Satan Lives for My Love!: Sex and Sadism in Marvel's Horror Pulps, 1938-1940

Before launching what would become the Marvel Comics empire, Martin Goodman published low-rent pulp magazines issued by a dizzying array of shell companies designed to insulate him from creditors. In order to compete in an already-crowded marketplace, he allowed editor-in-chief Robert O. Erisman to distinguish these periodicals with lurid covers and sensational fiction. They eschewed explicit descriptions of sex acts but otherwise left nothing to the imagination, routinely trafficking in torture and paraphilia. Bearing Goodman’s “Red Circle” trademark, the horror pulps MYSTERY TALES, UNCANNY TALES, MARVEL TALES, and REAL MYSTERY were transgressive in the extreme, shattering the boundaries of good taste and igniting a firestorm of outrage that eventually drove them off the newsstands. Although Goodman continued publishing pulps as well as comic books well into the 1950s, he deliberately allowed MYSTERY TALES and its sister magazines to lapse into obscurity, making no attempt to renew their copyrights or reprint their contents in other periodicals or paperback editions. This anthology collects the wildest, most offensive stories from those long-forgotten magazines, making it a veritable cornucopia of sexual violence and perversion!