Suspended animation in fiction which is indistinguishable from death. In American fiction, the first story to deal with suspended animation is the tale of Rip Van Winkle, a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819 as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. In the story, a British subject in the American colonies wanders into the Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolutionary War, and finds a group of fairies, whose moonshine he drinks. He then falls asleep for 20 years, and returns to his village in what is now the United States, finding his home town
Horror comics ran through "Prize Comics" #52 (April 1945) before becoming a humor series and then being revived in horrific form in the series "Frankenstein" #18-33 (March 1952 - November 1954). Gilberton Publications' 60-page "Classic Comics" #12 (June 1943) adapted Washington Irving's short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as a backup feature to Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" in a package titled "Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman". The next issue, "Classic Comics" #13 (August 1943), adapted Robert Louis Stevenson's horror novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" as the full-length story "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", making it