The 'arrival' of Dr. Fredric Wertham was the scariest thing to ever happen to comic books.
He was a highly distinguished psychologist who thought comic books were
bad for kids, and his efforts to have them censored had a horrible and
lasting impact that still affect comic books to this day. Click here to
read the biography of Dr. Fredric Wertham.
Once the popularity of comic books shot up through the introduction of
Superman, they gained media attention, some of it bad. Here
is an excerpt of an editorial from the Chicago Daily News book reviewer
Sterling North that was printed in May 8th, 1940.
"Badly drawn, badly written, and badly printed - a strain on the young
eyes and young nervous systems - the effects of these pulp-paper
nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. Their crude blacks and reds
spoils a child's natural sense of colour; their hypodermic injection of
sex and murder make the child impatient with better, though quieter,
stories. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than
the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band
together to break the `comic' magazine."
These kind of backlashes against the comic industry caused companies
like DC (the biggest publisher at the time) to put together their own
editorial boards in 1941, to show citizens that comic books were being
held up to standards of wholesome entertainment. These editorial boards
were formed with psychiatrists, child welfare experts, and some famous,
well respected citizens. The board members' names were printed
on the inside cover of all DC books. This action did help to
relieve some of the criticism that comic books had come under, but
not for long.
Five years later, Dr. Wertham set up a clinic for underprivileged
people. After opening it he soon got interested in the "effects" that
comic books had on children. In 1948, Dr. Wertham came out against
comic books publicly in an interview in Collier's Magazine titled "Horror
in the Nursery." This interview would be the start of Dr. Wertham's
seven-year study of comic books' effects on children. In this interview,
Dr. Wertham would state that:
"The number of `good' comics is not worth discussing, but the
great number that masquerade as `good' certainly deserve close
scrutiny."
A few weeks later Dr. Wertham attended a symposium in New York City
called "The Psychopathology of Comic Books". The reaction to
Dr. Wertham's views was immediate. One month later, in the April
issue of Time magazine, a story appeared about Detroit Police Commissioner
Harry S. Toy, who examined all the comic books available in his community,
and then stated they were; "Loaded with communist teachings, sex,
and racial discrimination." In May of 1948 he also presented his views
in an article for the Saturday Review of Literature.
Henry E. Shultz talked about the conditions in the December, 1949 issue
of the Journal of Educational Society:
In towns, villages, and municipalities throughout the country.. law makers
were goaded and prodded into action, and many did their best to please and
appease the angry torment which had been unleashed. Laws and ordinances,
committees on legislation, censors, indeed every device to bedevil and
confuse dealers, wholesalers, and publishers of comics, were created and
enacted - books were banned, and finally, to cap the climax, mass burnings
of comic books were publicly held in several communities."
The mass burning of comic books did happen. On December 20th, in 1948,
Time magazine reported and printed pictures of Binghamton, New York
residents, after a house to house collection of comic books, having
a mass public comic book burning (with a bunch of kids in the background
watching).
In 1948, some of the comic publishers formed the Association of Comic
Magazine Publishers (ACMP). It's goal was to set out guidelines under which
comic books would be published. They did this hoping that it would reduce the
amount of criticism they were under. The ACMP set up a board of people that had to approve
a comic before it would see print. But because some big companies like
DC and Dell comics had their own internal approval boards, they didn't
join the ACMP. As well, some of the partners involved had disagreements
over parts of the approval guidelines, which caused them to quit the ACMP.
Some people were a little more extreme in their views against comic books.
In 1949, Gershon Legman wrote a book called Love and Death, where he
claimed that comic books train kids like animals, by breaking their spirit.
He also claimed that comic books distort real life, and give kids violent images
(or as he puts it, "blood") to "feed" upon.
Also in 1949, The Canadian Government enacted a broad law that sought to
control 'crime' comics (any comics that dealt with crime, which included
Superhero comics). Here is the law as it stands today in the Criminal Code:
CORRUPTING MORALS ...
163. (1) Every one commits an offense who
...
(b) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, sells or has in his possession
for the purposes of publication, distribution or circulation a crime comic.
...
(7) In this section, "crime comic" means a magazine, periodical or book
that exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictorially
(a) the commission or crimes, real or fictitious; or
(b) events connected with the commission or crimes, real or fictitious,
whether occurring before or after the commission of the crime.
In 1950, the Cincinnati Parents Committee began rating almost
all comic books published on their own criteria of art, writing,
printing, and objectional content. Their ratings were published annually
in Parents Magazine.
The U.S. Federal Government jumped into the fray in 1950. A
U.S. Senate special committee was doing an investigation into organized
crime. A part of this investigation looked into the 'effects' that
crime comics had. One judge on the committee stated that he had
cases where boys had committed a crime that was patterned after one depicted
in a comic book. Blaming comic books for their crimes suddenly became an easy
way out for kids. The kids would be given sympathy, for it
was the comic book that "made them do it."
Even though there were a number of people in the media who were critical of
comic books, Dr. Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent, published in 1954,
had the most devastating effects. In this book Dr. Wertham stated that in his studies with children,
he found comic books to be a major cause of juvenile delinquency. This assertion was based mostly on guilt by
association. The vast majority of kids in those days read comic books, including the ones who became delinquents.
But according to Dr. Wertham, comic books caused the children to become delinquents.
But comics went much further than just turning kids into juvenile delinquents.
According to Wertham, comic books were giving kids wrong ideas
about the laws of physics, because Superman could fly! He also charged
that comic books were implementing and re-enforcing homosexual thoughts because
Robin was drawn with bare legs, that were often
wide open, and that Robin seemed devoted and attached
to only Batman. Dr. Wertham also stated that Wonder Woman was
giving little girls the "wrong ideas" about a woman's place in society.
The comic industry and others who believed that comic books were not all bad fought back.
Some attacked Dr. Wertham's study by pointing out that Wertham studied only juvenile delinquents,
without comparing them to other kids. Wertham responded that the kids who didn't become delinquents
may be worse off(!)
At the time, there were a lot of horror comic books on the market showing
some pretty gruesome things. But what Dr. Wertham wouldn't admit was that kids
were not reading those books, adults were. While fighting in WWII, many soldiers read comic
books for morale and entertainment. Upon coming back, these men continued reading comic books. It was
mainly for this audience that horror comics were written. Even today,
those comic books are being redone into Tales of the Crypt shows, being aired
late at night for adult audiences.
Comic companies flexed their corporate muscles against Dr. Wertham's book. First, a deal to make Seduction of the Innocent the selection for the Book of the Month Club was somehow killed. In Seduction of the Innocent, Dr. Wertham showed the gruesome covers and pictures of some books. But the bibliography that listed which comic companies produced those pictures was cut out after publication. There are no details as to why this happened, but it is suspected that the comic companies put pressure on Seduction's publisher Rinehart & Co. to get rid of the bibliography.
Seduction of the Innocent caused a U.S. Senate Investigation into the relationship between comic books and juvenile delinquents. Dr. Wertham was called to testify at the hearings, as were other juvenile delinquent experts, representatives of the major comic companies, some of their advertisers and distributors, and the representatives from National Cartoonist Society.
Dr. Wertham came out on top. He had a lot of experience testifying
in front of government committees (read his biography for more information). Most of the
representatives from the comic companies were business men who knew very
little about the editorial content of the comic books, so their answers
about those topics were vague and seemed evasive. But they did know about
the complex workings of their companies, and for that reason they were
sent. The one exception to this was William Gaines, publisher of E.C.
(who published most of the horror comics). William Gaines had a teaching
degree, and was able to answer the questions clearly and state his side
rather well. The National Cartoonist Society representatives, Walt Kelly,
Milton Caniff, and Joe Musial all distanced themselves from comic books
and gave a general condemnation of them (traitors!).
The result of these hearings was the Senate committee advised comic companies that
"A competent job of self-policing within the industry will achieve much."
So then the comic companies took this message and created the Comic Magazine
Association of America (CMAA) and then they created the Comics Code
Authority (CCA) on October 26th, 1954. Click to see the
guidelines. In 1955, the Senate committee gave its final report, stating that
it approved the CCA, and thought it represented "steps in the right direction."
The Senate committee did not fully endorse Dr. Wertham's theories about
the effect of comic books on children, since his studies were not done on the
"complete environment", but only on juvenile delinquents. But the Senate committee did agree that
comic books might have an unhealthy effect on those kids that were already emotionally disturbed or
morally delinquent. But because they didn't know whether comics had this effect or not, the
committee decided in favour of self-policing by the comic publishers. The Senate committee's final report
also issued a warning to comic companies that if their self-policing didn't work that they would
re-visit the issue again, and use whatever means necessary to
"prevent our nation's young from being harmed from crime and horror comic
books." The Senate Interim report is now online for all those to read. It is a big report, but it will give you an excellent idea of the kind of mentality that comic book publishers were facing back in 1954. Click here to read the 1954 Senate Interim Report on Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency.
So the ACMP put a CCA stamp on every comic book that met it's guidelines.
The problem was the horror books didn't. Stores or newsstands simply
would not accept comic books without the stamp, so some of the horror comic publishers
went out of business. Others adapted and became 'magazines', something that the
CCA had no authority over. But for the most part, those still producing horror comics toned
them down quite a bit. Marvel Comics was one
of the companies still producing horror comics as well as 'sci-fi'
comics. Today, the CCA has lost it's importance. Once their stamp was large and
easy for all to see on a comic book. Over the years the stamp has become smaller
and smaller, now readers sometimes have to squint and search for it. If a comic
company wants to publish a book that doesn't meet CCA standards,
they just publish it anyway. Sometimes even if they can get CCA approval,
they don't bother with it. Often you'll see a "Suggested for Mature Readers"
written on the comic book to warn those still concerned. It should be known that Dr. Fredric Wertham did not approve of the CCA.
He felt the industry would not to a correct job of policing themselves.
Even after several comic companies went out of business and the industry
was brought to it's knees, Dr. Fredric Wertham still complained that comic
books still had most of the unsavory elements to them. In 1953, Marvel tried to bring back superheroes. In Young Men #24
the three big Marvel heroes made their return. Captain America, The
Human Torch, and Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner all had stories
that explained what they were doing since World War II. It told that
Captain America had become a history teacher and he had his young
sidekick Bucky as a student. But then his old arch-enemy The Red
Skull re-appeared and was now teaming up with the Commies. So Captain
America and his sidekick sprung back into action to stop his evil plans.
The Human Torch was captured by gangsters and buried underground
in the Nevada Desert. Once America started testing the A-bombs there, the
radiation made him more powerful than before. The Human Torch then
freed himself and tried to find his sidekick Toro. He found out that
the gangsters had sold Toro to the Commies. The Human Torch
then had to re-capture his young sidekick Toro and free him from the
brainwashing that the Commies gave him. Prince Namor had nothing happen to him after the war. He simply
went back to his underwater kingdom until America called for him once again.
The American Navy had a problem with some of their ships mysteriously
vanishing. They suspected the Commies were up to no good again. They called
upon The Sub-Mariner to investigate. He found out the cause of the
sinking ships was not the Commies, but were sunk by robots from the planet
Venus! After the Sub-Mariner defeated their commander the robots
went back to Venus, promising never to return to earth. Sadly, Marvels attempt to bring back superheroes was not successful.
Shortly after this DC tried to bring back superheroes too and they were a
success. This event is called the 'Silver Age' and you'll read about it in
the next section.
Restarting the Superhero Genre