Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, Vintage Paper | Tagged: joe Sinnott, menace, pre-code horror

Stan Lee Made the Case For Horror Comics in 1953, Menace #7 at Auction

Menace #7's "The Witch in the Woods" by Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott in 1953 was a reaction to the comic book moral panic in the media of the era.

I've been rereading a stack of old Menace anthology comic books recently, published by Atlas in the fifties before a) the Comics Code kicked in and b) before the return of superheroes. Stan Lee wrote most of these horror and sci-fi short stories, and they frankly read a lot better than much of his subsequent Marvel stuff. They seem to generally be written in the second person; they follow the standard twist format of such short stories and are frankly a lot of fun. But you can see what was in the air regarding these horror comics in Menace #7 from 1953, a bunch of stories written and edited by Stan, with art by Russ Heath, Joe Maneely, Syd Shores, and Joe Sinnott.

In 1954, Dr Frederick Wertham published Seduction Of The Innocent, warning that comics were a negative form of popular literature and a serious cause of juvenile delinquency. It fueled a Senate inquiry that saw comic book publishers such as Atlas form the Comics Code Authority and abandon the likes of horror comic books. One year earlier, in Menace, #7, Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott were aware of the concern and published a story about a kid reading horror comic books, much to his father's disgust.

In order to correct the child's reading habits, he decides to read him the kind of fairy tales he grew up with as a kid and goes for Hansel And Gretel. Though clearly forgetting some aspects of this.

With Joe Sinnott mirroring images common in the likes of the targeted EC Comics horror titles and making the case that this is just the "same old same old" and that parents have forgotten what it's like to be kids. These days, you could do similar with Gender Queer and much of the stories that objecting parents read when they were the same age. A copy of the pre-Code-baiting Menace #7 is currently up for auction from Heritage Auctions with a CBCS grading 3.5.

Menace #7 (Atlas, 1953) CBCS VG- 3.5 Off-white pages. Frankenstein story. Carl Burgos skull cover. Woman burned alive panel. Russ Heath, Joe Maneely, Syd Shores, and Joe Sinnott art. Stan Lee story. Overstreet 2022 VG 4.0 value = $206.

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