Michael Goodrum is Reader in Cultural History at Canterbury Christ Church UniversityPhilip Smith is Associate Chair of Liberal Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design

'The six main chapters incorporate a broad range of texts, and in these Goodrum and Smith read comics from two distinct periods—the periods before and after the formation of the Comics Code Authority (CCA) in 1954—through the lenses of trauma, race, and gender.'Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association'The authors robustly show the extent to which horror comics appear to indict racism and misogyny while consistently presenting women and people of colour as endangering white men and societal structures.'Dianne Kirby, Twentieth Century Communism

• Introduction1 The dead – the slain – the unavenged – trauma in the 1940s and 1950s2 Men are beasts! Wild beasts! Wild beasts must be destroyed! – gender in the 1940s and 1950s3 Confusion turns to fear – race in the 1940s and 1950s4 Monster kids: bridging the pre- and post-CCA eras5 The war has done strange things to you – trauma in the 1960s and 1970s6 This isn’t a dream! This is really happening! – gender in the 1960s and 1970s7 We are a species that fears itself most of all – race in the 1960s and 1970s8 Conclusion: appropriating white male fearIndex