Beware (Marvel)

(Marvel, 1973-1974)
™ and ©1972 Magazine Management Co., Inc.
Series continued as Tomb of Darkness #9

When the Comics Code was originally devised in 1954, it specifically prohibited “scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires, and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism.” Other parts of the code prohibited “scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes…” as well as “all lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations.” Almost overnight, horror comics that had been so popular in the fifties began to die off, having been stripped of both their favorite monsters and the essence of the genre. Countless stories, ready for publication, were destined for the file drawer instead.

The code was relaxed a bit in 1971, ushering in a blitz of monster and werewolf titles such as Frankenstein (The Monster Of…), Werewolf by Night, and catalog titles like Crypt of Shadows. Beware was another such Marvel effort, reprinting forgotten (and generally average) monster stories from the 1950s.

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