Subscribe Posted by Michael Pinto on Jan 23, 2012 in Comic Books

What were fanboys and fangurls reading fifty years ago? Well here’s a selection of over fifty comic books from January 1962. The first thing that’s interested about this selection is the variety of genres — superheroes only represent a percentage of the titles that were on newsstands: In 1962 you could find comic books that took place in the old wild west, World War II, outer space and there were also romance comic books for the ladies and quite a few cartoony kid friendly titles as well.

Super Heroes

Yes Batman and Superman are here – but there are some also some silly covers devoted to the misadventures of Superboy, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane.

War Stories

Comic books about World War II would start to decline to in popularity during the later part of the 60s, however in 1962 there were still quite a few titles out there like G.I. Combat and Our Army at War. Although the stories weren’t always just about World War II as some paratroopers might run into a volcano filled with dinosaurs!

Romance

Once upon a time there were quite a few romance comic books aimed at girls — but these titles started to fade quickly as the 60s went on and the times changed. What’s funny about these covers is that some feel like the 50s, however in a few you can see some signs of the 60s like the Jackie O. pillbox hats.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

When most of us think of science we think of Star Trek and Star Wars — however the comic books of 1962 were much more like the low budget B films of the 50s. Most of these comic books weren’t about space travel but more focused on monsters and aliens that wanted to come to Earth and party on down.

Westerns

In the 50s and the 60s cowboy shows were very popular — and comic books reflected this interest in the old west. Although the publishers weren’t afraid to go where televisions shows wouldn’t and thrown in ghosts and green beasts.

Comedy

Archie first appeared in Pep Comics #22 in 1941 and was still going quite strong by 1962. In addition to Archie’s teen humor there were also comic books based on well known comedians like Jerry Lewis and Lucille Ball. Additionally there were also many reprints of comic strips as comic books which would appeal to kids.

My thanks to mycomicshop.com which had all of these titles nicely organized.