VAMPIRES AND ZOMBIES 659
returned to avenge their death, others came because they were just overwhelmingly evil,
and still more were beckoned from the grave or revived by the living. Th ese were the
major tropes for zombie stories in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Few stories containing horror were published in the 1930s and usually the horrifi c
elements were mere extensions of the some other genre story. Typically, Classics Illus-
trated’s adaptation of Th e Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1943 is identifi ed
as the fi rst horror comic. Eerie Comics #1 (1947) is often credited as the fi rst ongo-
ing horror series, though there is some debate since Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein series
(1945) was inspired by horror but often the early issues were more humor than horror.
Regardless, by the end of the 1940s, vampires and zombies were being featured promi-
nently in many horror comics.
Often, early vampire stories were formulaic in that they followed in the tradition
of both the fi lm and book versions of Dracula. For instance, in a story published in
Adventures into the Unknown #3 (1948), “Th e Vampire Prowls” features many things
that invoke the fi lm, Dracula, more so than the book. Th e story contains a well-dressed
vampire akin to Béla Lugosi’s fi lm version of Dracula who lusts after a woman he meets
at the theater though she is married to another. Th e doctor of the story wields an herb
( juniper sprig) to repulse the vampire and later stakes the vampire through the heart in
its coffi n. Th is is more aligned with the fi lm since in the book, there is no theater scene
and it is the husband who helps slay Dracula.
Regardless, vampires and zombies continued as reliable characters in the increasingly
gory and violent comics of the 1950s. Th e visual and moral debauchery exhibited in
crime and horror comics led to the publication of Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Fre-
dric Wertham and to meetings of the U.S. Senate’s sub-committee to Investigate
Juvenile Delinquency with a focus on comics. October, 1954 saw the creation of the
Comics Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America, Inc, in which comic
stories involving vampires and zombies would be all but eliminated in comic books for
about 17 years. Under General Standards Part B, the Comics Code stipulated several
clauses that would signifi cantly hinder these narratives, including the second clause
which prohibited “all scenes of horror” and the third clause which banned “all lurid,
unsavory, gruesome illustrations.” But vampires and zombies were offi cially sent back
to their coffi ns en masse with the fi fth clause which clearly stated, “Scenes dealing with,
or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls,
cannibalism and werewolfi sm are prohibited.” For most publishers, this kept them from
publishing such stories until 1971.
Th e revised Comics Code in 1971 amended and opened up some room by reword-
ing the fi fth clause as such: “Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking
dead, or torture, shall not be used. Vampires, ghouls and werewolves shall be permit-
ted to be used when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula,
and other high caliber literary works written by Edgar Allan Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle
and other respected authors whose works are read in schools around the world.” With
horror reemerging as a popular fi lm genre in the wake of creation of the Motion Picture
