Living In Fear!

I forget how long ago it was that I learned that Les Daniels, the author of many a tome on comic books including the seminal volume Comix: A History of Comic Books in America, had written a similar book recounting the development of terror in popular culture. I do know that I was very pleased to stumble across a copy of Living In Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media at a local bookseller. While the book was more well-thumbed than I usually buy, I knew that this one is hard to get so I made off with it.

Now at long last I've given it a solid reading straight through and I sadly find it an uneven reading experience. Daniels is expansive in his definition of terror or horror as it is often called. He begins with the ancient myths and works his way steadily through history, counting all manner of monsters from all sorts of sources as influences. He's doubtless correct, but sometimes he's so inclusive it's difficult to get a feel for the parameters he has established for the book.

A sense of that begins to develop with the discussion of the Gothic horrors of vintage writers such as Robert Walpole, Edmund Lewis and others. When we finally get to Mary Wollstencraft Shelley and her seminal novel Frankenstein, the influences are firmly established is broad. Daniels goes on to focus on important American writers such as Poe and Lovecraft. 

Then he turns his attention to films with obvious focus on the epic Warner Brothers classic monster flicks along with just about every other significant "horror" film you've ever heard of. He brings this 1970's analysis of the genre right up to the then present day talking about such efforts as The Night Stalker and The Exorcist.

Also Daniels offers up samples of horror stories from across the centuries with tales by Poe, Lovecraft, Bierce, and Machen among others. There's even a vintage EC Comic story by Jack Davis included.

Daniels is sweeping in his coverage, and in spots allows himself to drill down in some detail, but mostly this book becomes a catalog of important and or famous horror stories and films a fan should want to see. That's not unimportant in a book which pre-dates the internet with its avalanche of information on the genre, but it was not what I expected really. I anticipated more analysis, more insight and there is some, but just not as much as I'd have preferred.

That said, this is still a book I'm glad I found and read. 

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Les Daniels RIP

Word is spreading that Les Daniels, an accomplished author and musician, but best known to me as the writer of one of the key histories of comic books, has passed away.

We're awash in comic book lore and such these days, but once upon a time, it was relatively rare and Comix - A History of Comic Books in America was a key tome for the home library. I checked a copy out of my local library many times, and I still remember getting my very own copy in a little used book store in Ashville, North Carolina.

Daniels wrote more comic book histories, notably sweeping looks at both Marvel and DC, but it's that first one from the now musty days of the early 70's which left its mark here.

Here's a nice interview with Daniels from 1995. Here's a quote from the interview:

And in fact, I did one earlier; my first book ever was a history of comics, a general history. It was called Comix, A History of Comic Books in America. That was in 1971. And that was to some extent based on my concerns, which you've been touching on earlier, about censorship, and the fact that when I was a boy in the 1950's, the horror comics were more or less banned in the United States; something that I'd been reading, specifically the EC comics Tales From The Crypt and its sister publications, like Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear. I liked comics as a form; when I was a small boy, again, I used to draw my own little comics and I thought, maybe I would get involved in that but I'm not much of an artist, and at the time I thought that you had to be able to write and draw them both, only later I realised. But rather than ever going into comics, in terms of writing, I just have this sort of sideline now of being a 'comics historian', in addition to writing the novels.

Rest in peace Mr.Daniels.

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