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THE GREAT COMIC BOOK CONTROVERSY

By Devin O’Bryan

Comic books are a distinctively American invention along with jazz, rock and roll, and the western.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Today there is much debate about the effects of violence in the media on children. Going back sixty years to the stir created by objectionable content in comic books might help us see all of this in a new light.

The attack on the comic industry in the 1950s …

…stunted the artistic development of a new medium…

…was based on shoddy research…

…and took away the inspiration for many great minds of the “boomer” generation.

The comic book industry, accused of contributing to juvenile delinquency was among the many organizations that received intensive scrutiny during the 1950’s, and some radical changes resulted, hampering the industry’s artistic growth.

Because of this controversy, the styles and subject matter of comics changed drastically, titles were dropped, and major comic companies vanished overnight.

First of all, we must picture the world of the early fifties…the beginning of the BABY BOOM…we remember it as a more INNOCENT time…and in many ways it was…

…but what is forgotten is that there was a tremendous rise in juvenile crime during this era.

Today we can look back on it and realize perhaps that WWII may have had much to do with it…fathers gone for years fighting the war…fathers that never RETURNED…leading to some children growing like weeds.

This was an era when the comic book industry was HUGE…titles sold MILLIONS of copies monthly…not like today…

A Pennsylvania drug store…

In the fifties, almost EVERY child read comics (adults TOO)…and they were EVERYWHERE…in every store…not just specialty comic stores.

In the quest to find a scapegoat for the rise in juvenile delinquency, COMICS became a target.

After much hand-wringing…comics were burned in bonfires and Congress began to investigate them.

Slightly reminiscent of similar scenes in Europe just ten years before?

“A teenaged girl poses with comic books and paperbacks seized from a Kitchener, Ontario newsstand in the early 1950’s.”

Part One…The Growth of the Comics Industry is Stunted

The industry finally had to react in order to avoid legislation against comic books and to clear their bad name. Most of the major publishers banded together in October, 1954 to create the Comics Code Authority.

However, the code did irreparable damage to the industry as a whole. Many companies folded, unable to adapt to what many viewed as the ridiculously strict standards of the code.

This was an organization which set up an elaborate list of restrictions with which all subscribing publications were expected to comply. Comics without the seal of approval could easily be boycotted (or even refused distribution). The code was designed to protect the comic book business and was successful in placating members of the public.

The code, as originally written, was so strict that it was impossible to publish a comic that dealt with horror or crime in any way.

Some companies tried to survive in particularly creative ways. E.C. reworked their line of comics and started publishing tamer material about knights, pirates, and doctors. Sales plummeted. Kids were used to reading some of the brightest, well written and illustrated stories in the history of comics from that company. Publishers like E.C. Comics, Fiction House, and Gleason folded due to lack of sales.

What many consider a tragic thing was that these moves occurred just as comics were beginning to achieve new heights of sophistication in execution and concept.

This was a great setback for the art of comics, and the industry has never been able to equal the fine storytelling and exquisite artwork which was commonplace in comic books in the late 1940s’s and early 1950’s.

Great artists like Frank Frazetta began their careers at this time working for EC, but quickly left the industry.

Artwork by Frank Frazetta

Jack Cole, brilliant creator of PLASTIC MAN, also left the industry. Countless others followed…

Author Ray Bradbury’s stories were adapted masterfully in E.C. Comics.

These Bradbury adaptations were truly a high water mark in the history of comics.

Comics were crushed by the pressure and forced into safe, sanitized, and infantile patterns, just when the great potential for maturity in comics had only begun to be explored

Clint Eastwood once said that "don't have any original art except western movies and jazz.” Others Americans have pointed out that distinctly American inventions include the banjo, musical comedy/vaudeville, the mystery story, jazz (including rock and roll), and comics.

It is interesting to note that in France, Italy, and Japan, comics are not viewed as solely a child’s medium, but a format just as suited to adult storytelling as novels, movies, TV, or any other medium.

Part Two:The Initial Research that Prompted the Censorship was Problematic

The initial research that prompted the censorship was remarkably shaky. The public controversy over comic books all began with the release in 1953 of Dr. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent.

Wertham claimed that “crime comics” (in which group he included Superman) were corrupting America’s youth. Comic book artists were described as “diabolic,” and comics were referred to as a “social virus.”

Dr. Wertham had first hit on the idea that comic books were harmful when he noticed that his juvenile patients were reading comics in his waiting room. He immediately deduced a cause and effect relationship but overlooked the fact that virtually every child of that era read comics.

He mentions the case of a boy who had threatened to break his sister’s arm, and concludes, “This is not the kind of thing that boys used to tell their sisters. To break people’s arms, or to threaten to do so, is one of the comic book’s devices.” This unsubstantiated assertion is a good example of Wertham’s technique, which rarely offered any concrete proof concerning the allegedly harmful effects of comic books.

Many examples are given of objectionable material in comic book stories, but Wertham rarely gives the source (title or issue number) that they come from. Therefore, the reader has no way of verifying that the original comic stories are actually the way that he presents them. They often aren’t.

For example, Wertham blows up a panel from one comic showing the shading on a jungle hero’s biceps that supposedly resembles a woman’s private area and claims this to be the artist’s original intention.

In only ONE instance, did Dr. Wertham show an entire comic cover including the title. This issue was shown because Wertham was upset that the publisher had meant the psychiatrist depicted on the cover to be a caricature of himself. Showing the title of the comic would bring more harm to that company.

He asserted that children learned more than techniques of burglary and violence from comics citing stories (possibly “urban legends”) about the kids who wrapped towels around their necks and jumped out of windows pretending to be Superman.

A map used by juveniles planning a crime was supposed to have been influenced by one seen in a comic book.

Wertham asserted that SUPERMAN was a fascist ideal.

Dr.Wertham also stated that Wonder Woman and Batman were deviant homosexual role models.

Dr. Wertham wrote in the Saturday Review of Literature (April 9, 1955) that the code had really done nothing to remove the crime from comic books. Wertham said, “At present it is far safer for a mother to let her child have a comic book without a seal of approval than one with such a seal.” He went on to say that the new comics, with their self-awarded seal of approval, made murder seem even more like a game, disguising action with “an aura of good taste where the ghastly effects of heartless cruelty were never realistically depicted.”

Wertham had originally advocated, at the end of his book, a rating system, which would have left the serious comics on the stands, but only for sale to those over sixteen. This would have been similar to the system recommended for rock music in the 1980’s by Tipper Gore or the rating system for movies rolled out in the late 1960’s, and today’s ratings for violent video games.

Part three:The Comics Have a Lasting Creative Impact on a Generation

The comics published in the pre-code era are now considered to be a “golden age” of comics and are acknowledged as having a long lasting positive creative impact on a generation. Many of today’s great writers and artists cite these comics as influential in their early development.

Ironically, the comic books which Wertham attacked became much sought after collector’s items and have been reprinted in hardcover book form on archival paper by publishers considering them to be “art.”

Stephen King cites E.C. Comics as being a major influence on his youth and ultimate writing style.

Many people involved in the creative media today, from artists to noted writers to famous film directors, mention these comics as early influences that stimulated their young imaginations.

Ray Bradbury absolutely loved the adaptations of his short stories that appeared in the comics of the time.

Artist Robert Crumb cherished these comics as a child, especially MAD.

This E.C. comic turned magazine, MAD, had been credited as a major force in causing the “Baby Boom” generation to think critically and to question what society and Madison Avenue told them.

Perhaps comics weren’t as bad an influence as Wertham believed. Readers learned not to blindly follow authority without thinking.

Prejudice was also shown to be shameful in these early comics.

Many of the creative minds left the industry, unable to cope with the censorship, leaving it in the hands of the “mindless, uncreative non-talents” whom Wertham had found most despicable. The industry was worse than it had ever been, and ironically, the public (both friends and enemies of comics) held Wertham responsible for the Authority.

In 1972, stories from E.C. Comics were turned into two major motion pictures from Britain’s Amicus Pictures.

The art design of E.C. Comics is still influential today…

The distinctive look and logos of the E.C. Comics line have become iconic.

In the 1990’s, E.C. Comics stories were adapted into an HBO television series…and EVEN a Saturday morning cartoon! Disney ‘s comic book arm began reprinting the original comics as well!

A generation that was provided an early exposure to critical thinking demanded more maturity and realism in comic stories. War comics did not glamorize war and show it to be great fun.

The grim reality of war was shown by artists and writers, many of whom had served in World War II. The horror of racial prejudice and violence was also depicted

Writer Stan Lee, in 1971, wrote a Spider-Man story in which the hero tries to save a teenager on LSD from a rooftop, but fails, and she falls to her death. The Comics Code Authority refused to approve this comic, and Stan Lee fought them. He thought he was making an important, anti-drug statement with the story and doing some good. Lee went ahead and distributed that issue of Spider-Man without the seal. Virtually no one noticed, and the code’s power had been weakened.

By the late 1990s, comics companies began to just ignore the code. The Comics Code died in January of 2011 when the last participating publisher (ARCHIE) stopped submitting its books to it. Marvel had stopped using it ten years before.

Did the code help our nation’s youth during its 55 year existence? Would similar self-censoring boards help in other media? There are many critics who believe that the comic controversy of the fifties stunted the growth and creativity of the medium for almost sixty years. A generation was robbed of what could have developed into a grand medium fusing art and writing, and it was all based on haphazard research. We must be wary of censorship, the enemy of art.