A comic can tell any kind of story. That’s because comics are medium just like oral histories, stage plays, written novels, film, or television. But comics suffer from something those other media do not: the American public associates the medium with just one genre of story.1Not by accident, comic strips are not associated with the superhero genre, but rather various kinds of comedy. (They are the “funny pages” after all). But at least for comic strips there is still a variety of comedy settings. Hägar the Horrible is different from Calvin and Hobbes is different from Beetle Bailey. Plus some people still read Prince Valiant somehow. Everyone understands that a movie can be a romantic comedy, science fiction, high drama, action, or even a superhero story. So why are comic books tied to only that last genre? Because of hearings held by the 83rd United States Senate from 1954 to 1955.
The Comic Book Market post-World War II
Comic books as a format distinct from pulp magazines and comic strips came together in the 1930s. 1938’s Action Comics #1 introduced the world to Superman and birthed the superhero genre2If you want to argue that The Shadow or something you’ve never heard of before googling is actually the first superhero, just know that I do not care for these purposes. Action Comics‘ success spawned many other superhero comics books with characters familiar to us today, like Captain America (which debuted in March 1941, months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II).
In the period after the war, comic books were a booming business. According to the 1955 Interim Report on “Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency,” S. Rep. No. 83-62, put out by the “Subcommittee To Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in the United States” (a topic we’ll get to shortly):
- There were 676 comic book titles being published by 111 different publishers
- The monthly circulation of comics in 1953 was 68 million3The comic industry post-pandemic has changed how it has tracked sales figures and there is a lot of fragmentation of both publishers and formats. The most reliable-looking figures I have found say that the annual circulation of comic books, both in floppy and graphic novel format, is only around 94 million in 2021. See Comic Book Sales Statistics, WordsRated (Feb. 2, 2023).
- The annual revenue of comic books was nearly $90 million in 19534A branch of the ultra vires scam that is the Federal Reserve says that $90 million in 1953 dollars is equivalent ~$1.01 billion in 2021 dollars. In 2021, the total market for comic books was roughly $1.4 billion including graphic novels, and comic book floppies made up around $435 million of that market. Comic Book Sales Statistics, WordsRated (Feb. 2, 2023).
As part of this big market there were a diversity of genres. and the importance of the superhero waned. 1947 saw the creation of the romance comic genre with Young Romance #1 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (the same guys who created Captain America). The predecessor of Marvel Comics had a stable of Westerns like Kid Colt: Outlaw and Two-Gun Kid. EC Comics’ line of comics spanned the gamut of fiction, and included such appropriately named titles as Crime SuspenStories, The Vault of Horror, and Weird Science.
The Nationalization of The Seduction of the Innocent
A comic book which is replete with the lurid and macabre; which places the criminal in a unique position by making him a hero; which makes lawlessness attractive; which ridicules decency and honesty; which leaves the impression that graft and corruption are necessary evils in American life; which depicts the life of a criminal as exciting and glamorous may influence the susceptible boy or girl who already possesses
definite antisocial tendencies.While comic books which are unrealistic in that they tend to produce fantastic pictures of violence, brutality, and torture may have no effect on the emotionally well-balanced boy or girl, ·nevertheless, they may serve as the springboard for the unstable child to commit criminal acts.
J. Edgard Hoover, as quoted by Sen. Robert C. Hendrickson in 100 Cong. Rec. 4859 (April 8, 1954)
In 1954, America was facing a perceived crisis of juvenile delinquency. The fear of multiplying James Dean characters running about (Rebel Without A Cause (1955)) was so intense that the Senate tasked its Judiciary Committee with “determining the extent and character of juvenile delinquency in the United States and its causes and contributing factors.” S. Res. 89 (83d Cong., 1st sess.) (June 1, 1954). The Subcommittee To Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in the United States examined a few potential causes to the crisis, including the education system, youth employment, “obscene and pornographic literature”, and television. But it was the Subcommittee’s focus on comic books that had a lasting effect on that industry.
Prior to the Senate hearings, a few parents and local governments across the country had placed the blame for juvenile delinquency on comic books. “By 1949, laws to regulate comic books – mostly designed to ban the sale of crime comics to minors – were pending in fourteen states, and eventually at least fifty U.S. cities would attempt to regulate the sale of comics.” Brief of Amicus Curiae Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at `12, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, No. 08-1448, 564 U.S. 786 (2011) (citing The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu (2008) at 303-04; Grand Theft Childhood by Kutner Lawrence & Cheryl K. Olson (2008) at 50). New York’s governor, Thomas E. Dewey, vetoed a law in 1952 that would have banned the sale of books “principally made up of pictures, whether or not accompanied by any written or printed matter [comic books], of fictional deeds of crime, bloodshed, lust or heinous acts, which tend to incite minors to violent or depraved or immoral acts” on the grounds that it would have violated the First Amendment. See People v. Bookcase, 201 N.E.2d 14, 15-16, 252 N.Y.S.2d 433, 435-36, 14 N.Y.2d 409, 412-13 (1964). Parents in Cincinnati formed “The Greater Cincinnati Committee On Evaluation Of Comic Books,” which circulated to nationwide recognition a list of “approved” comics for children. (Think a 1950s version of “Movieguide: Movie Reviews for Christians”.) See Ken Quattro, The Committee On Evaluation Of Comic Books, The Comics Detective (July 19, 2020)
The most infamous contributing factor to this wave of comic-book concern was the work of psychologist Fredric Wertham, in particular his April 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham was a German-American psychiatrist who focused on the diagnosis and treatment of children (sus). See Carol L. Tilley, Seducing the Innocent: Frederic Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics, Information & Culture: A Journal of History Vol. 47, No. 4, p.386 (2012). As may be guessed from the readership numbers above, children and teens read a lot of comics in the 1950s. It was Wertham who decided that comic books were the culprit for juvenile deliquency, and most effectively advocated for their censorship. Here are some gems from Seduction of the Innocent, which you can wonder why they shocked the conscience of 1950s politicians:
Just as ordinary crime comic books contribute to the fixation of violent and hostile patterns by suggesting definite forms for their expression, so the Batman type of story helps to fixate homoerotic tendencies by suggesting the form of an adolescent-with-adult or Ganymede-Zeus type of love-relationship.
***
They are Bruce Wayne and “Dick” Grayson. Bruce Wayne is described as a “socialite” and the official relationship is that Dick is Bruce’s ward. They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit by the fireplace the young boy sometimes worries about his partner: “Something’s wrong with Bruce. He hasn’t been himself these past few days.” It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals having together. Sometimes they are shown on a couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and his hand on his friend’s arm. Like the girls in other stories, Robin is sometimes held captive by the villains and Batman has to give in or “Robin gets killed.”
Seduction of the Innocent, 2d Ed. pp. 189-190
The Lesbian counterpart of Batman may be found in the stories of Wonder Woman and Black Cat. The homosexual connotation of the Wonder Woman type of story is psychologically unmistakable.
Seduction of the Innocent, 2d Ed. pp. 192
The Superman type of comic books tends to force and superforce. Dr. Paul A. Witty, professor of education at Northwest¬ ern University, has well described these comics when he said that they “present our world in a kind of Fascist setting of violence and hate and destruction. I think it is bad for children,” he goes on, “to get that kind of recurring diet . . . [they] place too much emphasis on a Fascist society. Therefore the democratic ideals that we should seek are likely to be overlooked.”
Actually, Superman (with the big S on his uniform—we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of ever new submen, criminals and “foreign-looking” people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible. It is this feature that engenders in children either one or the other of two attitudes: either they fantasy themselves as supermen, with the attendant prejudices against the submen, or it makes them submissive and receptive to the blandishments of strong men who will solve all their social problems for them—by force.
Superman not only defies the laws of gravity, which his great strength makes conceivable; in addition he gives children a completely wrong idea of other basic physical laws. Not even Superman, for example, should be able to lift up a building while not standing on the ground, or to stop an airplane in mid¬ air while flying himself.
Seduction of the Innocent, 2d Ed. p. 34
Wertham became the star witness of the Senate hearings. He convincingly put into the Congressional Record such gems as this:
Senator Kefalwer: Would you liken this situation you talk about, showing the same thing over and over again until they finally believed it, to what we heard about during the last war of Hitler’s theory of telling the story over and over again ?
The Chairman: The “big lie” technique?
U.S. Congress, Juvenile Delinquency (Comic Books): Hearings before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, 83d Cong., 2d Sess. (April 21-22 and June 24, 1954) p.95, https://ia801605.us.archive.org/22/items/juveniledelinque54unit/juveniledelinque54unit.pdf
Dr. Wertham: Well, I hate to say that, Senator, but I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry. They get the children much younger. They teach them race hatred at the age of 4 before they can read
The most hated (and innovative) comics publisher, EC, got its day at the hearing through the testimony of its co-EIC, William Gaines. But you can imagine how well the following testimony went
“Following the hearings of the subcommittee on the effects of crime and horror comics books . . . establishment of the Comics Magazine Association of America was announced.” S. Rep. No. 83-62 at 32. The Comics Magazine Association of America was an attempt at self-regulation to stave off stricter federal regulation:
The subcommittee intends to watch with great interest the activities of [the Comics Magazine Association of America] and will report at a later date on this effort by the comic book industry to eliminate objectionable comic books. At any rate, the subcommittee is convinced that if this latest effort at industry self-regulation does not succeed, then other ways and means must- and will- be found to prevent our Nation’s young from being harmed by crime and horror comic books.
This attempt at industry self-regulation was much like what would happen with video games and the Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB). But the ESRB’s rating system would be much looser than the regime of the strict Comics Code promulgated by the Comics Magazine Association of America.
Life Under the Comics Code Authority
The Comics Code Authority reviewed every comic published and would not gives its approval to any comic which violated the code. From the following list, imagine the creative freedom you would have as writer or penciller:
General Standards Part A
1) Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
2) No comics shall explicitly present the unique details and methods of a crime.
3) Policemen, judges, government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
4) If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
5) Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation.
6) In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
7) Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gun play, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.
8) No unique or unusual methods of concealing weapons shall be shown.
9) Instances of law enforcement officers dying as a result of a criminal’s activities should be discouraged.
10) The crime of kidnapping shall never be portrayed in any detail, nor shall any profit accrue to the abductor or kidnapper. The criminal or the kidnapper must be punished in every case.
11) The letters of the word “crime” on a comics magazine cover shall never be appreciably greater in dimension than the other words contained in the title. The word “crime” shall never appear alone on a cover.
12) Restraint in the use of the word “crime” in titles or sub-titles shall be exercised.
General Standards Part B
1) No comic magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title.
2) All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.
3) All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
4) Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
5) Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism and werewolfism are prohibited.
General Standards Part C
1) All elements or techniques not specifically mentioned herein, but which are contrary to the spirit and intent of the Code, and are considered violations of good taste or decency, shall be prohibited.
Dialogue
1) Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.
2) Special precautions to avoid references to physical afflictions or deformities shall be taken.
3) Although slang and colloquialisms are acceptable, excessive use should be discouraged and wherever possible good grammar shall be employed.
Religion
1) Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible.
Costume
1) Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure.
2) Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.
3) All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society.
4) Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
Marriage and Sex
1) Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as desirable.
2) Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at or portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.
3) Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for morbid distortion.
4) The treatment of love-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage.
5) Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.
6) Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.
7) Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.
Comics Code Authority (1954), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015009097182&seq=5
This puritan list killed genre diversity. Predictably, it was hard to run a respectable horror comic (the bread-and-butter of EC) under these restrictions. The Comics Code Authority wouldn’t even let the phrase “wolfman” pass unless it was because the writer’s name was actually Wolfman (see, e.g., Brian Cronin, Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #119, CBR (Sept. 7, 2007). Marvel would rely heavily on the term “Zuvembie” in its supernatural-related comics to avoid the CCA ban on “Zombie”.
But the Comics Code Authority was more pernicious than even the Code would belie. The CCA would try to censure any socially controversial story regardless of the Code’s text. The starkest example of this is the EC story “Judgment Day!” Originally published in the pre-Code issue Weird Fantasy #18 (April 1953), as you can see, it’s a not-so-subtle allegory of racial segregation in the United States with a message that America must overcome its biases toward skin color to advance as a society. But when EC tried to reprint the story in Incredible Science Fiction #33 (February 1956}, the CCA tried, unsuccessfully, to get EC to change the color of the main character—revealed Samus Aran-style in the last panel—from black to white. See, e.g., Bill Cronin, The Anti-Racism Comic Book Story That Beat the Comics Code Authority, CBR (Jan. 30, 2019).
For our purposes, the result of the Comics Code Authority was that comics were forced to became uniform and silly: only zany superhero stories would survive. If you were interested the crime-ridden streets of Gotham, you now had to deal with such campy characters as Ace the Bat-Hound (first appearance March 1955) and Bat-Mite (first appearance May 1959). Dead was the “Golden Age” of comics, and by self-censoring-fiat came the degraded “Silver Age”.
The Much-Too-Late Death of the CCA
The genre diversity and popularity of comic books were irrevocably damages by the Comics Code. A brief examination of the numbers mentioned above will show that American comics have never regained their circulation numbers from before 1954. The medium suffered much like film did under the strictest enforcement of the Hays Code for Hollywood. But the Hays Code was done away with by the 1960s, when the comics were just adapting to the Silver Age. While Marvel’s defiance of the code in The Amazing Spider-Man #96 (May 1971) led to some loosening of references to drugs, Marvel would not completely abandon adherence to the code until 2001, and DC not until 2011. That’s 50+ years of self-censorship spawned from a Senate inquisition.
Coincidentally, in 2011 the Supreme Court of the United States decided Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011). That case affirmed (by a 7-2 vote) a ruling that California’s 2005 law banning the sale of violent video games to children under 18 years old. The rhetoric of California legislators and other censors in favor of the law, as well as the 1993 Congressional hearings on violent video games, are uncannily similar to the arguments made in the 1950s against comic books. (In a relatively mild manifestation, Hillary Clinton blamed Grand Theft Auto on anti-social behavior; Bill Clinton blamed the Columbine massacre on Doom.) Whether it’s from America’s growing resistance to government censorship, or the judiciary’s invigoration of the First Amendment as to legislatures (or both), the nascent video game industry of the 1990s-2000s escaped with a voluntary rating system of the ESRB, whereas the nascent comics industry of the 1950s was stunted by the CCA. In time, hopefully comics can become as accepted as video games in the mind of the public as a versatile and respected medium.
This was Just My Blog.
Further Reading
The Senate Comic Book Hearings of 1954 by Jennifer González, IN CUSTODIA LEGIS (Oct. 26, 2022).
The History of Comic Books by Jamie Coville (Aug. 15, 1996)
Note, Regulation of Comic Books, 68 Harv. L. Rev. 489, 490 (1955)
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu (2008)
Love on the Rocks: A History of American Romance Comics by Michelle Nolan (2008)
Allen W. Wright, Neal Adams – Interviews in Sherwood / Green Arrow: Bold Archer, Part Two, Robin Hood: Bold Outlaw of Barnsdale and Sherwood (2020).
Juvenile Delinquency (Comic Books): Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, 84th Cong., 1d Sess. (1954), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951d021132003
Notes
- 1Not by accident, comic strips are not associated with the superhero genre, but rather various kinds of comedy. (They are the “funny pages” after all). But at least for comic strips there is still a variety of comedy settings. Hägar the Horrible is different from Calvin and Hobbes is different from Beetle Bailey. Plus some people still read Prince Valiant somehow.
- 2If you want to argue that The Shadow or something you’ve never heard of before googling is actually the first superhero, just know that I do not care for these purposes
- 3The comic industry post-pandemic has changed how it has tracked sales figures and there is a lot of fragmentation of both publishers and formats. The most reliable-looking figures I have found say that the annual circulation of comic books, both in floppy and graphic novel format, is only around 94 million in 2021. See Comic Book Sales Statistics, WordsRated (Feb. 2, 2023).
- 4A branch of the ultra vires scam that is the Federal Reserve says that $90 million in 1953 dollars is equivalent ~$1.01 billion in 2021 dollars. In 2021, the total market for comic books was roughly $1.4 billion including graphic novels, and comic book floppies made up around $435 million of that market. Comic Book Sales Statistics, WordsRated (Feb. 2, 2023).