"Tales from the Crypt" is about to take a whack at the nation's most famous hockey mom.

The next issue of the horror comic book has Sarah Palin, GOP vice presidential candidate, depicted on its cover swinging a hockey stick and rousting the ghoulish "Crypt" characters made famous in the book's gory glory days back in the 1950s.

"Didn't we get rid of you guys in the 50's?" the Alaska governor asks with a sneer as she scatters the Vault-Keeper and his creepy mates from a stone castle doorway. The poltician is wearing a campaign button that reads "Palin-McCain" -- as well as a red top with a plunging neckline.

The cover is a reference to two instances of content debate, one that played out on a national stage and the other a seemingly minor moment in Alaska that has been made major by the current political season.

"Tales from the Crypt " became one of the signature names in horror and American pop culture after five years of memorable mayhem that ended in 1955. That was after months of intense pressure and new industry regulations targeting the lurid comics, spurred by televised Senate subcommittee hearings on juvenile delinquency and its causes.

Palin, meanwhile, has taken heat for some overtures she made in 1996 while as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Criticized after reports that she sought to ban books from a local public library, the GOP candidate has said that on two occasions she asked "a rhetorical question" about removing objectionable books from shelves, but that she never pursued it or mentioned specific titles.

But any White House candidate who even entertains a conversation about book banning is a natural enemy to "Tales from the Crypt," according to Jim Salicrup, editor-in-chief of Papercutz, the publisher that revived the classic title about 16 months ago. "This was not a partisan thing. People tend to think of everything as black and white these days -- you are either for or against one of the parties 100%. But for us this was about the history of EC Comics, the original publisher of 'Tales from the Crypt.' Anyone who knows that history knows that even of whiff of banning books is going to get us angry."

The Sunday Review: "The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics"

Edited by Paul Gravett (Running Press, softcover, $17.95)      

Earlier this year, there was quite a stir of attention (and appropriately so) for author David Hajdu's latest book, "The Ten Cent Plague: the Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America," which delved into the quirky and alarming crusades against comics in this country that reached their shrill peaks in the 1940s and 1950s. In a piece I wrote in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, I admired the research but had some problems with the focus in the final analysis. That said, the book and its tale really stuck with me, and I think it should be on the bookshelf of anyone who loves comics history. And you know what should go right next to it? "The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics" and not just because both have oddly long and stilted titles.

If Hajdu gives us the motivation for the pop-culture offenses, this book, edited by Paul Gravett, gives us the crime-scene photos, so to speak. The book arrived in the mail the other day and the first thing I noticed was the heft; you get your money's worth with 480 pages of two-timing molls, square-jawed cops, doomed losers and booze-soaked ciphers. There's an impressive array of talent surveyed here, too, with classic names such as Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Bill Everett, Joe Simon, Jack Cole, Bernie Krigstein and Johnny Craig. More than that, "Best Crime" brings its lurid mission well into the contemporary decades, with comics work by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Charles Burns and mystery novelist Max Allan Collins (whose "Road to Perdition" comics spawned the film of the same name).

There's also the comics work of Mickey Spillane, who is no stranger to killers in trenchcoats, and best of all, some of Dashiell Hammett's "Secret Agent X-9" comic strip from 1934, which was drawn by Alex Raymond, the graceful illustrator who that same year would launch a little strip called "Flash Gordon" that would end up doing quite well.