Web exclusive: Margaret Atwood on 1950s creepy comics

At the Writers' at Woody Point Festival, Shelagh Rogers and Margaret Atwood reminisced about the comics of their childhood - but they aren't the comics you think they'd be reading. They both read the "Eerie" and "Creepy" comics of the 1950s.

Shelagh Rogers: I used to read comics when I was a kid. Not the standard and popular Archie and Betty and Veronica, but things like Eerie Comics and Creepy magazine.

Margaret Atwood: The comics you were reading, were they black and white?

SR: Yeah.

MA: The comics code, when they put it out, only applied to coloured ones. They got around it by doing those things in black and white. I have a chapter on that in Cat's Eye, reading those creepy comics and going "haha." But at night, of course, you didn't want them in the same room. They were too eerie and creepy.

SR: I loved them though. I devoured them,

MA: What kids did on Saturday afternoons, when they were 11 or 12, they would bring all their comics over and put them in a big pile and trade them back and forth, and then sit around reading them, making little grunts.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.