kind of comic from superheroes to college boy capers, and especially, perhaps, science-
fiction comics such as Planet, published by Fiction house, a former pulp magazine
purveyor, Fiction House comics, including the Tarzan-like series Jungle Comics with its
leopard-skin-clad ladies swinging around the trees, were the nearest thing to illustrated
erotica many a young soldier had ever seen. These comics were also on sale at America’s
local news-stands, and were naturally bought by youngsters not yet in their teens. It
was the beginning of a new wave of comic books and eventually a new wave of adult
criticism which, after the war, would lead to the temporary downfall of the whole comic
book business.
Frederick Wertham, a psychologist, wrote a series of articles focusing on the comic
book as a corrupter of childhood; his Seduction of the Innocent (British edition 1955)
blamed comics for leading children into crime and sexual depravity. The illustrations
from horror comics in the book made a convincing case; Senate hearings followed, and
horror comic publishers rapidly went out of business— although their legacy is still with
us. It was a dark decade for the American comic book, leading to an uninteresting period
of ‘approved’ comics, subject to the seal of an industry-owned censoring board.
Thus the American comic book has grown from localised reprints to world domination
in less than sixty years. Early examples can command thousands of dollars from
collectors, there are specialist shops selling them in Britain, and there are regular comic
markets and annual comic conventions where dealers, artists and fans congregate to
spend small fortunes on ‘rare’ comics, original artwork, and even to dress up as their
favourite fantasy heroes for prizes (comics, of course!).
Dime Novels, Pulps and Penny DreadfulsErastus Flavel Beadle, father of the American dime novel, a pocket-sized paperback of
128 pages of thrilling fiction selling at ten cents (later reduced to five cents) was born in
Otsego County, New York, in 1821. His own father, Irvin P. Beadle, had been a ballad
hawker who set up as a printer and issued the best-selling Dime Song Book, a
compilation of the ballads he had been hawking for years. By 1840 Erasmus was a
printer in Buffalo, and in 1852 published number one of a children’s story magazine,
The Youth’s Casket. But it was in June 1860 that his great idea of popular novels at
affordable prices took shape with the first volume in his series of The Choicest Works of
the Most Popular Authors, otherwise billed as ‘Dollar Books for a Dime’. It was entitled
Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, and was a reprint of the ‘Prize Story’ from
the magazine, The Ladies Companion, written by Mrs Ann Sophia Winterbottom Stephens
and first published in 1839. The Beadle’s Dime Library reissue sold 65,000 copies within
a few months.
The title and source of this tattered milestone in popular literature sound romantic,
but consider this moment from page 10:
‘Touch but a hair of her head, and by the Lord that made me, I will bespatter that
tree with your brains!’ Thus spake William Danorth, white hunter. Many a dusky
form bit the dust and many a savage howl followed the discharge of his trusty gun!TYPES AND GENRES 255