Four Color Wonders
Comics and censorship: From the Seduction of the Innocent to Boiled Angel.
      by Tara O'Shea

Comic books. The words conjure up visions of radioactive spiders, exploding planets, gunshots and pearls, gamma radiation, golden lassos and bullets and bracelets. They bring to mind memories of newsprint and garish colors, lazy summer afternoons, and generations of teenaged boys that believed in Truth, Justice, and the American Way. This Norman Rockwellian portrait, however, often does more harm than good, and ignores several key points about the history of comics and their readership.

Mighty Mouse: responsible for the destruction of American youth.

Comics in the 1930s and 1940s were considered in many ways an extension of the pulp magazines of the early 20th century, and in addition to costumed superheroes and men of mystery, also included crime stories, epic fantasies, and adventurers. The era of super hero comics began with reprinting Sunday newspaper strips like Tarzan, Prince Valiant, Dick Tracy, The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in magazine form. By the late 1930s the comics industry had switched gears from reprints to original comics magazines. It was in this climate some of the most enduring characters of the 20th century first made their debuts: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, The Sub-Mariner, and The Human Torch were all going strong by the time America entered World War II. Dozens of caped crusaders and star-spangled gals followed as the fledgling industry continued to expand.

However, after the War ended, the industry was more than just mystery men and superheroes. By the 1950s, comics readership included millions of adults, particularly American GIs with a bit more grown-up taste. While funny animals and romance thrived, particularly the adventures of model/starlet Katy Keene, it was the cheese-cake filled pages of Sheena and Sun Girl, and the thrills and chills of EC comics like the now-classic Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror titles reflected the changes in the industry as comics now catered to more than just the kids.

Originally "Entertaining Comics", EC quickly learned they got more bang for their buck with horror. In 1950, the publisher introduced the Crypt Keeper and his pals in a half-dozen titles that appealed to adolescents and adults precisely because, instead of featuring costumed aliens with super-strength, they plumbed the mundane world for horror. There was a belief that any one of the slash-and-hack tales could in fact be taking place in your next door neighbor's house -- and you would never even know about it. The grisly and gruesome melodramas tapped into the every day fears of suburban life in the early 1950s and were in their own way, morality plays. Innocents suffered, but the guilty suffered even more and usually in spectacular style.

When the other publishers got wind of EC Comics success, horror comics came out of the woodwork. However, while parents might not have objected to their kid's reading habits when it came to Superman or Captain Marvel, they found tales of murder and mayhem a bit worrisome.

In 1948, Dr. Fredric Wertham -- psychiatric consultant to the Chief Censor of the United States Treasury Department, a lecturer at Yale Law School, a consultant to the Juvenile Aid Bureau and the former senior psychiatrist for the New York Department of Hospitals -- began a two year study of this new phenomenon. He presented his findings in a symposium with the ominous title of "The Psycho-pathology of Comic Books."

Wertham claimed that comics glorified violence and were the source of moral decline in America's youth, not to mention "sexually aggressive in an abnormal way." His most damning claim, however, was that "comic book reading was a distinct influencing factor in the case of every single delinquent or disturbed child" he had studied. However, despite a surge in public interest stories slamming comics, and parental uproar, the industry itself was not largely affected, and continued to churn out crime and horror comics By 1953 over 500 comic books could be found on the market and comics sold 60 million copies a month.

EC Comics' Crime SuspenStories #22

By the mid-1950s, the comics industry -- which had so far survived the attacks and book burnings in 1948 -- suddenly found out that it was not immune to Cold War hysteria. With the publication of Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today's Youth, the industry suddenly became the center of a firestorm that culminated in the April 21, 1954 U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency hearings in Manhattan on comic books. The star witness? Dr. Wertham -- who named Superman and Mighty Mouse among the "crime comics" responsible for the destruction of American youth, and labeled Batman and Robin homosexuals.

Present at the hearings was EC Comics publisher William Gaines, who told the committee, "It would be just as difficult to explain the harmless thrill of a horror story to Dr. Wertham as it would be to explain the sublimity of love to a frigid old maid." Gaines closed with the comment: "[New York City mayor] Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl ruined by a book. Nobody was ever ruined by a comic."

Senator Estes Kefauver then held up the cover of EC Comics Crime SuspenStories #22 -- which featured an ax-man holding up the severed head of his wife -- and asked publisher Gaines if he believed the cover was in good taste.

"Yes sir, I do," Gaines replied. "for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the blood could be seen dripping from it, and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody."

"You've got neck coming out of her mouth," Kefauver countered.

"A little," Gaines admitted.

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