Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer / Artist: Don Heck
Release Date: 20th January, 2016

Mention the word ‘Marvel’ to any self-respecting comic fan and several names come to mind: Stan Lee, Dick Ayers, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, and Don Heck. In the 1960s, Heck not only designed Iron Man, along with Kirby, but also was responsible for creating the characters of Hawkeye and Black Widow, original nemeses of Tony Stark, or ‘Shellhead’, in addition to his considerable work on The Avengers. Heck worked within several other genres during his career, including crime, fantasy, romance, westerns and, of course, horror.

Horror by Heck, part of the Chilling Archives of Horror Comics series, collects the horror comics illustrated by Heck from his time with Media Comics. However, as indicated in the brief but poignant sections by Kelley Jones and Craig Yoe, the book is much more. It touches upon the elitism encountered by Heck in regards to his work, particularly his forays in the horror genre. Working for Comics Media in the pre-Code era of the 1950s, Heck worked on such lines as Weird Tales and Danger before the Comic Code was issued in 1954. The Code was a direct result of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s infamous book, The Seduction of the Innocent, which warned of the negative effects of comics on children. The Code prevented “lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations”, any depictions of “walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolf- ism” and even references to “horror or terror” in titles. Consequently, as early as 1955, many comic book companies were no longer in operation and this was sadly the case with Media Comics.

Heck’s contribution to the world of horror comics, though short-lived, was seminal and this is reflected in the reverence of Jones and Yoe’s tributes. Collected within the pages of this book are full issues of Weird Tales and Horrific, featuring werewolves, corpses and the iconic bullet-in-the-head cover from War Fury, all reproduced in stunning, uncensored glory.

The book is a necessary collection for any horror comic fan and, in addition to the rest of the Chilling Archives of Horror Comics books, nicely complements Jim Trombetta’s The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read!, which is compiled of pre-Code comics from the 1950s across several genres, many of which are rare issues from Trombetta’s own collection. Thanks to Jones and Yoe, Horror by Heck can now be part of yours.

Rating: 5/5.

The writer of this piece was: Rebecca Booth
Rebecca Tweets from @rebeccalbooth