Here’s an interesting read for you older comic book geeks (like me) who remember the days of the comics’ code and its impact on both the comic and magazine racks. This article is taken from Inside Comics, issues 3 and 4, 1974. For you newbies, the Comics Code Authority (CCA) was formed in 1954 as a voluntary alternative to government regulation of the content in comics. It followed after a “moral panic” arose over the graphic violence, sexuality, gruesome horrors, and the supposed effect on juvenile delinquency, that comics packed in every issue. Said panic was promoted by one Fredrik Wertham, a psychiatrist, who wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent. While he came to be reviled by comic book fans, it should be said that he was a progressive shrink who treated poor black patients at his Lafargue Clinic (from Wikipedia), and “his institutional stressor findings were cited when courts overturned multiple segregation statutes, most notably in Brown v. Board of Education.” So he wasn’t all that bad, just misguided about comics.
EC Comics (which is now legendary for the horror titles it put out during the 1950s), and William Gaines, its publisher, took the ire of the senate judiciary subcommittee’s hearing to investigate juvenile delinquency after Wertham provided his light-the-bonfire testimony. As noted on CBLDF.org:
As for Gaines himself, the hearings changed his course forever: Gaines’ deep resentment of Wertham’s assertions and the impact of the Senate hearings colored his attitudes towards publishing. To escape the regulation of the Comics Code (and the dwindling comics sales he saw after the code was enacted), Gaines founded Mad magazine, encouraging cartoonists to lampoon authority. The magazine became a powerful influence on cartoonists and activists in the years to come.
Ironically, while the comics code “tidied-up” comic books, as one newspaper article of the time wrote, it forgot about the magazine rack. Magazines were not covered by the code. The horror, adult themes and images, and, frankly, the more entertaining aspects of storytelling moved over to the larger size format and into titles that included Creepy, Eerie, various Marvel horror and superhero titles, Skywald “horror mood” titles, and, continuing the irony, a reprinting of many of the 1940s and 1950s horror stories that spurred the comics’ code into existence in the first place (albeit in chilling black and white instead of color).
By 2001 Marvel dropped adherence to the comics code as it lost its relevance in the real world that it forced comics to hide from. But even before that, in 1971, Marvel ignored the somewhat confusing comics code rules with issue 96 of The Amazing Spider-Man, which contained a story about drug addiction. For the first time the code’s seal of approval did not appear on that issue. I can’t tell you how thrilling that was for me, and many comics fans of the day, to finally see that. We buzzed about it in the neighborhood for weeks.
Stan Lee made the decision to run with the issue without the code after the Nixon Whitehouse asked Marvel to do an anti-drug story. Lee went to the code people for approval and was turned down. Go to CBR.com for more information.
Thanks for posting this. Very interesting and valuable snapshot of comic history.
My pleasure Robert. I’ll see what other vintage stuff of interest I can post.
Ha, nearly two years later and I’m rediscovering this! Since 2024 I’ve read Wertham’s Dark Legend and SOTI – couldn’t get through A Sign for Cain – and I find he’s very elusive. Statements he’s making here are definitely misrepresenting and reframing what he said in the 1950s. He also sounds an incredible egotist. This won’t be my last time reading this, I’m sure! Thanks again!
My pleasure to share his comic book related nonsense, more or less. 😉 As for his other books, I haven’t read them, though I may eventually. I was headed to a career in Forensic Psychology but got side tracked into the computers instead. The internship in a hospital criminal ward did its best to dissuade me.
Hi again. The only book I can recommend is Dark Legend. It’s a very sad case and I still don’t know how I feel about Gino going to a hospital rather than the chair, but the book is well well written and interesting. His other work, even the magazine articles, is like being shouted at by a guy who hasn’t thought through his case properly. By the way, Wertham was in charge of the criminal ward at Bellevue Hospital and unlike you he seems to have felt at home with the patients. Frankly, reading about Albert Fish turns my stomach.
I will read Dark Legend then. Bellevue would have seen the worst and most varied cases. It takes a strong detachment to deal with the more challenging people. I only had to deal with a man who microwaved his child and another who cheerfully stalked women idolizing them, among the more mundanely dangerous. At some point the realization becomes you are warehousing offenders, not curing them. I’m sure Wertham was quite confident in his dealings at Bellevue, but he went too broad, like most, in assigning blame or causation. One noted psychologist, I forget her name, mentioned in a documentary that some people are just evil. That’s the scary part. I think she was right. Unless you can foster a sustaining fascination around such people, the emotional returns you get from them are quite limited. I found computers and technology training less challenging (and dangerous). What firmly made my decision to switch careers was not the recommendation from the supervisor to wear clip-on ties or probably get strangled, but the out of the blue statement from one person I was evaluating. While we were talking he glanced over to see the guard across the room. He turned back to me and said “what would you do if I jumped over this table and strangled you. I could do it before the guard could stop me.” He said it matter of factly, too. But I could see he was tensing up. I took a breadth and told him I wouldn’t know until it happened, standing my ground and modulating my voice just as matter of factly. He smiled and backed off. Yup, I thought, the pay isn’t enough for this.