As if we needed any more proof of the insanity of the
anti-comics Senatorial hearings of the 1950s, one of the comics called into
question was Black Magic. E.C.’s
horror comics were the most visible victims of the senate’s witch-hunt, both
because William Gaines courageously/foolhardily challenged the subcommittee directly
and because his comics were really, really gruesome. In comparison, Black Magic was a paragon of restraint.
Most of the tales Joe Simon and Jack Kirby whipped up for the comic were
tastefully illustrated, usually lacking in violence or even the explicitly
supernatural. To put it in TV terms, if Tales
from the Crypt was Boris Karloff’s
Thriller, then Black Magic was One Step Beyond.
A lot of the stories compiled into The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror!— part of a series compiling
the guys’ work by genre— barely qualifies as horror. Pieces such as “The Girl
Who Walked on Water” and “A Giant Walks the Earth” are squarely in the uncanny
or fantasy drawers. “The Scorn of the Faceless People” is presented as a
psychological study by a couple of cartoon shrinks. There’s also a short piece
on Nostradamus’s vague predictions. Quite unlike Crypt’s menagerie of zombie and vampire tales, many of Simon &
Kirby’s stories could have really happened. Even a tale about a mysterious
werewolf lady is plausible. Although a few stories close in on the graphic muck
the more committed horror comics deliver (“Freak”, “Nasty Little Man”, and the
genuinely horrifying “Hungry as a Wolf”, for example), readers who really want
to swim in that stuff might be a bit disappointed by the maturity of Simon &
Kirby’s dalliances with the genre. The duo’s artwork is more in line with the
gooey romance comics they pioneered than goopy horror.
Those who already count themselves among the artists’ fans will
be most impressed with The Simon &
Kirby Library: Horror! This is a great looking volume with restored artwork
that doesn’t look absurdly digitized, as the recent volumes of Dark Horse’s The E.C. Archives do. You also get more
thrills for your buck. There are over fifty stories collected here; everything
Simon & Kirby contributed to Black
Magic and the weirder (and wonderfully titled) The Strange World of Your Dreams, which featured illustrated
dramatizations of the actual dreams of that comic’s founder, Mort Meskin!
