 (October/November 1954), Wessler’s “The Sliceman
Cometh” fctionalized the contemporary zeitgeist through another provoca-
tive displacement: during the French Revolution, Jean Courbeau conspires
with executioner Andre Vache to have Courbeau’s brother guillotined – thus
inheriting his fortune – through fake charges of being a royalist sympathizer.
This time, however, there is some poetic justice rendered by EC’s goriest art-
ist, Graham “Ghastly” Ingels: the dead man’s corpse hunts down Vache and
tears off the executioner’s head (23–9).
Meanwhile, EC’s notoriety kept increasing, as Bill Gaines voluntar-
ily became the only publisher to testify at the Subcommittee’s hearing on
 From Caligari to Wertham 17
21 April 1954. He defended the thrills of horror fction, EC’s anti-racist
agenda, children’s consumer rights, and the readers’ ability to distinguish
sheer entertainment from encouraging messages. Faced with intense, hos-
tile questioning concerning EC’s horror output and the “Are You a Red
Dupe?” editorial, however, Gaines struggled to justify his standards of
“good taste,” resulting in a public relations disaster amply reported on
mainstream media. Responding to the ensuing backlash, Gaines organized
an industry-wide joint front, but his efforts backfred: the Comics Magazine
Association of America (CMAA), formalized in September 1954, adopted
a self-regulating code effectively prohibiting all of the visual elements and
subject matter associated with horror, even banning the words “horror” or
“terror” from appearing in covers. Although initially refusing to join the
CMAA, Gaines was unable to counter the tide; that September, EC can-
celled its entire horror line (Geissman, 413–37; Wright 167–77). The Haunt
of Fear’s fnal issue (October/November 1954) opened with an obituary for
the “deceased” series, addressing recent events with a typical mix of outrage
and acerbic wit:

As a result of the hysterical, injudicious, and unfounded charges leveled

at crime and horror comics, many retailers and wholesalers throughout
the country have been intimidated into refusing to handle this type of
magazine. . . . Economically our situation is acute. Magazines that do
not get onto the newsstands do not sell. We are forced to capitulate. . . .
Naturally, with comic magazine censorship now a fact, we at E.C. look
forward to an immediate drop in the crime and juvenile delinquency
rate of the United States. We trust there will be fewer robberies, fewer
murders, and fewer rapes!
Feldstein, “In Memoriam” 1

Given this prologue, an antipathy toward the anti-comics campaign was

bound to inform the reading of the issue’s frst story, the seven-page “The
Prude” by Carl Wessler and Graham Ingels, about “the life and death of
a blue-nosed reformer.” The context was emphasized by Ingels’ signature,
which read “Farewell Ghastly,” and by the introductory words of the host,
the Old Witch, explaining that “this will probably be the last issue of my
putrid periodical” and that “the sad details are in my idiot editor’s column
opposite this page on the inside of the front cover” (2). Thus, despite the
remote setting in a fctitious American town in the early nineteenth cen-
tury, readers were ushered to identify the protagonist, Warren Forbisher, as a
stand-in for another moral crusader, Fredric Wertham – notice the switched
initials.
Having already installed the death penalty for adultery, the titular “prude”
runs an increasingly radical campaign against sin. Through demagogu-
ery, intimidation, and defamation, he manages to outlaw kissing in public,
18 Rui Lopes
holding hands, and couples alone without a chaperone. He even imposes
separate cemeteries for each sex, directing gravedigger Seth Hoskins to open
women’s graves and bury their coffns in a new cemetery across the road,
because “who is to say what goes on in the afterlife” (4). The narration
leaves little ambiguity about the tale’s moral economy, sarcastically labeling
Forbisher “the self-appointed guardian of public morals . . . the pillar of
society . . . the righteous judge of all” (3) and later commenting, with regard
to the cemetery law, that “the anti-immorality campaign had reached the
point of ridiculousness!” (4). This implied that the same held true for the
anti-comics’ crusade.
Unlike the protagonists of Wessler’s aforementioned stories, Warren For-
bisher was not a mere calculating hypocrite, but – as explained in fash-
back – a fanatic moved by a guilty conscience. As a younger man, he had
a long affair with Laura Adams; yet, he refused to divorce his wife, so
Adams took poison and Forbisher watched her die without calling a doc-
tor, for fear of exposing himself to scandal. The narration interprets his
psychology:

He’d fnally found escape from his own guilt by convincing himself that
fate had driven him to sin so that he might know its torment and thus
save others. He’s subconsciously set about righting his own wrongs by
exposing and demanding the end of the wrong doings of others.
(6)

More: “who is to say that the presence of Laura Adams’ body in the town
cemetery was not the subconscious inspiration for Forbisher’s demand for
“separate graveyards”?” (7). Although replacing cynical motivations for
tragically unresolved personal issues, the story once again linked populism
to an individual’s private agenda, even adding that “the ‘good’ folks” who
rallied to Forbisher were themselves plagued by “their own secret hidden
guilts” (7), attributing a key scapegoating dimension to their reforms.
Besides denouncing the moral campaign’s warped worldview, “The
Prude” provides a cathartic response through a supernatural twist. The
reburied women keep getting up, taking their tombstones, and returning to
the original graves, near their husbands, which sets up a payoff along classic
EC lines: in the fnal page, Laura Adams’ “mouldy, maggot-infested, rot-
ting corpse” advances toward a panic-stricken Forbisher. After a suggestive
ellipsis, Seth Hoskins fnds Forbisher and her corpse in a common grave.
The gravedigger’s words – “Why, Mr. Forbisher! Don’t you know there are
laws about that sort of thing! Gasp . . . Shame on you!” – could refer merely
to the fact that Forbisher has been dragged into a woman’s grave. Yet, the
taboo-tinged description – Hoskins “blushed to the roots of his sparse grey
hair and he shook his head” – strongly hint the former lovers are in a nec-
rophiliac position (8). Since readers are not shown if Forbisher ended up
 From Caligari to Wertham 19
there voluntarily or was forced, or his current expression, it is up to the
imagination whether he was the victim of lust or rape; but any interpreta-
tion puts the conservative protagonist in an especially undignifed position
for his own standards. Like in many EC horror tales, the shocking ending
doubles as a darkly comedic punchline suitably followed by a string of puns
by the story’s host, in this case inviting readers to laugh at the expense of an
ersatz-Wertham.
Ironically, much of the impact stems precisely from censorious impulses.
The implicit ambiguity and invisibility of Forbisher’s fate leave part of the
payoff to the readers’ imagination while preventing any empathy derived
from witnessing his gruesome condition. The text’s mocking spirit was toned
down by a respectful artwork: the narration claims Hoskins “grinned at
what he saw,” but Ingels gave him a shocked expression (8). The panels with
the living corpses are covered in a blue tinge, a common strategy deployed
by Marie Severin to obscure the gore – according to her, less because it
offended her sensibility than out of fear that EC would get in trouble with
the law (Ringgenberg 91) – which in this case heightens the dusky mood of
a nocturnal scene. This coloring choice helps restrain even the panel where
the allegory reaches its peak, at the top of page 8, with the ultimate censor
helplessly yelling at unstoppable zombies (a horror icon now symbolic of
dead comics, like The Haunt of Fear, doing one last deed): “Stop! Stop this
wickedness! There are laws against this!”

Conclusion
Just as horror fction relies on the craft of exacerbating, manipulating, and
exploiting fear, it can also be a vehicle to expose and ridicule the use of fear
by outside parties. In the early 1950s, EC’s horror comics targeted the anti-
communist and anti-comic panics stirred up by fgures like Joseph McCa-
rthy and Fredric Wertham, denouncing those who consciously used fear to
achieve or exert personal power and to attack freedom by promoting war,
persecution, or censorship. While “You, Murderer” drew on an expression-
istic flm to present such tactics as a scary phenomenon that could affect the
readers themselves, “The Prude” used a genre trope to simulate a cathartic
revenge against the perceived main opponent of horror comics. If the former
tale visualized the latent violence of Cold War ideology (just as EC’s war
comics were visualizing its overt violence in Korea), the latter literalized
horror’s libidinal appeal, even as it demonstrated the benefts of its own
restraint.
These works therefore sought not only to provoke readers’ fear but also
to comment on fear itself, including on the fear of the very comics that car-
ried those tales. By doing so, EC did more than satirize the sociopolitical
role of certain contemporary strains of panic: it invited fans to share the
publisher’s own existential and commercial dread.
20 Rui Lopes
Notes
1 Each title was published on a bimonthy basis. The Haunt of Fear published 28
issues (#1–28). Tales from the Crypt published 27 issues (#20–46), continuing
the numbering from previous titles: International Comics (#1–5); International
Crime Patrol (#6); Crime Patrol (#7–16); and The Crypt of Terror (#17–19). The
Vault of Horror published 29 issues (#12–40), continuing the numbering from
War Against Crime (#1–11). Shock SuspenStories published 18 issues (#1–18).
2 Page numbers refer to the (unnumbered) sequence of original pages per issue,
including editorials, prose stories, and letter columns. They do not correspond to
the numbers printed on the actual pages, as each story within an issue has its own
autonomous numbering, starting from 1.
3 The issue’s cover emphasized this aspect, showing one of the attackers yelling
“Yuh don’t like it here, why don’t you go back where yuh came from?”
4 The issue was cover-dated April–May, but that signaled when issues were meant
to be removed from newsstands. Issues were published and placed on newsstands
up to 4 months ahead of the cover dates.

Works Cited
Binder, Otto (w), Bernie Krigstein (a) and Marie Severine (c). “You, Murderer.” Shock
SuspenStories #14 (April/May 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 17–22.
Budd, Mike. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories. Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 1990.
Feldstein, Al (w, a). “Horror Beneath the Streets!” The Haunt of Fear #17 (Septem-
ber/October 1950). EC Comics, 1950, pp. 24–30.
____. “In Memoriam.” The Haunt of Fear #28 (December 1954/January 1955). EC
Comics, 1954, p. 1.
Gabilliet, Jean-Paul. Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic
Books. University Press of Mississippi, 2010.
Gaines, William (w), Al Feldstein (w) and Jack Davis (p/i). “The Patriots!” Shock
SuspenStories #2 (April/May 1952). EC Comics, 1952, pp. 19–24.
____, Lyle Stewart (w) and Jack Davis (a). “Are You a Red Dupe?’ Shock SuspenSto-
ries #16 (August/September 1954). EC Comics, 1954, p. 1.
Geissman, Grant. The History of EC Comics. Taschen, 2020.
Jacobs, Frank. The Mad World of William Gaines. L. Stuart, 1972.
Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German
Film. Princeton University Press, 2019 [1947].
Krigstein, Bernard. Interviewed by Bhob Stewart and John Benson. “An Interview
with Bernard Krigstein.” Squa Tront, n.6, 1975, pp. 3–30.
Ringgenberg, Steven. “Marie Severin.” The Comics Journal Library Volume 10: The
EC Artists Part 2. Fantagraphics Books, 2016, pp. 84–95.
Sadowski, Greg. B. Krigstein: 1919–1955. Fantagraphics Books, 2002.
Schelly, Bill. Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction
Visionary. 2nd ed. North Atlantic Books, 2016.
____. The Golden Age of Comics Fandom. Hamster Press, 1995.
Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Little, Brown, and
Company, 1998.
Wessler, Carl (w) and Reed Crandall (a). “A Kind of Justice.” Shock SuspenStories
#16 (August/September 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 16–23.
 From Caligari to Wertham 21
____ and Graham Ingels (a). “The Sliceman Cometh.” Tales from the Crypt # 44
(October/November 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 23–29.
____, Graham Ingels (a) and Marie Severin (c). “The Prude.” The Haunt of Fear #28
(December 1954/January 1955). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 2–8.
____ and Jack Kamen (a). “The Pen Is Mightier.” Shock SuspenStories #16 (August/
September 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 24–30.
____ and Joe Orlando (a). “The Hazing.” Shock SuspenStories #16 (August/Septem-
ber 1954). EC Comics, 1954, pp. 8–14.
Whitted, Quiana. EC Comics: Race, Shock and Social Protest. Rutgers University
Press, 2019.
Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in
America. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
3 “Men Have Sentenced This
Fen to Death”
Marvel’s Man-Thing and the
Liberation Politics of the 1970s
Henry Kamerling

Inside the pages of Marvel Comics’ May 1971 issue of Savage Tales #1
(May 1971), readers meet for the frst time “a monstrous shambling collage
of roots and muck – in the shape (almost) of a MAN!” (Gerber and Alcala,
“Blood of Kings!,” 232). This hulking beast lumbering through the verdant
Everglades, like the surrounding marsh, proved to be an amalgamation of
the bog itself. The swampman known as Man-Thing had enormous crimson
eyes and a mossy brown–green “body” with bulbous pockets of mud, vines,
and rocks protruding from its plant-like “fesh.” While Man-Thing possesses
astonishing power, razor-sharp claws, and a burning touch, the creature’s
plant-like frame often becomes porous as needed. Readers would fnd that
bullets, fsts, and sharp teeth sailed right through it. The creature also oozed
through and beyond the nets and jail-cell bars meant to capture it, all leav-
ing Man-Thing unharmed, uncaged, and free. While Man-Thing emerged
from the human body of Dr. Ted Sallis and took a humanoid form, it lacks
any memory of its prior human self. The swampman possesses no interior
human skeletal or physiological structure: no heart, no lungs, and no brain.
Lacking memory and any purchase on rational thought, the only surviving
element of Man-Thing’s former humanity is a vestigial remnant of his once
human consciousness, a state of being fnding expression in the creature’s
sensing and feeling nature. “The macabre swamp beast called Man-Thing,”
one narrative panel explained, “is a creature not of intellect, but of emotion.
His very nature is empathic. He can ‘read’ the emotions of others. He feels
what they feel” (Gerber and Buscema, “Song-Cry of . . .” 173).
The comic book industry had revised its Comics Code in early 1971, allow-
ing for (among other things) the reintroduction of monster-based comics, a
topic that had been previously forbidden. Marvel Comics moved forcefully
into this newly expanded space, rapidly producing a number of horror-
themed titles (Nyberg 139–143). Running through various anthology titles
and its own self-titled series from 1971 through 1975,1 Man-Thing, written
chiefy by Steve Gerber, proved to be a surprise success for Marvel Comics.
Man-Thing’s lack of consciousness and memory made him a strange pro-
tagonist for Gerber to build stories around. However, the creature’s empathic
abilities and marshy habitat, it turned out, made Man-Thing the perfect

DOI: 10.4324/9781003261551-4
 “Men Have Sentenced This Fen to Death” 23
monstrous-but-heroic representation of the era’s New Left liberation poli-
tics and countercultural perspectives. In the hands of Gerber, Man-Thing is
found championing anti-Vietnam War protesters and the bourgeoning envi-
ronmental liberation movement. At the same time, the swampman battled an
array of seemingly conservative villains, from greedy real-estate developers
to otherworldly demons pursuing unending wars and imperial conquests.
Throughout these stories, Man-Thing proved to be an unerring defender of
the downtrodden and other misshapen characters who, like himself, found
their way into the swamp and to safety.
The savage yet thriving Everglades functioned as a rebuke to the decaying
civilization that existed beyond its edges. In this context, Man-Thing can be
viewed as a hero set against the wider values defning early 1970s’ society,
a grotesque creature misunderstood by a nation that has lost its way. In
a world defned by the Vietnam War, Watergate, and a fracturing political
consensus, it is the human community and formal law-giving society, what
comics’ scholar Neal Curtis calls points the “nomos,” that is exposed to be
misguided and corrupt (59). Over and over, Man-Thing rescues the set-upon
humans who fnd their way into his fen. In doing so, the comic imagines
the creation of a new nomos, one where monsters, misfts, and outcasts will
forge a more inclusive community apart from human-built world outside
the swamp. In different ways, then, Man-Thing should be read as speaking
to both the New Left’s and hippies’ perspective on America at the tail end of
what historians call the “long 1960s” (Hall 655).

When the Machine Is Not God: Living the Revolution

Like the swamp creature who stalked the Everglades, the frst half of the
1970s is a diffcult era to comprehend. Looking back on the decade from
afar, the seventies are often understood as an in-between period, one char-
acterized by a profound of failure and malaise. However, viewed from its
starting point, the early 1970s seem a continuation of the liberation poli-
tics that had come to defne American life during the mid-1960s. If any-
thing, New Left political forces and countercultural perspectives appeared
only to be gathering steam as the decade opened (Berger 1–5). Often called
a “movement of movements,” historian Van Gosse explains that at their
core these New Left liberation struggles “sought to overturn existing struc-
tures of racial, gender, and economic privilege in favor of a radical vision
of equality and democracy” (Gosse 4, 189). The counterculture of the hip-
pies emerged both alongside and apart from these liberation efforts. While
both movements hated war and sought pathways to genuine equality, hip-
pies believed, as Timothy Miller argues, that “politics held no salvation for
anyone” (108). From the hippies’ perspective, Western civilization itself had
“reached a dead end” (103), strangled by the plastic nature of capitalism,
military adventures abroad, and authoritarian political impulses at home.
The solution to such catastrophic failure was simply “living the revolution”
24 Henry Kamerling
(108). As one counterculture troubadour put it, the hippie communes that
formed throughout the era represented a withdrawal “from a culture where
the machine is God” (qtd. in Greene 141). In this context, Steve Gerber’s
“misshapen Man-Thing” (Gerber and Mayerik, “Day of the Killer, . . .” 310),
imagined as an unthinking primordial swampgod lacking rational thought
and guided instead by empathy for mainstream society’s cast-offs, became
the perfect monstrous-but-heroic emblem of the era’s liberation politics.
The New Left’s and hippie’s efforts to remake society presented an unu-
sual challenge for Seventies’ superheroes and monsters. In his book Sover-
eignty and Superheroes (2016), Neal Curtis insists that “we must understand
superheroes as defenders of the law; they are defenders of the stories that
speak of a path from injustice to justice, from chaos to order, from dark
to light” (60). Curtis uses the Greek term “nomos” to describe the law-
giving society supers work to protect. Nomos, however, does not simply
mean “law” but also the spatial boundaries of an imagined legal realm
that encompasses those included and excluded from the law’s jurisdiction.
Curtis explains that superheroes, like monsters, exist on the boundaries of
society, operating “at the point where the law is paradoxically maintained
or protected precisely by suspending itself” (107). The extralegal authority
assumed by mainstream superheroes is meant to “prevent the onset of law-
lessness” (108) and restore order to the normative universe in defense of the
nomos. In the land of superheroes, monsters exist as creatures beyond the
edge of this legal realm, and thus, according to Curtis, the “monster sheds
light on how society sees itself, it shows us something about the community
to which it is both tied and from which it is expelled” (119).
But what happens when there is no easily defnable nomos for superhe-
roes to safeguard? What happens when the monster becomes the hero? In
the context of the United States in the early to mid-1970s, as the Vietnam
War raged, the Watergate scandal blossomed, and as the New Left liberation
struggles challenged traditional social and political confgurations, society
appeared to be on the precipice of social anomie. It was a dark time for main-
stream and nationalist superheroes, as they struggled to locate meaning in
restoring sovereignty to a moribund society (Goodrum 178–179, 215). But
as the post-World War II liberal consensus shattered, monsters-turned-heroes
like Man-Thing did not carry the burden of reviving a nation perceived by
some as being terminally ill. As a sympathetic creature who existed beyond
the boundaries of the law-giving society, Man-Thing’s presence off the map
augured for the creation of an entirely new community. The swamp itself,
depicted as a feral and fertile “liminal ecosystem” (Cade), functioned as its
own kind of hippie commune. As will be seen, while Man-Thing did not
exactly beckon people to his swamp, he did protect the refugees feeing the
frayed and dying exterior human society. Throughout the pages of the comic,
this leviathan of the swamp is imagined as a beast-god occupying a dominion
apart from the formal World of Men. The creature’s location off the map,
his radical deployment of empathy, and his offering of aid to outcasts can be
 “Men Have Sentenced This Fen to Death” 25
read both as an argument for the abandonment of the existing nomos and
the creation of a new one.

No More Super Soldiers: Man-Thing’s Anti-War Politics

Nearly all the themes detailed earlier fnd expression in very frst Man-Thing
comic, “. . . Man-Thing!” in the black-and-white magazine Savage Tales #1,
which explain the creature’s original story. In a tale written by Gerry Con-
way and Roy Thomas with pencils and inks by Gray Morrow, government
chemist Ted Sallis is in a clandestine lab deep in the heart of the Florida
Everglades. Sallis has just successfully created a secret Captain America-like
serum that will turn U.S. soldiers currently fghting in the jungles of Vietnam
into super-soldiers. Instead of feeling elation, Sallis expresses a deep sense
of anguish about the serum to his lover, Ellen, who he brought with him to
the swamp. “It’s bad enough that the chemical will be used for more kill-
ing,” Sallis explains, as he glances down at a newspaper with the headline
“NAPALM BOMB” plastered across the front page. Ellen suggests rest. The
next panel has Sallis with his head buried in his hand, replying, “rest? Every
time I close my eyes, I hear them – the people I’ve helped KILL – thousands
of them . . . SCREAMING all around me. And you tell me to get some rest?”
(8). Sallis’ horror over his role in creating a biochemical weapon highlights
the story’s New Left sensibility and anti-war politics. That Sallis expresses a
profound compassion for those he’s helped kill further deepens the comic’s
connection to the hippies’ embrace of empathy as an ideal valued higher
than reason. Naturally, Ellen turns out to be a spy. When her partners show
up to help capture the serum, Sallis resolves to destroy everything. In the
ensuing melee, the chemist fees deeper into the swamp. As the enemy agents
gain, Sallis determines that the only way to prevent the last vial of the serum
from falling into rival hands is to inject himself with it. As Sallis plunges
the needle with the serum into his arm, his car plunges into the muck of the
swamp. In the embrace of the Everglades, the chemical cocktail mixes with
the bog’s unique ecology, turning Sallis into Man-Thing.
Man-Thing’s origin is not just an anti-war tale. It is a saga that also inverts
and re-writes the origin story of Captain America and the good war narra-
tive of World War II, turning it into a tale of horror. Steve Rogers, the war-
time volunteer who will become Captain America, is a willing participant
in his confict. Rogers is a patriotic citizen eager to help his country fght an
unquestionably monstrous enemy. The super-soldier serum that turns Rog-
ers into Captain America is presented as a triumph of technology and in its
own way is an expression of American exceptionalism (Dittmer 8–12, 107).
The very frst Captain America comic, Captain America Comics #1 from
December 1940 (a year before Pearl Harbor), has Cap punching Hitler in
the face right on the cover! In contrast to this, Sallis appears as a reluctant
participant in the United States’ war-making from the outset. Instead of
being proud of his creation, Sallis is horrifed by it.
26 Henry Kamerling
World War II is understood to be presenting the United States with well-
defned enemies and clear moral choices. The confict also represented a
moment of shared sacrifce that helped generate national unity. The Vietnam
War readers glimpse in Man-Thing’s origin tale inverts the good war nar-
rative, foregrounding the horrors of war and the meaninglessness of the
confict. The fnal narrative panel explains, “Well, you MADE it, Ted Sallis.
You HAVE your super-soldier – your indestructible KILLER. Too bad you
couldn’t have known that your ULTIMATE victim would be YOURSELF!”
(Conway et al. 15). Instead of Sallis’s “eureka” moment being depicted as
a triumphal expression of American scientifc capability, the comic’s bleak
ending constructs this discovery in horrifc terms. In this imaginative space,
one that duplicates in substantial ways the real-world politics roiling coun-
try at the same moment in time, readers are presented with a Vietnam War
that produces no national unity, no collective sacrifce, and no super-soldiers
punching Nazis in the face. Instead, readers fnd that the Vietnam War pro-
duces only monsters.
Steve Gerber picked up writing duties on the Man-Thing comics starting
with Adventure into Fear #11 in December 1972 and deepened the crea-
ture’s already strong Anti-Vietnam War perspective. Over the next several
years, Gerber came back again and again to stories which highlighted both
the pointlessness of the war and the unfortunate toll combat took on the
everyday soldiers used to fght it. In the comic titled “A Question of Sur-
vival” (Fear #18 [Nov. 1973]), a drunk salesman crashes his car into a bus
carrying 50 passengers. All but fve die, the remaining being fung into the
swamp. Among the survivors are Jim, a Vietnam War veteran; Holden, a
student pacifst; Mary, a young nurse; Kevin, a wounded child; and Ralph,
the drunken salesman. While the soldier and pacifst bicker, each are given
space to make good points about how best to make change in the world.
Holden, however, is given the last word, explaining:

Take soldier Jim, here. He just came back from a war of attrition. That’s
where the whole fght is to see which side can kill more people! It’s sick!
And here at home – we dump chemicals into our waters – poison the
fsh – then we eat ‘em and poison ourselves! That’s suicide – but it’s also
our way of life! We really are out to destroy ourselves!
(Gerber and Mayerik 230)

In the end, it is the businessman, not the soldier, who turns out to be the
real villain. Tired of Holden’s gripping, Ralph yells: “SHUT UP! Don’t
you point a fnger at me – you flthy commie scum! You deserve to die –
for runnin’ down this country!” (232). After Ralph fnds a gun and kills
Holden, he insists, “I had to girlie – it was my patriotic duty!” Mary, who
has been balanced in her position throughout, comes around to Holden’s
way of thinking, replying, “Lord in heaven . . . you’re a lunatic! Not just a
super-patriot – a madman! ‘The Punk’ was right!” (233). Albeit a bit late,
 “Men Have Sentenced This Fen to Death” 27
eventually Man-Thing shows up and kills the businessman with his burning
touch and carries the wounded child out of the swamp.
The New Left anti-war, anti-capitalist, and pro-environmental politics of
this story are clear. The one person who makes the most openly patriotic
comments and views himself as standing up for his country is shown to be
venal and morally bankrupt. The businessman has no interest in anything
beyond his own survival. What is more, because Ralph is revealed to be such
a horrible person, his insistence that the student-pacifst is nothing more
than a “flthy commie scum” serves only to discredit the charge and similar
accusations leveled by conservatives against student protesters and activists
throughout the era. While comics’ scholars observe that Stan Lee, Marvel’s
Editor-in-Chief, sought to keep explicitly political material out of his com-
ics (Howe 94–96), Gerber clearly proved to be successful in saturating his
stories with the era’s New Left anti-war perspectives and counterculture
sensibilities.

The Marshland That Sustains His Life: The Anti-Capitalism

of Man-Thing’s Ecology
Alongside Man-Thing’s anti-war politics, Gerber also took aim at another
enemy of the New Left and counterculture: capitalism. Deepening a critique
commonly found among both New Left activists and hippies, Gerber’s Man-
Thing comics consistently depicted businessmen to be obsessed with money
giving it more importance than connection with people and business inter-
ests as a cancerous blight on humanity and the environment. In “Song-Cry
of the Living Dead Man” (Man-Thing #12 [Dec. 1974]), Gerber presents the
story of Brian Lazarus, an advertising man who has lost his grip on reality
and is haunted by demons and self-loathing. “I’m a blind disease blot on the
face of planet chrom-earth,” Lazarus says of himself in one panel, explain-
ing, “while there’s a capital man on earth, my labor will birth in the song-cry
of the living dead man” (Gerber and Buscema 183). Gerber populates his
stories with business-minded characters such as Lazarus and the murderous
salesman who crashes his car into a busload of people. Even Man-Thing’s
frst real arch-villain, F. A. Schist (or “fascist”), is an especially greedy con-
struction magnate and real-estate developer who wants to drain parts of
the swamp in order to build a new airport. In a series of comics stretching
almost a year (September 1973 to August 1974),2 Schist’s construction plans
bring him in confict with environmental protesters who want to stop the
endeavor, Native Americans struggling to protect their ancestral homelands,
and, naturally, Man-Thing.
“Cry of the Native!” (Fear #16 [Sept. 1973]), a story detailing the efforts
of the Everglades’ indigenous people to halt Schist’s plans, crystallizes these
fashpoints. Black Eagle, a young “brave,” urges his father, the tribal chief,
to take action: “I tell you, father, we have no choice! The excavation begins
tomorrow,” Black Eagle proclaims, “unless we stop it! And if we fail, we
28 Henry Kamerling
have only months – before the swamp – our homeland – is gone – replaced
by an airport” (Gerber and Mayerik 157). Black Eagle leads his “braves” –
wearing traditional Indian clothing and fghting, for some reason, with bows
and arrows – into battle with the Schist’s construction workers. The white
labors give voice to their racism, calling the native people “blasted redskin
savages” (160). In the ensuing melee, Black Eagle is shot and killed by Jake
Simpson, the foreman of the job site. Man-Thing’s compassion compels the
creature to emerge from out of the swamp and to carry Black Eagle’s lifeless
body back to his father.
But the swamp creature’s work is not done. Man-Thing’s feeling nature
allows him to sense the wider danger posed by Schist’s construction plans.
One narrative panel explains that Man-Thing “senses that something is ter-
ribly wrong here. For this marsh-land sustains his life, and if it is destroyed –
! He struggles now and succeeds, momentarily, in bringing some of the jig-
saw fragments together” (Gerber and Mayerik, “Cry of the Native!” 168).
Inarticulately, emotively, Man-Thing returns to the construction site. Simp-
son attacks Man-Thing with a pickaxe that sails right through the creature’s
oozing body. Retreating in fear, Simpson cowers, covering his head with his
hands. Man-Thing advances on the worker, placing a single, mossy hand over
Simpson’s head, searing together the foreman’s hand, head, and face. Utter-
ing the monster’s infamous catch-phrase, a panel explains that “for whatever
knows fear – BURNS at the Man-Thing’s touch!!” (173). While Man-Thing
wins this battle, the comic ends with a particularly bleak coda. The fnal panel
displays a worker’s hard-hat on the ground in close-up with Man-Thing wan-
dering back toward the verdant swamp in the distance. The ending narration
explains that “the story has not ended. Tomorrow the work will begin anew.
Men have sentenced this fen to DEATH . . . and with it, the Man-Thing. They
will likely carry out that sentence. Eventually. They always do” (174).
“Cry of the Native!” is an environmental tale that takes sides against the
forces of modernization. Of course, the comic reduces Native Americans
to the racist stereotype of the Noble Savage. Gerber and artist Val Mayerik
depict indigenous peoples as being messengers from a bygone time. Their
“primitiveness” seemingly make them more alive to the possibilities of hav-
ing a spiritual connection with the natural world because they are imagined
as not having been contaminated by “civilization” or capitalism. Neverthe-
less, the comic uses this trope to express the counterculture’s reverence for
indigenous practices and to side with the New Left’s environmental poli-
tics. The Everglades are the homeland of both the native peoples and Man-
Thing. Their common habitat connects the two groups, identifying their
cause as the same. Like the environmental protesters seen elsewhere in the
story, these forces understand that an airport, with its concrete runways,
pollution, and wider connection to capitalist modernity, will destroy the
delicate swampland ecosystem.
Man-Thing is presented as being connected to the swamp in a deep and
spiritual way. It could be said that Man-Thing is the swamp, an avatar of
Another random document with
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jälkeen. Tähän ehdottomasti parantavaan reseptiin kuuluu: joka
päivä rämpiä syvissä kinoksissa, märät saappaat, joskus jäätyneet,
jalassa, Öin ja päivin. Toisinaan tilaisuuden sattuessa maataan myös
kuusi, seitsemän tuntia lumessa, joka lämpimän ruumiin alla vedeksi
sulaa. Kilometrittäinen juoksu kuulasateessa on kipeille jäsenille
parhainta sairasvoimistelua ja peninkulmien marssit edistävät
suuresti yleistä hyvinvointia. — Tässä Heinosellekin paras ja halvin
hoitotapa. Kaupanpäällisiksi voi Mannerheim vielä antaa rintaasi
punakeltaisen nauhan. Niin voi käydä. —

Olisi sen Heinosparan kustannuksella varmaan ison aikaa iloa

pidetty, mutta tuvan ovi avautui ja pöydän päässä istuvan luutnantin
eteen astui terhakka poikanen, joka reippaasti kunniaa tehden
lausui:

— Komppanianpäällikkö! Meillä on täällä viisi vankia, jotka

saimme toverini kanssa vartiopaikalta.

Hymyillen katsahti nuori luutnantti pientä sotilasta ajatuksissaan

sanoen:

— Näiden kanssa ne suuret työt suoritetaan. Hän nousi ja seurasi

poikaa ulos.

Vangit, joista kaksi täysiveristä huligaania ja kolme kalpeata

tehtaalaisnuorukaista, odottivat kohtaloaan saunassa, jota heikosti
valaisi kiukaan reunalla käryävä kotoinen talikynttilä.

Lyhyt, nopea kuulustelu sen ratkaisi. Nuo kaksi, joiden kasvoilta

tuntui jo ihmisyys paenneen, syytivät epätoivonsa vimmalla
"lahtareille" tuikean kiroustulvan, mutta poikaset pelosta väristen
vakuuttivat lähteneensä toisten houkuttelemina sotaan.
 — Saatte näyttää, oletteko puhuneet totta — sanoi
komppanianpäällikkö pojille. — Te seuraatte nyt meitä rintaman
selkäpuolella ja teette töitä mihin kykenette, eikä teille tapahdu
pienintäkään pahaa. Mutta vähimmästäkin juonittelusta on heti
tienne poikki. — Ymmärrättehän!

— Kyllä, herra luutnantti. Ammuttakoon meidät paikalla, jos

pienintäkään viekkautta huomataan.

Kuvaamaton kiitollisuus loisti nuorten vankien kasvoilta.

Tämmöistä kohtelua he eivät olleet odottaneet, sillä kamala oli
kohtalo valkoisen vangin punaisten puolelle joutuessaan.

— Lapsiparat, — huokasi Jouko itsekseen. Pojat köyhistä kodeista

raastetaan tänne, syöstään laumoittain surman suuhun, siksi vaan,
että joku vallan- ja kunnianhimoinen "kansanvaltuutettu" saisi vielä
jonkun aikaa pitää tämän kurjan, raastetun ja häväistyn maan
ohjaksia, jotka kumminkin häneltä kerran siirtyvät taitavampiin käsiin.

— Menkää pojat tupaan, siellä saatte kuumaa teetä ja voileivän

—. Hän käski viitaten heidät poistumaan selvittääkseen välit noiden
turkulaisten katusankarien kanssa, joille virkkoi:

— Miten teidän mielestänne olisi kanssanne meneteltävä?

— Eikö teillä ole kivääreitä, joita voisitte koetella? — vastasi toinen

vangeista ilkeästi irvistäen.

— Lieneepä lahtareilla jokunen niitäkin, — ilvehtii toinen.

Joukon muoto synkistyi. Hän viittasi pihalla seisoville vartioille,

jotka katosivat vangit mukanaan pimeyteen. Jonkun hetken perästä
kuului kahdesti kolmen kiväärin yhteislaukaus. Jouko huomasi
Heinosen vierellään.

— "Persana, mitä noista säästää yhlestäkään, ampua ne saisi

kaikki järestään. Antaa vaan työtä ja päänvaivaa, mihin ne sijoittaa ja
millä ne ruokkii, kun ei tahlo armeijallekaan ruokaa riittää."

— Eihän noita nyt raaski lapsia ampua, syyntakeettomia ne ovat,

pitää toki armahtaa niin monta, kuin on mahdollista, olemmehan
vastuussa tehtävästämme.

Toista se on noiden kanssa. Tuommoiset paatuneet konnat,

ihmiskunnan hylkiöt, joista ei kenellekään elämässä ole hyötyä, ne
joutavat huoletta muuttaamaan muille maille.

— Ampuminen on liian helppo kuolema noille, voi persana! kiluttaa

niitä pitäisi, kiluttaa sanon minä!

Hän kääri tiukemmin turkkia ympärilleen ja hänen pyöreästä

nelikymmenvuotiaasta olemuksestaan ei näkynyt muuta kuin
pehmeät, hiukan veltostuneet posket ja turpeiden luomien alta
muljottavat ihraiset silmät.

— "Kiluttaa oikein, kiluttaa minä sanon!" — kertasi hän yhä noita

inhoittavia sanojaan.

Jouko jo tunsi kuumenevansa.

— Jumaliste, olisimmeko silloin punaisia paremmat! — Minä sinut

"kilutan", ellet laita itseäsi näkyvistäni, tukin takaisin kellariin
issiaksinesi ja pakoittavine varpainesi. Oletko täyttänyt velvollisuutesi
tänä päivänä!
 Hän ravisti miestä turkinkauluksesta, työnsi hänet sitte ovesta
tupaan, josta jo kuului harras kuorsaus.
IV.

Valkoisen Suomen pääkaupungissa vietetään juhlaa. Liput liehuvat,

sinivalkoiset, punakeltaiset ja ylpeät leijonaliput — kaikki
puolitangossa ja valtakadulla kulkee suuri saattue, koko kaupungin
väki on liikkellä osoittaakseen kunniaa ensimmäisille vapaussodassa
kaatuneille sankareille.

Ja torvet soivat ja surumarssi kajahtaa raskaan harmajana

sydäntalven päivänä ja kansa vakavana kulkee ja jokaisen kasvoilla
on ilme, kuin saattaisi hän omaansa viimeiseen lepoon.

Kirkko on väkeä täynnä. Ei mahdu sisälle kuin puolet pyrkijöistä,

toiset ulkopuolella odottavat pakkasen ja tuiman pohjatuulen
käsissä.

Ja urkujen soidessa kantavat omaiset esiin kalliin uhrinsa,

laskevat alttarin eteen arkut, toiset mustan, toiset lumivalkean ja
tuoreen viheriät asparagusoksat kannella kiehkuroivat ja niiden
lomassa hohtavat kukat, veripunaiset, puhtaanvalkoiset. — —
Tuossakin kantaa arkkua isä. Käsityöläinen hän on, köyhä mies, joka
keväällä oli toivonut näkevänsä poikansa valkoisen lakin —
valkoisen hän saikin verhon — ja jo ennenkuin kevät saapui, lepäsi
kaunis kalvenneena valkoisessa arkussaan.

Mutta isä kulkee pystypäin, kasvoillaan kirkastava juhlailme, —

hän antoi ilomielin ainoisensa, antoi isänmaalleen parhaan, minkä
omisti.

— — Siinä veli veljeään kantaa ja mustan arkun perässä kulkee

kumaraisena vanha äiti. Mutta hänen silmänsä ovat kirkkaat ja
hänen ryppyisillä kasvoillaan on heijastus kuin oudon onnen, kun
hän alttarille saattelee poikansa nuorimman, vanhuutensa tuen,
yksinäisen elämänsä auvon ja lohdun, ja suuren surun ylitse soivat
sielussa sanat: — "Minun uhrini isänmaalle, koska niin oli Jumalan
tahto."

Lehterin hämärässä nurkassa istuu tumma tyttönen. Hänen

hienopiirteisillä kasvoillaan ovat ilmeet herkät ja silmien
epämääräinen väri näyttää mielialojen mukaan vaihtelevan.

Hän istuu hiukan eteenpäin kumartuneena ja silmänsä tähyävät

jonnekin rajattomaan, määrättömään kaukaisuuteen. Kasvoilla
hehkuu nyt haltioitunut into, hän on kuin rukoukseen vaipuneena:

— Minä tunnen nyt sinun olemuksesi ihanuuden, sinä valkoisen

armeijan Valkea Henki. Sinä, sen salainen Johtaja. — Sinun avullasi
he voittavat moninkertaisen vihollisensa, sinun voimallasi he ilolla
tuskiin ja kuolemaan käyvät. — Ihanaa olisi kuulua sinun joukkoihisi!
——

Urkujen soitto värisyttää ilmaa, säveliä, muistosanoja, kukkien

tuoksua, — kyyneleitä. — On kuin kaikki yhdeksi sulaisivat, kuin
kukin toisensa surun tuntisi, — on kuin kukin itkisi toisensa tuskaa.
 Ja valkoisen armeijan Valkoinen Henki levittää siunauksensa
kautta kirkon, ylitse ihmisjoukon, ihmisten, jotka itkevät, toistensa
tuskaa.

Niin myös tyttönen, lehterin hämärässä nurkassa, ja hänen

kyyneleensä putoilivat, kuin suvisen sateen pisarat, silmät itkivät,
huulet hymyilivät. —Ihmiset uhrautuvat toistensa tähden, ihmiset
ovat jo oppineet rakastamaan toinen toistaan…

Ja suuret, väkevät tunteet hänen hentoa olemustaan värisyttävät.

*****

On ilta. Alina Auran pulpetin ääressä luo sähkölamppu kalpean

valon viheriän varjostimen takaa. Suuret konttorikirjat avautuvat ja
paiskautuvat jälleen kiinni, uudelleen avautuakseen. Numerot
sarakkeissa sekaantuvat, laskut sotkeutuvat ja silmä hairahtuu pitkiä
riviä seuratessa.

Vapisevin käsin sulkee hän taas raskaan kirjan ja painaa käsiinsä

tumman pään. Ummistuneitten silmien eteen kohoavat kummat
kuvat: -Tuolla näkyvät kasvot kivun vääristämät, tuolla polttavat,
kuumeiset huulet hehkuvat vettä janoovina — tuolla hourailun
kourissa kamppailevan käsi tyhjästä haparoi ystävän kättä… Ja
ulkona riehuu taistelu, kiväärit paukkuvat, tykit jyskivät ja hangella
makaa kymmenittäin kaatuneita, jotka kuroittavat käsiään apua
anoen, veren hiljalleen kuiviin valuessa. — — —

Neitonen kohotti päätään, pyyhkäisi otsaansa ja katsoi ikkunaan,

josta vastaan tuijotti talvi-illan pimeys.
 Mutta siellä sisällä syntynyt ääni puhui yhä voimakkaammin,
kunnes hän oli vakuutettu siitä, että todella kuuli sen kehoituksen.
Silloin kuvastui kasvoilla päättäväisyys. Hän nousi pöytänsä äärestä
ja lähti valmistautumaan tehtävään, johon kutsui häntä sisäinen ääni.
V.

Pitkin mäkistä maantietä kulkee pitkä jono vahvasti kuormitettuja

hevosia, jotka kuljettavat sekä väkeä, että muonaa rintamalle, joka
on nykyisin kymmenen penikulman päässä rautatien asemalta.

Kuta kauemmaksi ehditään, sitä epätasaisemmiksi käyvät

välimatkat kuormien välillä ja lopuksi ei etumaisia enää saata nähdä
jonon loppupäähän, ainoastaan kaukaa kuuluva kulkusten helinä
toteaa niiden vielä olevan äänen kantamilla.

Viimeisessä reessä, nahkaisten peitossa on Alina Aura, jolle

vihdoinkin on toivottu hetki koittanut. Hänen vierellään nukkuu toveri,
sairaanhoitajatar hänkin, jolla on sama matkan määrä. Näin on
kulettu monta tuntia, sillä tie tuntuu loputtoman pitkältä, mutta vaikka
onkin keskiyö, ei sisar Alina ole saattanut vielä hetkeksikään
nukahtaa.

Hän lepää hiljaa katsellen tiepuolessa torkkuvia kuusia, joiden

oksat valkean taakkansa painosta taipuilevat alimmat aina
pehmeäkiteiseen kimaltelevaan lumikenttään saakka. — Valkoista,
kaikki on valkoista! — Koivut huurteen helyissä, petäjän oksat
pehmeän untuvalumen peittäminä ja yllä sininen taivaan holvi, jonka
syvyydestä tähdet vilkkuen tuikehtivat.

On ihanaa tässä levätä kuunnellen jalaksen ratinaa ja kavioiden

kapsetta pakastaneella tiellä. Kulkuset helisevät erikielin ja niiden
vienot äänet raukenevat yksinäiseen erämaan yölliseen
hiljaisuuteen.

Tuntuu kuin ne keskustelisivat, kyselisivät: — ymmärrätkö, kulkija

tiukujen kieltä?

Kyytimies hoputtaa hidastelevaa hevostaan puoleksi itsekseen

puhellen.

— Toissapäivänä oli valkoisilla kuuma päivä, vihollinen, ainakin

kymmenkertainen, yritti saartaa, mutta ei onnistunut. Minkähänlaista
on taas huomenna, kun perille päästään ja mikä lieneekin tämän
sodan loppu?

Sisar Alina oli vaiti. Hän ei halunnut puhellen häiritä tuudittelevia

tunteitaan, mutta ukko oli kumminkin sanonut sanan, joka tarttui
tahtomatta hänen korvaansa.

— Saartaa, — niin saartaa! — sellaistakin saattaa tapahtua.

Kymmenkertainen vihollisjoukko saartaa meidät, miehemme
kaatuvat viimeiseen asti. — Entä me naiset? — Kuinka käy meidän
silloin? Jos niiden villiintyneitten punaryssien käsiin nainen, on
edessä kohtalo, kuolemaa kamalampi, voi, ei saata sitä ajatella!

Hän koetti irtautua hirmukuvasta, joka pyrki mielessä nousemaan,

se kuva tyrmistytti aatoksen, seisatti suonissa veren.
 Ja on kuin tiu’ut leperrellen kyselisivät: — oletko valmis kaikkeen,
yksinpä sellaiseenkin kohtaloon? — Miehet sotaa käykööt, ei ole
sodassa naisen paikka, miksi lähdit, miksi, tyttönen, tänne lähdit?

Alina kokosi voimansa ja koetti kirvottautua painajaisestaan: —

Minä lähdin siksi, että Hän kutsui, Hän puhui minun sieluuni kirkossa
ja minä tunsin Hänen läheisyytensä silloin. — Vaikene epäilyksen
ääni! Hän näkee minut ja tietää mikä on osani oleva.

Vähitellen vaimenee sen voima, hirmukuva kalpenee ja katoo, jo

soittaa sointuvammin tiukujen kuoro ja nuori matkalainen vaipuu
keveään unenhorrokseen.

Hän havahtui saavuttaessa kylään, jossa oli päätetty syöttää

hevoset ja viettää loppuyö. Edellisistä kuormista olivat jo miehet
siirtyneet asumuksiin. Yksi hevonen näkyi sen talon pihamaalla,
jonne sisarten kyytimies oli ajanut.

— Kas niin — puheli ukko hevostaan päästellen — täältä ovat

punaiset kiireellä lähteneet. Älkää, neidit, säikähtäkö, mutta täällä on
niiden ruumiita ympäri pihamaata ja talo näkyy olevan tyhjänä.

— Katsokaas tuossakin, näyttää aivan kuin istuvan navetan

seinään nojaten, pieni verinaarmu poskessa ja ohimolla. Entä tämä,
joka katselee kohti taivasta ulos pullistunein silmin. — Täällä on niitä
kymmenkunta tämän rakennuksen ympärillä.

Ukko vei hevosensa talliin ja kävi itse tupaan. Alina otti häneltä
lyhdyn, ja lähestyi kinoksessa makaavaa ruumista. Vedossa
vapajavan kynttilän liekki loi vaisun, väräjävän valon kuolleen
kasvoille, joita nuori sisar hartain tuntein katseli.
 Ken oletkin ja mitkä lienevätkin olleet ne vaikuttimet, jotka sinut
taisteluun toivat, — kunnioitan kumminkin kuolemaasi. — Ei
vihamielisyyttä enää, olkoon sielullesi rauha — puheli hän vainajalle.

Niin jäykät olivat kuolleen kasvot, kuin kiveen hakatut, aivankuin ei

olisi noissa piirteissä koskaan eloa ollutkaan. — Miksi se niin erosi
muista, joita hän ennen oli ruumiina nähnyt? Missä oli kuoleman ylhä
juhlallisuus? — Ei tämän kasvoilla mitään sellaista ollut. Vai oliko
hän ehkä aatteensa mukaiseen uskoon nukahtanut ilman
heräämisen toivoa ja tuo usko oli hänen sielunsa aineeseen niin
lujasti kytkenyt. — Siksikö näytti hänen unensa olevan syvä, kuin
kallion tuhatvuotinen uni.

Näitä mietiskeli sisar Alina kaatuneen punakaartilaisen vieressä ja,

kun hän aatoksistaan heräsi, huomasi hän olevansa pihalla — yksin.
"Täällä on niitä kymmenkunta tämän rakennuksen ympärillä", muisti
hän ukon sanoneen ja hänen ruumistaan karmi kylmä väristys.

Kun hän tuli tupaan, olivat muut jo levolle asettuneet. Hän etsi
itselleen makuupaikkaa ja löysi tupakamarista vanhan keinutuolin,
johon heittäytyi yötään viettämään.

Ruumista puisteli väsymys ja vilu, sielussa asui yksinäisyyden ja

orpouden tunto. Tuolla ympärillä makaavat ruumiitkin tulivat
alinomaa mieleen. Se pyrki pahemmin lamaan, näin ruumiillisen
väsymyksen painaessa.

— Missä on nyt palava innostukseni? — Näinkö lyhyeen se loppui,

jo ennen perille saapumista —? Entä siellä sitten? — kyseli hän
itseltään ja nukahti vihdoin kesken tukahutetun nyyhkytyksen.
VI

Muutamana kauniina kevättalven aamuna hyppäsi luutnantti

Toivonen ratsunsa selkään, matkansa määränä kenttäsairaala, joka
sijaitsi muutaman kilometrin päässä rintaman takana. Siellä nyt
sairasteli Seppo poikanen ja yhä huononevan kuului.

Hepo juoksi tasaista ravia. Maaliskuun aurinko hellitti lämpöisiä

säteitään hankia sulatellen. Metsästä lemusi jo tuores keväinen
tuoksu.

Mutta nuoren ratsastajan mieli pyrki murheelliseksi ja kysymykset

tulivat, nuo tuskalliset kysymykset ja heräsivät raskaat muistot nyt,
jolloin taistelun jännitys ei hermoja pingoittanut. Aina kun oli
levonhetki, ne tulivat ja kiersivät hänet ahtaaseen pusertavaan
piiriinsä. Hän koetti niitä vastustella, koetti torjua tahtonsa voimalla,
mutta aina uudelleen ne tulivat. Viimein ei hän enää vastustellut,
vaan antoi niiden vapaasti tulla ja sanottavansa sanoa, ollen itse
kuin sivullisena kuulijana.

— Mitä tämä oikeastaan on? Veljessotaa käydään maassa. Sotaa

hirmuisinta mitä koskaan on ollut. Onko kauhua tämänveroista
nähnyt vielä yksikään kansa maan päällä? Mikä ihmisiin on mennyt?
— Mikä tämän on synnyttäjä, alkuunpanija? — Mistä ovat peräisin
ne olennot, jotka pieksevät, ruhjovat, nylkevät ja ristiinnaulitsevat
ihmispoloisia, jotka heidän uhreikseen ovat joutuneet. Onhan moni
elävänä poltettukin ja tunnustihan kuolinhetkenään eräs punanen
keittäneensä valkoisen soturin. Kylmään veteen oli pannut siitä
hiljalleen kuumennellen, kunnes kiehui pata. Ovatko tämmöiset
sodan kävijät ihmisiä ollenkaan, vaikka sen hahmossa esiintyvät.

Se on ryssän rutto, Venäjältä tänne virtaileva bolshevjikkilainen

myrkky, joka tekee ihmisistä petoja.

— Voi Venäjä, Venäjä!

Jo on puolet Suomen väestöstä siihen saastutettu, saako toinen

vielä terveenä säilynyt, osa pelastetuksi tämän poloisen maan?

— Saa — a! — Sen täytyy! — kuulee hän puoliääneen sanovansa

ja kohottautuen suoraksi satulassaan koetti hän taas irtautua näistä
mietteistään ja kannusti hevosta, joka syöksyi tuulena juoksuun.

Hän oli jo saapunut kylään, ja tuossa jo liehuikin punaisenristin

lippu erään rakennuksen katolla — siinä se siis oli.

Hän kiiruhti sisään ja kyseli etsimäänsä.

Miten tarkkaan olivat täällä tilat käytetyt, vuode vuoteen vieressä,

joiden välistä oli hoitajattarien pujoteltava.

Hänelle osoitettiin tila suuren salin peränurkassa. Siinä oli

valkeitten raitien sisässä kuin pieni käärö josta selviytyi esille
Seppopoikanen, kuihtuneena, pienen pieneksi kutistuneena, joten
ensisilmäykseltä oli vaikeata häntä entiseksi tuntea.
 Suljetuin silmin hän siinä lepäsi, mutta kuultuansa tutun äänen
nimeänsä mainitsevan, avautuivat raskaat luomet ja kaksi kirkasta
lapsensilmää loisti Joukolle vaikeitten pielusten lomasta. Niissä oli
nyt, kuten ennenkin sama rakkauden, luottamuksen ja rajattoman
ihailun ilme.

Hän ei sanonut mitään, mutta huulensa vetäytyivät heikkoon

hymyyn ja, kun Jouko otti tuon pienen kalpean kätösen omaansa, oli
se omituisen kylmä ja kostea. — Olihan hänen verensä ennen
avunsaantia melkein kuiviin vuotanut.

Hän istui vuoteen laidalla, mutta sairaan silmät painuivat taas

väsyneesti umpeen ja Joukon katse lepäsi milloin noilla kauniilla
pikkukasvoilla, milloin harhaili se ympäri huonetta, jonka asukkaat
olivat isänmaalleen kukin veronsa suorittaneet.

— Elämä täällä on toista, kuin rintamalla. Täällä on kivun ja

kärsimysten maailma — ajatteli Jouko, ja hänen mieltänsä ahdisti. —
Jos kerran pitäisi tänne, jos en saisikaan kaatua kentälle, niinkuin
olen kuvitellut. Se olisi helppoa, mutta tämä! — Kivun kärsimykset,
toisten voihkina ja valitukset, alituinen sairaalan haju ja koko ilma
täällä on kuin ainaisten tuskantunteiden kyllästämä. — Kunpa
säästyisi tästä, olisi armollinen se iskevä kuula ja ottaisi kokonaan
kerta kaikkiaan.

Tuossakin nuori mies, Sven Duvan mallia, heittelee levottomana

vuoteellaan. Hänen kasvonsa ovat turvoksissa ja silmissä palaa
kuumeinen kiilto. Käsi haparoi peitteellä etsien hätäisesti jotakin —
"Minne se karbiini tuli, meidät aiotaan saartaa, — täytyy murtaa
ketju," — puhelee se oudolla, luonnottomalla, äänellä.
 Toisesta nurkasta kuului kuin hiljaista, tukahutettua itkua. Siellä on
parinkymmenen ikäinen, tummatukkainen nuorukainen, side
silmillään. Hän on taistelussa saanut räjähtävän kuulan kasvoilleen,
mikä repi nenän yläosan, soensi silmät ja siellä hän nyt nyyhkii
nurkassa, katsellen pimeillä silmillään elinkautiseen mustaan yöhön.

Hänen vieressään taas toinen katselee nuorta luutnanttia kirkkain,

tajuisin katsein. Jouko haluaa puhella jonkun kanssa ja menee
hänen luokseen, kysyy nimeä ja kotipaikkaa. Poika vaan hymyilee
sopertaen "— ei — ei — mi —" Hän osoittaa kaulassaan pientä, jo
ruvella olevaa haavaa, josta on kuula mennyt, tullen niskasta ulos.
Siinä meni mieheltä puhekyky ja halpautui oikea käsi joka lepäsi
tuossa vierellä kuin kuollut kappale, ainoastaan ajottainen pakotus
ilmoitti sen vielä muuhun ruumiiseen kuuluvan.

Mutta ovensuussa makaava, vanhahko mies, voihkasee äkkiä

tuskaisesti ja nuo kasvot, äsken kelmeät ja jäykät, kuin ruumiin,
saavat taas elonmerkkiä hänen ääneen vaikertaessaan.

Silloin helähtää tuskien asunnossa lempeä, kaunissointuinen ääni:

— Onko isännällä tuskia taas? — Antakaa kun muutan asentoa,

ehkä vähän helpoittaa — kuuluvat sanat ja vuoteen viereen on
ilmestynyt valkopukuinen hoitajatar.

Hän pyyhkii hellien sairaan otsalla helmeilevän hien, kääntää

pielusta, pöyhentelee, kohentelee.

— Onko nyt parempi, onko yhtään parempi?+

— On se, voih, — on se, niinkuin vähän helpompi taas — ääntelee

sairas ja muistakin tuntuu sisar Alinan ilmestyttyä, että on se vähän
helpompi nyt taas.

Hän siirtyy vuoteelta vuoteelle puhellen kullekin erikseen, sanoo

sanasen vaan, ja he kuuntelevat hänen ääntään, ja hetkeksi
unohtuvat surut ja kivut.

— Kuinkas poju voipi — sanoo hän lähestyen nuorta sotilasta,

joka istuma-asentoon tuettuna, pää siteissä katselee tylsin ilmein.
Mutta hoitajattaren lähestyessä saavat hänen raukeat silmänsä
loisteen, kun hän kättään ojentaen sammaltaen sopertaa jotakin, jota
Jouko ei ymmärrä.

— Mitä hän sanoo?

— Sanoi vaan, että neidin poika, — niin se on minun pojuni tämä

— puhui hoitajatar hyväillen ojennettua kättä ja kiiruhti edelleen.

Ja Joukon katse seuraa tuota joustavaa vartta ja pehmeitä liikkeitä

nuortean ruumiin, näkee silmät, jotka niin lempeinä loistavat hänen
puhuessaan potilailleen, — mutta enemmän kuuntelee ääntä, joka
niin kauniisti soinnahtaa suurten surujen asunnossa.

Hänen pieni ystävänsä nukkuu yhä, eikä Jouko voi täällä

kauemmin viipyä. Hän nousee ja poistuu hiljaa hänen vuoteensa
vierestä. Ovella tapaa hän vielä hoitajattaren, ojentaa hänelle
kätensä ja virkkaa:

— Kiitos teille! — Hyvästi.

Mutta samassa hän punastuu. Oliko toinen ymmärtänyt, mistä

häntä kiitettiin. — Eihän hän ollut sitä aikonut sanoa, se tuli kuin
itsestään.
 Nuori luutnantti ratsastaa pois, mutta yhä on hän tuntevinaan
kädessään pehmeän, lämpöisen kätösen ja korvissa kaikuu ääni,
kauniimpi, kuin mitä hän koskaan ennen on kuullut.
VII.

Ollaan jo maaliskuun lopulla. — Vakavasti, varmasti on valkoinen

armeija edennyt, vaikka vastarinta kauemmaksi tultaessa yhä
vahvistui. Vähälukuisilla joukoilla oli moninkerroin ylivoimaisen
vihollisen hyökkäykset pidätetty ja vähitellen sitkeästi etelämmäksi
edetty, kohti Tamperetta, punaisen vallan lujaa tukikohtaa.

Oli sitä jo näinä viikkoina Pohjanmaan pojilta elämän mukavuudet

unohtuneet ja yön rauhallinen uni, oli enää vaan muistona heidän
mielissään.

Mutta se suuri isänmaallinen innostus, joka heidät oli tänne tuonut

ei matkan vaivoissa ollut laimennut ja eteenpäin paloi miehillä mieli.

Niinpä eräänä iltapäivänä marssi kapt. V:n pataljoona, johon nyt

Jouko Toivonenkin kuului, K:n pitäjään, jonne kello kolmen tienoissa
saapuivat. Teiden risteyksissä lähti osa kirkolle päin vievää tietä, osa
taas kääntyy asemalle.

Punaryssät olivat sieltä vasta lähteneet ja suuri siivottomuus

vallitsi kaikkialla, joten myötäseuranneiden naisten oli heti miesten
avustamina käytävä puhdistuspuuhiin.
 — Ei ole hätää, rata on etäämpänä poikki — puhelee pataljoonan
päällikkö ratsuaan puhelinpylvääseen sitoen.

Niin hajautuvat joukot, osa lähetetään varmemmaksi vakuudeksi

radanvartta tarkastamaan, toiset asettuvat vartiopaikoille, muutamat
taas jäävät selailemaan asemapihaan jätettyä suurta sanomalehti
pinkkaa.

Jouko Toivonen puolestaan ottaa mukaansa pari miestä ja lähtee

tutkimaan ympäristön asumuksia radan toisella puolen.

*****

Sillävälin soi aseman puhelin, johon pelkäämätön kapteeni suorat

sanat vastasi, — mutta tämän keskustelun seuraus tuli myös kohta
näkyviin.

Pian porhalsi panssarijuna kohti asemaa, päästen radan vierellä

olevan kallion suojassa joka esti äänenkin kuulumasta, kenenkään
huomaamatta aseman lähelle, vaihteelle asti, josta alkoi ammunnan
kivääreillä, kuularuiskuilla, vieläpä tykeilläkin.

Jouko Toivonen muutaman miehen kanssa oli nyt eristettynä

muista, avoimella, suojattomalla paikalla. Hän näki, miten vartiat
junan edeltä pakenivat, etsien halkopinojen välistä suojaa, miten
valkoiset hyppäsivät alas asemarakennuksen ikkunoista läheiseen
metsään juosten, ja kuinka muuan nuori suojeluskuntalainen, ontuva
poika päästeli rauhallisena, kuulasateesta välittämättä, aitaan
kiinnitettyjä hevosia.

Vain muutama oli enää jälellä. Päällikkönsä ratsun hän

lähenevästä vaarasta huolimatta pelasti ja tuli viimeiseksi erään