Lurid cover art from 1950s comic, Witches Tales

A fantastic collection of covers from the pre-Comics Code comic book Witches Tales. Too bad Fredric Wertham had to come along and spoil the fun. (Via Dooby Brain)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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mgmars

Today I learned that being a buxom beauty in a red dress all but guarantees you’ll die a gruesome death at the hands of bizarre and supernatural forces.
- Guest
  
  …probably all named ‘Roxanne’. Sting warned them.
http://www.facebook.com/comediAn2323 Michael Crosby

wertham wouldn`t have been very disturbed by most of those… the bad ones were much worse.
Huwman

This is beautiful work that often even rivaled the EC output. Lee Elias and warren Kremer were just two of the top notch artists that worked on these. What inspirations these guys were and still are!
Syd

I hope this is the start of “Weird Witches Wednesday”.
HenryPootel

Someone needs to learn to use smaller preview images…
samovar100

My LIFE is a torture jar.
pjcamp

Too much rouge on the mads, there.
MonsterMan

Man, that blog is slow as molasses! Those are some big images on there.
Charles H.

Wertham didn’t help things, but he wasn’t the catalyst. If you want to blame somebody, blame the big publishers of the time — in particular National Periodicals, now DC, and Archie Comics — who saw it as a golden opportunity to kill off the competition that was cutting heavily into their sales.

(There’s also a bit of a date problem. The hearings into juvenile delinquency that focused on comics in particular were already scheduled and, if I recall correctly, may have actually already been under way by the time Seduction of the Innocent hit the press.)