“Gutter of Horror” is a Brazilian column from DinamoStudio website that talks about horror comics.
This is the translated version of the article.
The backlash against
horror comics began way back in the early days when the genre was popular
within the pulps (more on that here). Parents, religious authorities and
teachers worried about the potential negative effects to children – although
that kind of comics was not made for them, adolescent and teens were a big
audience for horror comics. But the situation was lead and highlighted by the
publication of two 1948 articles from Dr. Fredric Wertham: “Horror in the
Nursery” e “The Psychopathology of Comic Books”. At that time, some crimes
committed by teenagers were seen as similar to crimes featured in comics and parents started to target the medium – not so different from
what we've seen in recent years with blaming films or video games for acts of
violence.
But it was really in
1954 that things got ugly, especially after the publication of Wertham’s book, “Seduction of the Innocent”. What happens is that Wertham, realizing that his
worst patients were comic book readers, deduced that it was the stories featured in
comics that was driving them to delinquency. Add to this, the creation of a
Congress hearing about juvenile delinquency highly promoted in the press ended
up targeting comics and popularize the fear of the medium. The nationwide
backlash harmed distributors and put some publishers out of business. Comic book industry got scared and Comics Code Authority was created, a tool to regulate what
could and couldn’t be done in a comics book.
Bill Gaines and E.C.
Comics were particularly affected by it since the seal eventually become what
censors wanted: a weapon to censor everything that they didn’t thought was
appropriate. That included absurd demands as to prohibiting using words like
“horror”, “terror” and “weird” on the covers of any comic. Most of E.C.’s
titles had those and other terms that was forbidden and distributors refuse to pick E.C’s titles up – even those who were highly
popular - marking the beginning of the end for the company. Gaines ceased
publication of its 3 horror comics and SuspenStory titles. All this happen still in
1954.
Trying to survive, E.C
changed focus to stories based on real life professions such as M.D. and
Psychoanalysis. It also renamed its remaining science fiction titles but, since
the previous issues didn’t carry the seal of the Comics Code, distributors
refuse to sell it. After consulting with his team, Gaines, reluctant, send the
comics for the Codes’ evaluation and then all titles in this “new direction”
got the seal after its second issues. But the titles were not successful enough and
ended up being cancelled after just a few issues.
Several were the
battles that Bill Gaines had to fight with the Comics Code Authority to keep
his publications free from censorship and many were the times he had to face awkward
questions from people who weren’t interested in take care of National Security
but to point fingers at something to blame it for America’s problems at the
time. When the Senate Subcommittee on
Juvenile Delinquency was created, it was presided by Senator Estes Kefauver, which was
nothing more than an opportunist searching for self-promotion – years before he
had gain fame by having presided the audience with the Mob boss Frank Costelo,
that were broadcasted on TV – and Gaines was the only one that testifying in favor
of all the Comic Industry. Alone and being target by a horde of giant monsters,
Gaines wouldn’t stand a chance.
In one of the most
notorious and bizarre stories related to EC and the Code, Gaines threatened to
sue Judge Charles Murphy, who was the Comics Code head at the time, because of
a demand given by him to change the science fiction story “Judgment Day”,
published in Incredible Science Fiction #33 – which were a reprint of a story
published in pre-Comic Code Weird Fantasy that took the place of an original story already rejected by the code. The problem with this story? The main character was
black. The story in question followed a human astronaut, representative of
Galactic Replubic, visiting a planet inhabited by robots. He finds them divided
in blue and orange races that were functionally identical, but one of them has
more privileges and rights than the other. The astronaut decided that we
couldn’t admitted the planet among the members of the Galactic Republic since
they were not overcome their prejudices yet. Only in the final panel we see the
astronaut taking his helmet and reveling himself to the reader as a black man.
Murphy wanted the black astronaut was removed, even if this was not actually a
real reason within the Comics Code rules. Of course Bill Gaines and Al
Feldstein (the writer of the story) fought and tried to sue Charles Murphy: by
removing the character, the whole story loses its meaning. But in one of the few
small victories in those dark times, E.C. won and the judge ended up seeing the
"Judgment Day" published in its original form.
Incredible Science
Ficion # 33 was the last title published by E.C. Gaines once again shift his
focus to what was called “picto-fiction”, a line of titles in black and white with illustrated stories, and tried to rewrite some stories previously published by
E.C. But that didn’t pan out and, when E.C’s national distributor went
bankrupt, Gaines cancelled all titles – except MAD, since it was a magazine and
this format was outside the constraints of the Comics Code. It was the end of
and era. The Legay of E.C. Comics was never forgotten, but after the Comics Code Authority, American Comic book Industry was never the same.
Rafael Algures is a Bachelor of Philosophy specialized in Neurosciences of Language. He is also a copywriter, content and science writer, and a comic book creator. His latest work, “Gutter of Horror: Transition”, is available at Amazon – digital and paperback.
Further reading: Tales of Terror!: The EC Companion,
by Fred Von Bernewitz and Grant Geissman