“Gutter of
Horror” is a Brazilian column from Dinamo Studio website about horror comics.
This is a translated version of the articles.
Responsible
for killing E.C. Comics, most popular publisher of horror, suspense and crime
titles in the 1950s, the infamous Comics Code Authority did much more than to
attack comic books that featured graphic violence: it also changed the way
companies make comics and can be considered responsible for much of the “infantilization”
of superhero comics that came after 1950s. But the Code wasn’t born
overnight: it’s the result of the cultural climate that was questioning comics
as entertainment and its impact in the development of young readers.
Origins
The
controversy surround comics was already topic of debate in the 1930s. The first
group to target the medium was teachers that saw comics as a bad influence to
students and something that would harm their reading abilities and "literary
taste". At that time, comics were still seen as “cheap literature” without any
artistic expression and something for those who were “lousy readers” – some
people still think that, although thankfully it’s not the majority anymore.
Politically
and culturally speaking, there was another important thing about comics. Unlike
children’s books, comics were chosen by the kids so, for the first time, they
had the power of choice over the material that they consumed, which made parents unconfortable. Adding to this, religious
groups saw in semi-nude women in the jungle and the assumed glorification of
villains in comics a moral education issue. As far back as 1930s, Catholic
Church was already censoring comics, including it among the kind of content
that needed to be evaluated before being recommended to the congregation.
But the
situation really escalates after World War II. At that time, juvenile
delinquency became a popular topic of discussion in American culture, especially
among mental health specialists. With the stage settled since the decade
before, these professionals were easily attracted to comics and to question its
impact on youngsters. Among those specialists were Dr. Fredric Wertham, a New York
Psychiatrist that began a campaign to banish comics sales to children, arguing
that they imitate the actions of the characters and, therefore, comics lead to
violence. In 1954, his studies turned into a book that would be
the “bible” of the Comics Code.
Seduction
of the Innocent
In his most
famous book, Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham explores his hypothesis that
comics lead to juvenile delinquency. Using a (small) sample of patients with
severe delinquency problems, the psychiatrist deduced that comics were
responsible for the behavior of these young people, once many of his actions
had parallels and similarities with situations featured in comics. The “actions”
were homosexuality (at that time still considered a mental disorder) where
Wertham compare young gay men that read Batman, and several kinds of crimes
like theft and robbery.
The book
explores alleged problems in crime and horror comics, but also in
Superhero titles. For example, he claimed that Superman was non-american and
fascist, that Batman and Robin promoted homosexuality and that Wonder Woman
had much subtext of domination in her stories and the fact that she was super strong was, to
him, an obvious sign that the heroine was a lesbian. Wertham also saw things
like subliminal nudity and falic objects in apparently innocent drawings (and
you thought that Disney fans invented this things of seeing sex in everything,
huh?).
The
argument that kids were too stupid to understand that comics were fiction and
therefore would imitated the actions of the characters in real life was not new.
In the 1920s, a teacher from Tennessee went to court for teaching natural selection
at school instead of creationism. The trial became famous for driving a
revision of certain educational models in USA, with a major separation between
church and state. At the time, the (incorrect) assumption that the evolution
demonstrates that man “descended from monkeys” lead to the argument that, if
this were teach to kids, they will soon started to behave like animals. This
trial, known as “The scopes Trial”, can be seen in the classic movie “Inherit the
wind”.
Today, more
detailed studies and new evidence shows that Wertham manipulate and distorted
several information that he present as results. Several methodological problems
such as sample size, using anecdotal evidence and treating like empirical and
using more rhetoric than actual evidence puts in check Wertham studies.
Political
opportunism
Even before
Seduction of the Innocent, the idea that comics lead to juvenile delinquency
was already suggested in academic, political and popular circles – Wertham himself
wrote articles about it back in 1947). Seen as a public security problem in the eyes
of an extremely paranoid post-war America, it didn’t took long for the government to decide to play ball too. In 1953, the United States Senate Subcommittee on
Juvenile Delinquency was created to debate exhaustively the subject.
The
subcommittee was a unit of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee created
by motion of Senator Robert Hendrickson, a Republican from New Jersey. The
first members were senators. Estes Kefauver, Thomas C. Hennings Jr. e William
Langer. Hendrickson started presiding the committee, but was soon replaced by Kefauver.
But Estes Kefauver was not an unknown by the public opinion. Between 1950 and
1951 he presided the special Senate subcommittee that investigated organized crime. Among the
witnesses heard was mob bosses like Frank Costello, so the subcommittee gain
popularity – so much that was broadcasted on TV, with big audience.
Kefauver became practically a popstar politician, since his image was strongly associated to fighting organized crime. So It was no surprise that Kefauver ended up being a choice to preside the hearings about comics that
happened in 1954.
The Hearings
As usually happens
when a society goes through some cultural problem considered very serious,
there’s always the tendency to look for an element that could seen as the “villain”
of the story, so the situation seems possible to solve with easy to understand
actions, and so that the authorities don’t look completely incompetents. We see
this even today with the marginalization of Muslims, reinforced culturally and
by the media. Or when people blame movies or video games for mass shootings. In
1950s, the “crisis” were juvenile delinquency and the villains were comic
books. Comics were an easy target, once several groups in society were demonizing it for a while.
In 1954,
the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency decided to focus
his efforts at the comic books and made a series of hearings to talk about the
topic. The main target were “criminal comics”, the general name for comics that
featured several kinds of crimes, which included mostly crime, suspense and
horror titles.
Because of
that, William Gaines’ E.C. Comics (the story of EC is here, here and
here) were by far the most affected; after all, most popular E.C. titles was in
those genres. Gaines was crushed in the hearings and, thanks to the little to no
support he receive from other publishers – which were all of the sudden
favorable to public opinion on the subject – there was no other option but to
submit the industry to what would be later known as Comics Code Authority.
Although
the Comic Code Commission didn’t have any actual control over the publishers,
most of distributors refuse to deliver comics that didn’t had the seal of the
Comics Code. This was the end for E.C., but there was at least two publishers
that didn’t have the seal in his covers and were still largely available for sale:
Dell Publishing and Golden Key. This kind of pick and choose shows that the cultural
landscape was more against some publishers than others.
Next
article we will see how the Comics Code changed through the decades and what’s
its place in current American Comic Industry.
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.
Futher reading: The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, by David Hajdu