The American Comics Codes, Part C
The Senate comes to Town! The cameras are rolling, the microphones are live, and the Gaines hits the fan! "Are You a Red Dupe?"
This article well exceeds e-mail posting lengths. Please view on Substack.
As I have stated in my previous series of posts, I am not presenting an academic level review of this topic. My review of documents mainly made use of those with as much original observer content as practical. It shaped my reasoning in the selection of the five primary sources — four texts and the Senate Subcommittee Hearing transcripts — that formed the core of my review, as well as the other reference links I have provided along the way. My analysis is my own, and I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind with my arguments.
For some, that decision point is either long in the past due to their own reviews, or emotions are too strong to allow for any variance or dissent from their current beliefs.
My hope is that for those new or insufficiently familiar with this controversy, I will have provided enough material and appropriate references in these three posts for you to make your own decision after you read and review these materials.
It was stated in the previous article that Point of View (POV) is important in what we absorb in the way of information and how we process it. It is important then that I establish what my POV is in this final article. My POV is from the largest group involved, and in my view, it is the most important group involved in this controversy. It is typically the group that is most often ignored.
It’s these folks.
This question has been addressed from the perspective of Creators — artists, writers, and editors — such as with Hajdu’s book; from the perspective of fans of Crime and Horror comics, both from the time the books were published and at the time of modern day fans — such as with Vance’s book; from historians who attempt to frame the event relative to societal changes — such as with Nyberg’s book; as well as from the perspective of free speech/free expression activists.
Never have I encountered extended arguments for parents and other guardians of children outside of the typical “moral panic”, “public fear”, or similar rationalizations about parent and guardian behavior driven by ignorance or stupidity.
I hope to analyze this event — the Hearings and their aftermath — as though I’m watching from the back couch of the living room along with these folks.
The Senate Subcommittee Hearings (April 21-22 & June 4, 1954)
The initial sessions of the hearings opened at 10 am on the morning of April 21st. A morning session and an afternoon session were held, each lasting from 2 to 2-1/2 hours. A second day of hearings was held on the 22nd with similar session blocks. Oral and written testimony was submitted to the hearing records on both days. A third day of hearings was held on June 4th, and was primarily concerned with retailer concerns about “tie-in” sales of magazines offered by distributors and wholesalers.
The entirety of the oral testimony and many of the written submissions can be viewed in the first two links in the Articles and Transcripts section below. If you are so inclined, you can also listen to much of the audio of the first two days of testimony as it was broadcast on local radio station WNYC via the third link in that section.
The oral testimony of 16 people — plus 1 declining to testify due to possible future indictment (more on this person later) — was received by the Subcommittee on the first two days of the hearings. The following people gave testimony:
April 21st, Morning Session:
Mr. Richard Clendenen - Executive Director, US Senate Subcommittee To Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. [Testimony Link]
Dr. Harris Peck - Director of the Bureau of Mental Health Services, Children's Court, New York, N. Y. [Testimony Link]
Henry Edward Schultz - General Counsel, Association of Comic Magazine Publishers, Inc., New York, N. Y. [Testimony Link]
April 21st, Afternoon Session:
Dr. Fredric Wertham - Author of Seduction of the Innocent. [Testimony Link]
Mr. William Gaines - Publisher of EC Comics. [Testimony Link]
Mr. Walt Kelly, Mr. Milton Caniff, and Mr. Joseph Musial - The National Cartoonist Society. [Testimony Link]
April 22nd, Morning Session:
Dr. Gunner Dybwad - Executive Director, Child Study Association of America. [Testimony Link]
Mr. William Friedman - Small comic book publisher with some horror books. [Testimony Link]
Dr. Laura Bender - Psychiatrist working for National Periodicals (DC Comics) [Testimony Link]
April 22nd, Afternoon Session:
Mr. Monroe Froehlich Jr. - Business Manager, Magazine Management Co. (Atlas/Marvel Comics). [Testimony Link]
Mr. William Richter - News Dealers Association of Greater New York. [Testimony Link]
Mr. Alex Segal - President, Stravon Publications. [Testimony Link]
Mr. Samuel Roth - Publisher. [Testimony Link]
Mrs. Helen Meyer and Mr. Matthew Murphy - Vice President and Editor, Dell Publications. [Testimony Link]
Each individual above is linked to Jamie Coville’s transcription of their portion of the hearing testimony, as well as to backgrounds on the individuals, if such information is available. Front matter of the hearing report, the testimony from the third day of hearings, and the Subcommittee Interim/Final report are linked on Coville’s site here.
Mr Henry Schultz Testifies Before the Subcommittee.
During Henry E. Schultz’s testimony when the ACMP Code was submitted to the Senate subcommittee members, the Subcommittee called out the positive nature of the ACMP Code, praised it, and stated that they believed it would have been more than adequate to address concerns about comic books, if enforced. The Subcommittee asked their counsel read the code to the Subcommittee in open session. This was the discussion of note:
Senator KEFAUVER. Mr. Chairman, if I may make a suggestion, this reads to me like a very excellent code [ACMP Comics Code] that has been given a great deal of thought. If the publishers would follow this code, I do not think we would have this problem that we are talking about today. I know the code has been made a part of the record, but I would think, so that we would know what we are talking about, the paragraph having to do with that they recommend be published and what should not be published, ought to be read.
The CHAIRMAN. I shall be very glad to have the counsel read that portion of the code. I, too, want to join in commending the association for that code. It is a good code and would do the trick if it were observed.
Senator KEFAUVER. Counsel might read the whole thing. It is very short.
The CHAIRMAN. Counsel, will you read the code?
Mr. BEASER. This is something entitled "The [ACMP] Comics Code."
(Mr. Beaser read "The [ACMP] Comics Code" which appears as "Exhibit No. 9" on p. 70.)
. . .
The CHAIRMAN. You do agree, Mr. Schultz, that if they would abide by this code, if the publishers did abide by this code which was read into the record, the trouble would be solved?
Mr. SCHULTZ. I am sure 90 percent of the trouble would be removed.
If the comic book publishers, distributors, and wholesalers were listening to Mr. Schultz’ testimony, and they could have reigned in Bill Gaines, the Subcommittee had provided them with an acceptable path to mitigate this runaway freight train disaster headed for their industry.
View from the Couch: The ACMP Code, with effective sanctions for non-compliance, could create a solution that would likely be acceptable to many Americans who could probably get behind that idea.
Such a solution would not involve government censure, additional law or regulation, and it could have been touted as a method and promise to self-regulate, and thus turn around the perception of the Comic Book publishing industry.
But, if anyone from the Comic Book Industry was actually paying attention, they said and did nothing.
Dr Fredric Wertham Testifies Before the Subcommittee.
View from the Couch: Dr Wertham is a little all over the park with his talk, but he clearly states that his adolescent patients who are displaying delinquent or deviant behaviors are comic book readers. His concern is that children should be protected from violent environments when young. Crime and Horror comics are a portion of the delinquency equation though he cannot quantify how great the effect.
Bill Gaines was slated to appear in the morning session or just after lunch, but due a longer than anticipated morning session, the afternoon session resumed with Dr Wertham’s testimony, and Gaines would follow him.
There is one particular element of Wertham’s testimony I would like to highlight. Remember that Wertham had been frustrated for six to seven years in his advocacy of banning excessively violent comics. He chose not to testify at the 1951 hearings even though Sen Kefauver had invited him, as he stated his work schedule would not allow it. He may also have been frustrated at what he perceived to be another legislative event that would not lead to action on what he believed was necessary law.
His book lays out this frustration quite clearly. He is angry that there is not enough attention paid to vulnerable children who were exposed to an ongoing violent environment provided by some comic books.
A quote from Wertham’s testimony highlights his frustration, and that while he had given up in the main on seeing comics of a violent nature banned, he still wanted some form of legal sanction put into place to curb the easy access children had to Crime and Horror comics.
What was that sanction that he asked the Subcommittee to consider?
“Now, what about the remedy? Mr. Chairman, I am just a doctor. I can't tell what the remedy is. I can only say that in my opinion this is a public-health problem. I think it ought to be possible to determine once and for all what is in these comic books and »»I think it ought to be possible to keep the children under 15 from seeing them displayed to them and preventing these being sold directly to children.««
“In other words, I think something should be done to see that the children can't get them. You see, if a father wants to go to a store and says, "I have a little boy of seven. He doesn't know how to rape a girl; he doesn't know how to rob a store. Please sell me one of the comic books," let the man sell him one, but I don't think the boy should be able to go see this rape on the cover and buy the comic book.
“I think from the public-health point of view something might be done now, Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, if I may speak in seriousness about one suggestion that I have, I detest censorship. I have appeared in very unpopular cases in court (defending such novelties as the Guilded Hearse, and so on), as »»»I believe adults should be allowed to write for adults. I believe that what is necessary for children is supervision.«««”
Yes, Dr Wertham’s recommendation to the Subcommittee was to limit the sale of certain types of comic books to certain age ranges of children. Comics of a nature that might be harmful to children and their healthy development would be limited for sale by some type of age-based rating system. The restriction was of a similar type to that which existed for alcohol and tobacco sales.
Where have I seen something like that before?
Oh, yes. I remember.
Some additional samples of Wertham-gone-wild Censorship from Dark Horse. Quotes below the images should be taken as hard chastisement to those would-be censors of comic books!
One more reminder: both Marvel Comics and DC Comics have ratings systems that were adopted once both companies abandoned the Comics Code Authority review system. These ratings systems are merely slight modifications of this same Wertham-approved censorship that Dark Horse uses.
Shame! Shame, I say!
Mr William Gaines Testifies Before the Subcommittee.
Mr Gaines begins with his short speech after he is introduced to the Subcommittee: Horror doesn’t hurt kids. Kids see Horror and Crime stories and it’s ok. Kids are better than that. Several pithy quotes. We at EC do great comics, and we have really good writers and artists. A number of items about how censorship is bad. WE — AMERICA — print our crime, bad commies don’t. Pithy quotes. If you censor one thing, then you will have to censor everything. We’ll be Spain or Russia. The end.
The purple prose that Gaines and Stuart put together as an opening statement is embarrassing in its vacuity. Gaines could have offered something of substance, or reached out to the Subcommittee and the public with an offer to help address their concerns — really anything other than what he did.
Instead, he opted for airy quotes, platitudes, and back pats.
View from the Couch: What a pompous ass.
Then, the Subcommittee begins questioning him.
One point that should be made here is that Bill Gaines continually touts that he came up with the Horror genre, introducing it in his EC line in 1950. From his opening statement:
Mr. GAINES. For example, I publish horror comics. I was the first publisher in these United States to publish horror comics. I am responsible, I started them. Some may not like them. That is a matter of personal taste. It would be just as difficult to explain the harmless thrill of a horror story to a Dr. Wertham as it would be to explain the sublimity of love to a frigid old maid.
Ok, so two points.
Point 1: The first Horror comic book series began publishing in 1948 under the American Comics Group title Adventures into the Unknown, boasting Frank Belknap Long as the lead writer. Atlas (Marvel) also had a Horror series out in 1949, prior to any EC Horror release.
Now, this is not so much to correct an inaccuracy, as it is to highlight that Bill Gaines goes out of his way to make himself out to be the Big Kahuna of Horror Comics — the first and the best. In doing so, he paints a big ol’ target on his back for the viewing public and the other media as “the guy in charge of this Horror mess.” Remember that point.
Point 2: Bill couldn’t resist getting a dig in on Wertham, linking him to an “old maid”. He and Stuart probably chuckled like MAD over writing that line.
The junior counsel asks about the “messaging” in EC comic books.
Mr. BEASER. Mr. Gaines, let me ask you one thing with reference to Dr. Wertham's testimony. You used the pages of your comic book to send across a message, in this case it was against racial prejudice; is that it?
Mr. GAINES. That is right.
Mr. BEASER. You think, therefore, you can get across a message to the kids through the medium of your magazine that would lessen racial prejudice; is that it?
Mr. GAINES. By specific effort and spelling it out very carefully so that the point won't be missed by any of the readers, and I regret to admit that it still is missed by some readers, as well as Dr. Wertham ─ we have, I think, achieved some degree of success in combating anti-Semitism, anti-Negro feeling, and so forth.
Mr. BEASER. Yet why do you say you cannot at the same time and in the same manner use the pages of your magazine to get a message which would affect children adversely, that is, to have an effect upon their doing these deeds of violence or sadism, whatever is depicted?
Mr. GAINES. Because no message is being given to them. In other words, when we write a story with a message, it is deliberately written in such a way that the message, as I say, is spelled out carefully in the captions. The preaching, if you want to call it, is spelled out carefully in the captions, plus the fact that our readers by this time know that in each issue of shock suspense stories, the second of the stories will be this type of story.
What about new readers, Bill? Ugh.
View from the Couch: So when you put a “good message” into your books, you can claim the effect of a positive change. Conversely, there are no “bad messages” explicitly written into the book, so it follows that it can’t do any harm. Typical Hollywood double-speak. You are faring poorly, Mr Gaines.
Shortly after the above exchange, Senator Hennings asks about Gaines’ mention of testing stories on children. He references the Shock SuspenStories #14 story “The Orphan” referenced by Mr Clenenden in the morning session.
Mr. GAINES. It has been my experience in writing these stories for the last 6 or 7 years that whenever we have tested them out on kids, or teen-agers, or adults, no one ever associates himself with someone who is going to be put upon. They always associate themselves with the one who is doing the putting upon.
The CHAIRMAN.You do test them out on children, do you?
Mr. GAINES. Yes.
Mr. BEASER. How do you do that?
Senator HENNINGS. Is that one of your series, the pictures of the two in the electric chair, the little girl down in the corner?
Mr. GAINES. Yes.
Senator HENNINGS. As we understood from what we heard of that story, the little girl is not being put upon there, is she? She is triumphant apparently, that is insofar as we heard the relation of the story this morning.
Mr. GAINES. If I may explain, the readers does not know that until the last panel, which is one of the things we try to do in our stories, is have an O. Henry ending for each story.
Senator HENNINGS. I understood you to use the phrase "put upon," and that there was no reader identification ─ with one who was put upon, but the converse.
Mr. GAINES. That is right, sir.
Senator HENNINGS. Now, in that one, what would be your judgment or conclusion as to the identification of the reader with that little girl who has, to use the phrase, framed her mother and shot her father?
Mr. GAINES. In that story, if you read it from the beginning, because you can't pull things out of context─
Senator HENNINGS. That is right, you cannot do that.
Mr. GAINES. You will see that a child leads a miserable life in the 6 or 7 pages. It is only on the last page she emerges triumphant.
Senator HENNINGS. As a result of murder and perjury, she emerges as triumphant?
Mr. GAINES. That is right.
Mr. HANNOCH. Is that the O. Henry finish?
Mr. GAINES. Yes.
Recall that Gaines has told everyone that he is the Horror Comic King. He is responsible for this. He has painted a target on himself for the American public’s focus on Comic Books, and with this testimony he now puts a target on Entertaining Comics (EC) the company. That focus will be further intensified with Gaines’ own words as the hearing continues.
View from the Couch: What Mr Gaines means by “O. Henry ending” translates to “shock your moral sensibilities” rather than the satisfying twist at the end of O. Henry stories.
Sen Hennings picks up on the fact that (1) committing murder, (2) framing another person for your crime, then (3) lying about your actions so others die for your crimes gets what Gaines calls an “O. Henry ending.”
So, Evil Deeds get you the things you want, eh, Bill? Noted. Thank God I don’t live in your head — and I sure don’t want my kids to see what is there.
Senator Hendrickson (the Chairman) gets to the details of the testing Gaines does on children with his stories, and asks if he tests them on his children or his family’s children. Gaines states he and his family have no children.
View from the Couch: Gaines’ conversational vibe indicates to me that this entire ‘testing’ story is a lie, but that’s just my gut feeling.
Gaines dismissed Dr Peck’s testimony delivered in the morning session.
Mr. BEASER. Were you here this morning when Dr. Peck testified?
Mr. GAINES. I was.
Mr. BEASER. Did you listen to his testimony as to the possible effect of these comics upon an emotionally maladjusted child?
Mr. GAINES. I heard it.
Mr. BEASER. You disagree with it?
Mr. GAINES. I disagree with it. Frankly, I could have brought many, many quotes from psychiatrists and child-welfare experts and so forth pleading the cause of the comic magazine. I did not do so because I figured this would all be covered thoroughly before I got here. And it would just end up in a big melee of pitting experts against experts.
This statement is disingenuous at best, as Gaines made a point to quote experts in his opening remarks, including Dr Peck. His dismissive attitude to people who work in adolescent mental health, while offering his own opinions on aspects of a field when he has no background in it, makes him look foolish.
View from the Couch: How arrogant. “Ladies and Gentlemen! Bill Gaines: child psychologist! He’ll be here all week! Try the roast beef!”
The Subcommittee junior counsel, Mr Beaser, asks what governs the limits which Gaines has for EC comics and other periodicals, then Sen Kefauver breaks in to ask Mr Gaines a question.
Mr. BEASER. Let me get the limits as far as what you put into your magazine. Is the sole test of what you would put into your magazine whether it sells? Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?
Mr. GAINES. No, I wouldn't say that there is any limit for the reason you outlined. My only limits are bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.
Mr. BEASER. Then you think a child cannot in any way, in any way, shape, or manner, be hurt by anything that a child reads or sees?
Mr. GAINES. I don't believe so.
Mr. BEASER. There would be no limit actually to what you put in the magazines?
Mr. GAINES. Only within the bounds of good taste.
Mr. BEASER. Your own good taste and salability?
Mr. GAINES. Yes.
Senator KEFAUVER. Here is your May 22 issue. This seems to be a man with a bloody ax holding a woman's head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?
Sen Kefauver sees that “good taste” is Mr Gaines metric, so he proceeds to test the metric with an EC comic cover or two. His first selection is Crime SuspenStories, Issue 22 from May 1954 by artist Johnny Craig. Before you scroll down to Gaines’ answer, take in that cover image, and consider Sen Kefauver’s question as a parent of an 8 to 15 year old child.
Now we get to the moment when Gaines reveals to the Television and Radio audiences, and to the news media in the courthouse, what makes him tick.
Bill thought all his planning would ensure he wouldn’t look like Frank Costello on television. I hope that Mr Costello profusely thanked Mr Gaines for his effort in making people forget all about the 1951 Senate Hearings on Organized Crime.
Gaines’ answer is:
Mr. GAINES. Yes, sir; I do, 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 neck could be seen dripping blood from it and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.
Senator KEFAUVER. You have blood coming out of her mouth.
Mr. GAINES. A little.
Senator KEFAUVER. Here is blood on the ax. I think most adults are shocked by that.
Were we hearing that correctly? Did he just say that the image of a beheaded woman and her ax-wielding murderer, holding her head by the hair, on a comic book cover was in good taste? The courtroom gallery is talking a great deal among themselves as Gaines says this, if you listen to the audio from the event.
Sen Hendrickson follows up to clarify Gaines’ response by handing Sen Kefauver the current issue of Crime SuspenStories (Issue 23, July 1954):
The CHAIRMAN. Here is another one I want to show him.
Senator KEFAUVER. This is the July one. It seems to be a man with a woman in a boat and he is choking her to death here with a crowbar. Is that in good taste?
Mr. GAINES. I think so.
Mr. HANNOCH. How could it be worse?
Senator HENNINGS. Mr. Chairman, if counsel will bear with me, I don't think it is really the function of our committee to argue with this gentleman. I believe that he has given us about the sum and substance of his philosophy ... .
With that 3rd degree burn administered by Sen Hennings, it’s clear that Gaines has lost the Subcommittee member who was most likely to cut him some slack.
Sen Hennings clarifies with Gaines that his motives in publishing his comic books is a mixture of entertainment and profit, which Gaines affirms.
View from the Couch: Did Gaines realize he gave weight to Dr Wertham’s statement that pornographic comics might be better than Crime and Horror? Women are attacked and dying like flies in the EC stuff.
Yes, it is very likely that most adults watching the proceedings, listening to them, or reading about them in the newspapers over the next few days were very shocked by those cover descriptions, and Gaines’ statement of the covers being “in good taste”. They most likely understood what the “sum and substance of his philosophy” might be, as well.
Gaines had succeeded in convincing his audience that his concepts of Right and Wrong might be utterly foreign to the vast majority of American families.
View from the Couch: Of all the answers Gaines gives the Subcommittee, these two clearly show the audience how disconnected from normal reality he is. Either his moral compass is so thoroughly out of whack that he shouldn’t ever interact with normal people — much less children, or he is lying in hopes to somehow placate the Subcommittee members. People have remembered this moment from the hearings just because Gaines is THAT out of joint with Reality.
Other creators watching the hearings knew that Gaines had stepped deeply into quicksand and was drowning in his own answers.1
“Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were watching the hearings with their friend and collaborator, the comics writer Jack Oleck, at Simon’s apartment in Midtown Manhattan. At this moment in Gaines’s testimony, Kirby groaned and Simon chided Gaines through the TV screen: ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!”’
Dr Norman Fruman, Writer and Editor for American Comics Group, recalls Gaines’ testimony and his reaction to it.2
"I specifically remember Gaines before the Kefauver Committee, when an EC cover showing the picture of a man holding a bloody hatchet, and in the other hand he has the head—the severed head—of a woman. The bottom of the cover was her neck. And when he was asked about that, whether that wasn’t going too far, [Gaines] replied, “No, because you're not seeing the stringy things hanging down from her neck and so on.” And, actually, I remember watching it on TV, because we had been through this kind of thing and what happened is that there were de facto codes of “restraint” that different companies had put upon themselves, and the notion of what was acceptable was defined entirely by the company. As far as EC was concerned—they were so out of touch—they actually thought that was an acceptable cover. They thought that that was a morally acceptable cover, when it was an appalling cover."
The New York Times article the following day covering the Subcommittee hearings was carried in many papers across the country.
There is more to Gaines’ testimony, but I’ve gone way over with excerpts at this point. Please read it and/or listen to it. The section with Gaines is illustrated with some of the images discussed in the testimony on Jamie Coville’s pages. The audio for Gaines is about 35 minutes and starts at about 1:20:00 on the audio recording of the April 21st afternoon session.
View from the Couch: Bill Gaines — the proclaimed Leader of the World of Horror Comics — asserted before the television and radio audiences that essentially he would publish his comics as he saw fit based on his view of morality and taste, or his company would go out of business. The American Public pretty much said “your terms are acceptable — we will help you go out of business”.
What the American public had to be asking after Gaines’ testimony was if this is where we are now, then where are we going to be in 5 or 10 years from now? With what Gaines was saying, how could one not wonder if there were any controls at all that could be placed on comic books? Gaines — the King of Horror — refused to be held to the ACMP Code. Only his own will and his version of “good taste” would guide him.
Becoming the Big King of Horror Comics and labeling samples from his company’s comics made Bill Gaines and EC comics the focus — the target — for much of the outrage that came down the pike from the hearings. The majority of the pain he experienced was due to his own pride.
Even creators recognized that EC was pushing the boundaries too hard and with extreme disregard for the majority of Americans.3
"I remember—it was Ken Bald in fact, one of our artists—talking to me about how uncomfortable he was drawing this stuff, and realizing when his wife and kids came into the room he’d want to cover it up so they couldn’t see what he was doing. Many of us—certainly I—were becoming uncomfortable—more than uncomfortable—about the direction horror books were taking.
"They were getting bloodier and bloodier. And by the way, I might say that this experience together with what finally happened when we finally did get a Comics Code had an unforgettable effect on me. It was the direction of the immense success of the EC comics. They had a wonderful set of artists and also had very gifted writers. But they were way the hell ahead in driving the profession into realms of blood and gore and horror that we never dreamed of doing when we were writing Adventures Into The Unknown or Out Of The Night.
"But ... nothing provokes emulation more than financial success. Gaines and others, they were paradigms of what happened or can happen in a market driven by the profit motive. It is true of many businesses, in that they radically lose sight of the way other people can view their product."
Dr Fruman mentioned pushing the envelope — here is an example, and from the time of the hearings, no less. Compare Johnny Craig’s cover from the issue released about 2 months prior to the April Subcommittee hearings with a comic book that was on the stands while the hearings were in session. Copy-cat crimes of commission.
The other item highlighted here is how television changed the media playing field. It had been seen with Costello and the Organized Crime Hearings, it would be seen in the future Kennedy/Nixon debates, and it was on display here in the Subcommittee hearings. The invisible audience of Radio had expanded to add Television to its ranks. More people were made part of the debate, as they could watch these proceedings in many areas of the Northeast, listen to them on radio and rebroadcasts, and the newspapers worked to keep up with both.
View from the Couch: From reading the transcripts and listening to the audio recordings of the hearings, I am not sure Gaines understood that his audience was not really the Subcommittee or even the people in the Courthouse, but the American people who were his customer base. He did not appear to be speaking to the real audience, he focused on the panel in front of him. If Gaines did understand it, he did a very poor job of communicating with American families.
The Subcommittee members, especially Sen Kefauver, spoke to the actual audience, not to Mr Gaines. Kefauver, of all people there, knew the power of Television, and he wielded that power like a rapier.
The cover of a comic book and a simple question of “good taste” did more damage to the Comic Book Industry than Dr Wertham had done in seven years of his crusade. It did more damage than most of the parents groups and legislatures had done over the past four or more years.
The success of his company over four years of pushing the Horror and Crime boundaries ever farther, encouraging others to do the same due to EC’s popularity, and no doubt buoyed by court successes such as the SCOTUS Winters decision, built a cultural bonfire soaked in kerosene for Comic Books.
And Gaines had dropped a match on it.
Gaines’ answers got more parents looking at what their children were buying and reading, and parents didn’t like what they found.
Testimonies from the National Cartoonists Society and from Dell Comics
1 — Testimony from representatives of the National Cartoonists Society
This followed on the heels of Bill Gaines’ testimony. Representing the Society were three syndicated newspaper cartoonists: Walt Kelly (‘Pogo’ comic strip), the newly-elected President of the National Cartoonists Society; Milton Caniff (‘Steve Canyon’ comic strip, and formerly of ‘Terry and the Pirates’ comic strip); and Joe Musial (regular ‘ghost artist’ for King Features Syndicate strips; took over as artist for ‘Katzenjammer Kids’ in 1956), who was the Educational Director for both King Features and the Society.
Their testimony entailed pointing out the differences in Comic Strips in newspapers versus Comic Books, highlighting that the Strips required the editors of each paper that carried the comic strip to approve of the content. That meant an editorial bench of hundreds of editors who must be satisfied with the strip and its content before it saw print, which contrasted with Comic Books where typically only one editor had approval over sending the book to print and distribution.
Walt Kelly presented a position statement from the Society, asking for no new legislation be designed, and that efforts should focus on producing better comics that would ultimately outsell the Crime and Horror comics over time.
Both Caniff and Musial dodge debating Dr Wertham’s position, and don’t take any shots at him as Gaines had done, but rather discuss the potential good that comics can do. They detail some educational efforts with visual aids, highlighting the Society position that Comic Art can be beneficial for children and adults. None of the three has much regard for the Crime and Horror comic book samples. Kelly highlights the Society philosophy that the writer and artist should be doing work for the betterment of individuals and society at large, or not do the work at all.
If Dr. Wertham had a “hater” at these hearings, it wasn’t Bill Gaines; it was Mrs Meyer. She does not like his blanket condemnation of all comic books, and highlights the positives of Dell Comics — “Dell Comics are Good Comics” became the company’s tag line for many years. She wastes no time digging into the producers of Crime and Horror comics either, telling the Subcommittee that Dell refused to join ACMP because Dell leadership reasoned that other publishers would use Dell’s reputation as a shield, which would ultimately harm Dell Comics and the companies they worked for, which included Walt Disney and Warner Brothers Cartoons. Mrs Meyer also stated that she was willing to roll up her sleeves on Crime and Horror.
The CHAIRMAN. I am sure you are interested in eliminating horror comics, are you not?
Mrs. MEYER. We certainly are. And we would love to help you do it.
View from the Couch: Bill Gaines was lucky that the Code came along if Mrs Meyer was going to get involved.
Mrs Meyer and Mr Murphy share figures on why Dell comics commands between 30% and 40% of the comic market: printing 30 million comics per year, and selling 25 million, for a sell-through rate of 83%! They also submit samples of Dell Comics products into evidence.
The New Magazine Association and the New Comics Code
More calls for control of comic books via legislation were happening across the Northeast and began to spread to other portions of the country after the April hearings. Comics publishers were waking up to the public’s anger.
Gaines planned to write another editorial and initiate a letter writing campaign after the April Subcommittee Hearings, prior to the next round of hearings scheduled to start on June 4th, 1954. Gaines claimed that the Subcommittee had treated him unfairly in his appearance.
He sat down to pound out an editorial to get his EC “Fan-Addicts Club” members involved in sharing their concerns about censoring comic books with the Senate Subcommittee. His editorial is shown below.
Once again, Gaines’ tone-deaf appeal was taken as an attack on the Senate Subcommittee and their work. Sen Hendrickson responded, but this time he was not as polite as before, accusing Gaines of attempting to besmirch the integrity of the Subcommittee and its work, and using children as his tools to do it.
Gaines had learned nothing. He took no responsibility for the firestorm he helped create. He made no apologies. He stormed ahead rather than self-reflect.
The June 4 hearings came and went with oral and written testimonies submitted. This day was primarily focused on block bundling. Block bundling of movie releases and studio ownership of theater chains helped to cause the downfall of the Hollywood Studio System: there was testimony in the Senate hearings that wholesalers and distributors were “bundling” popular magazines with less popular ones — supposedly Crime and Horror comics were some of the less popular magazines with small dealers.
Claims were made that some retailers weren’t getting very popular publications — say, TV Guide — without taking other magazines for display. Distributors and wholesalers disputed that there were bundling or tie-in deals.
There was inconclusive testimony delivered on both sides of this issue in the hearing. While no conclusions were reached, there was a major impact to the comic book industry in the period from 1952 to 1957 related to these accusations. More on that topic below in the Legal Department.
Meanwhile, the furor over comic books was growing, and sales for many comic companies were suffering. Who should step in to suggest a new trade association to replace the ACMP?
Bill Gaines and Lyle Stuart of Entertaining Comics.
Yes, Bill Gaines pulled the trigger on starting the activities that led to the CMAA, the CCA, and the new Comics Code coming into existence.
The two set up a series of meetings that led to formation of the new trade association, the Comic Magazine Association of America (CMAA), and an independent oversight body. That was not Gaines and Stuart’s original goal for the body, but the deed was done. The Comics Code Authority (CCA) was established to administer the reviews of comics to ensure they were worthy of carrying the seal on their covers.
The first thing that CMAA did was write a new, more detailed code, based on the Motion Picture Production Code (the Hays Code) and several of the larger publishers’ in-house comics codes.
The first thing that the new CMAA Code did was to ban the use of the words “Terror” and “Horror”, as well as most of the egregious activities comics had engaged in over the past several years. It also addressed the type of advertising that could appear in comics, as well as how ads were presented. The 1954 Comics Code can be reviewed here.
Bill Gaines left the body upon seeing that Crime and Horror were being sacrificed to appease the public and lawmakers. EC as it was currently constructed was finished.
Hajdu’s book details more of how Gaines attempted to salvage EC, and ultimately left with MAD, which would move to a magazine format, and thus escape scrutiny of the CCA.
The CCA was designed to be the independent review body that reviewed comics and enforced the Code. The CMAA hired Judge Charles F. Murphy to the post of CCA Administrator. Five reviewers were hired to deal with the bulk of the script and art review work for the organization. Murphy was given total autonomy from the CMAA to enforce the Comics Code on CMAA members and their products.
As Nyberg points out in her book, the CMAA expected that Murphy would behave in the manner of the old AMCP or the in-house advisory boards.
He didn’t. Boy, he sure didn’t.4
“The comic book publishers intended Murphy to be nothing more than a figurehead; one industry representative called him ‘a not-very-bright political hack who was selected mostly because of his religious faith,’ and the public relations firm hired to handle the CMAA’s campaign described him as ‘a practical man who would recognize the problems of selling comic books in a declining market’”.
Hajdu also notes that some creators had apparently been clued-in to the fact that Murphy’s post at CCA was supposed to be more for show than action.5
“Murphy had been ‘hired to be a figurehead, like a rubber stamp,’ according to Carmine Infantino, an artist who was penciling Western and war comics for National/DC at the time. ‘He took the whole industry by surprise. Nobody expected him to come in and really change things. Even after the Code was written up, it was supposed to be more of a symbol. Nobody thought he was going to come in and really enforce it.’”
Judge Murphy was clearly not clued-in to the expectations of the CMAA membership, but who’d want to face an angry public for not doing the job the public was told that Murphy would do? Murphy wasn’t that stupid.
Not only did CMAA not anticipate that it might be a good idea to let the Administrator know that he was supposed to be a compliant stooge, but the publishers didn’t consider that they really should place some comic book editorial and creative talent on the CCA to advise them, or to be part of the review body itself.6
“At the beginning, the code was administered by Murphy and five trained reviewers, all women. The five included: Sue Flynn, a publicist for thirteen years with the Department of Agriculture and the Voice of America; Marj McGill, a recent graduate of Albertus Magnus College who had done social work while going to college and who had specialized in juvenile delinquency; Esther L. Moscow, librarian and researcher; Dr. Joan Thellusson-Nourse, professor in the Department of English at Hunter College and a lecturer and writer on the theater; and Dene Reed, an editor in the story department in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a number of years.”
Hadju, Nyberg, and Vance all have some “horror stories” of what writers and artists went through under the Code as it was finding its feet. Frustration, anger, and for some companies, closing their doors. The Code mollified some of the public, while in other areas, the battle to eliminate comics via legal means continued on hotly through 1955 and into 1956.
That doesn’t mean the Code worked well or behaved as expected. Many writers and artists left the field due to public sentiment about comic books and those who worked to create them.
Who was responsible for that sentiment?
Again, I primarily lay the blame at the feet of the Comic Book Industry itself. Their outreach to their customers was generally myopic and almost exclusively outsourced to their trade associations (ACMP and CMAA) with which the individual publishers had little interaction on the public affairs front, leaving that task to the association directors who were sometimes one deep.
So why did the Code succeed in hewing to the letter of the law, fail the creators who worked under the Code, and lead to failures in the creative department? Now you know.
It wasn’t the Senate Subcommittee or government regulators.
It wasn’t parents and civic groups.
It wasn’t the comic book writers and artists.
It wasn’t Dr Fredric Wertham.
It was the Comic Book Industry that put itself into its own grave. The Horror show was of their own creation. If the publishers would have banded together, set aside their differences to work on issues common to them all, and behaved as an actual trade organization back in the late 1940s when ACMP was formed, they might have mitigated this disaster. They chose infighting and going their own way instead.
Why this was difficult for publishers might be understandable from the perspective of 1935 when the industry started. It was low-margin, tooth-and-claw competition. Every man for himself in a gold-rush kind of world. By 1950, the business world had begun to change around them. They weren’t adapting to greater consumer expectations for input, government oversight and potential regulation, and awareness of how previously self-regulated industries such as movies had evolved over time within their codes. This wasn’t only the Comic Book industry. Many businesses would see similar consumer revolts in the 1960s and 1970s.
View from the Couch: A more self-aware industry might have designed a process to address concerns of consumers and their internal members. Something akin to this.
But then again, what do I know?
The Comic Book publishers and distributors expected to build a gameable system that placated their consumers, yet allowed them to operate on “business as usual” terms. They didn’t do a very good job of building the system in the first place, nor did they understand the nuances demanded by that system. The industry wanted to appease the public, but from all the resources I’ve tapped into, rarely tried to find out what the public’s actual concerns were, nor did they take actions that addressed those concerns.
The comic book publishers who could adapt to the Code survived and functioned, though they were diminished.
Legal Shenanigans Along the Way
View from the Couch: As much anger as was pent up prior to the Senate Subcommittee hearings, if something had not been done to convince the public that comic companies were changing for the better, such as the establishment and enforcement of the Comics Code, I have no doubt that there would have been attempts after 1957 to declare some comic books to be obscene.
Three important legal and economic events in 1957 could have had significant impact on comics if nothing had come of the Senate Hearings and CMAA and CAA were never founded. These were
Roth vs New York (1957), followed by Miller vs California (1973) Remember that dude we met on Day 2 of the hearings in the afternoon who came on just before Dell Publishing? Yeah, he’s a person who had been using the US Mail to distribute obscene materials on and off for about 20 years, as well having several run-ins for violation of Copyrights for publishing author works without permission or compensation. New York convicted him, destroyed the materials in question, then sent him up the river for 4+ years. BUT, his case made it to SCOTUS where his conviction not only was upheld, but the “Roth Two-point Test” as to whether some materials were obscene was adopted. RESULT: No federal standard for obscenity would be developed, and States and municipalities could judge materials as obscene under a rule that SCOTUS recognized. The obscenity definition was changed/refined under the Miller vs California decision in 1973, yielding the “Miller Three-point Test” for obscenity.
Kingsley Books Inc vs Brown (1957) and Nights of Horror (1957), was another obscenity case, this time involving a comic book erotic/BDSM series that was ruled obscene, whereupon New York ordered all copies of the work destroyed. SCOTUS ruled that in cases of material found to be obscene, the States have jurisdiction to destroy these materials, as long as an evaluation of whether or not is obscene does not prevent the production, but not distribution of the material. The person who drew the comics was later determined to be Joe Shuster.
American News Company federal indictment (1952) and dissolution (1957). The American News Company (ANC) was the largest wholesaler and distributor of periodicals in the country. In 1952, the Federal Government instituted antitrust litigation against the company, concerned that the company favored its own retailer chains over independent dealers and was in collusion with other related entities (Union News outlets, at that time owned by ANC). Dell Publishing chose to depart from ANC in 1955, but Atlas (Marvel) chose to remain with ANC. The company abruptly closed in June 1957, leaving many periodical publishers — to include Atlas/Marvel — scrambling to find other independent distributors or go out of business.7
Roth and Kingsley gave States and municipalities new tools to address obscene materials. If comic books had continued on their path unimpeded in 1954, there is little doubt both of these laws would have been used against comics, especially since the driver on Kingsley was itself a comic book. Comic publishers could have easily been looking at multi-State suits for distribution of obscene materials. The defense costs alone might have been enough to drive most publishers out of business.
While I don’t know the impact across the board of the ANC closure on comic book companies, the business was responsible for distribution of an enormous number of periodicals across the US. I’m looking for analysis or data on the impact to smaller companies, specifically if their closure or sale dates can be traced back to around the time of ANC’s closure in the Summer of 1957. It disrupted Atlas for a number of months, so it could easily have been a shock or a fatal blow to smaller publishers working through ANC.
Impact of the Code: Some Thoughts on Accountability
View from the Couch: This event was not a “moral panic” as it is sometimes described, but rather a “moral outrage” by parents and other defenders of young children. The impact delivered to comic books by the Public was not a banning or a censoring. It was an organized grassroots boycott of a product, similar to how known GMO products have been generally rejected by the Public. The offender is starved of money and attention. They are shunned.
The kids with a few quarters or couple dollars in allowance would have more of their comic book choices reviewed by parents after the hearings. Mom would be more likely to flip through that stack of comics that Billy or Suzy wanted to buy while they all were at the candy store, the drug store, or the grocery. Dad would be more likely to swing down to a comic book dealer, who was his druggist, grocer, and neighbor, and have a chat about what comics were being put on their public display of magazines.
That might not be as a big deal in the urban areas, but it likely meant something in small communities and suburban enclaves. Neighbors were known to other neighbors, and there was a fair bit of social cohesion the 1950s. Losing a customer was one thing, but having your neighbors turn against you could be long-term poison.
Parents saw the actions of comic book editors, publishers, and distributors as willful negligence in continuously exposing younger children to Crime and Horror comics, or they regarded it as malicious, anti-social behavior. While anger should have been directed at the publishers and distributors, comics creators of all stripes, aligned with or against parents, took a significant amount of the blow-back from the actions of their bosses after the Senate hearings.
Hadju points out that hundreds of writers and artists left comic books after the CCMA Code was established and they never returned to the field.
That is very sad. It was a loss to graphic art and story telling to have hundreds of people give up careers in the field of comics. But, publishers made that bed. They did a poor job of defending their creative talent. They could have taken the responsibility for the stories and art decisions and saved these creators a good deal of pain and grief that they received at the hands of a very angry public.
But, they didn’t. The Comic Book Industry hung their creators out to dry.
The Television Factor.
The other factor that probably doesn’t get enough attention is the growth of Television and its monumental effect on the Boomers who were being born in 1946 and onward. Gaines’ “EC Fan and Addict Club” members would have likely been majority Silents, as Boomers would have been 8 years old or younger in 1954. But, since those Boomers were younger, they would be more and more exposed to Television with its explosive penetration into American homes. Recall this graph. Boomers rapid growth as a generational cohort coincides with the growth of Television. Unfamiliar with the terms “Silents” and “Boomers”? Catch up here.
In 1950, less than 10% of homes had a television set. By 1954, between 60% and 65% of American homes had television, and by 1960 that penetration percentage had climbed over 85%. The immediately accessible home entertainment box was both a companion to comic books as well as its competitor in the American home. Did it displace some comics?
The author, Harry Harrison, who began his career as a penciler and layout artist with EC’s science fiction titles, believed the death of comics helped feed former comic readers into television.8
Perhaps it is true to some extent, but the explosive growth of Television from 1950 to 1960 speaks of a medium being powered by its own forces, not merely one that gathered up the remains of another medium’s audience.
Wrapping it up.
The end of the Golden Age of Comics was a Silent phenomenon. The beginning of the Silver Age of Comics was more aligned with the Boomers.
Bill Gaines’ EC “New Trend” comics in 1950 would hit Silents when they were about 8 to 15 years of age. Comic Books appear to have been the medium of Silent generation children, in a similar fashion to how Television was the medium of Boomer children.
It’s important to keep in mind that comic book trends cycled in a similar manner to movies trends prior to 1997: trends lasted about 10 years, then faded, perhaps to show up again later after a period of lying fallow.
Crime comics started in 1942 under Lev Gleason and in 1952 when comics in general were at their peak, Crime comics were losing ground to Horror, Romance, and other genres. Romance started in 1947 and hung on as a strong genre until about 1962, then rapidly began to fade though it hung on until about 1970. Superheroes lasted from 1938 through about 1949, then went into a kind of hiatus until 1956 when they began to resurface, accelerating through 1966 when they again peaked and began to decline.
Some back-of-the-envelope math: 1943 saw about 25 million comics per month printed, then up to 120 million per month in 1952, and down to 90 million per month in 1954. Using 1952 and 1954 as our base years, and knowing that from 1952 forward is in decline, a 25% decline every two years would indicate projected print publication runs for 1956 at 68 million issues per month, 1958 at 51 million issues per month. and 1960 at 38 million issues per month. The actual figures for 1960 were about 26 million comic book issues printed per month.
What are the relevant factors in this difference?
ANC’s demise and with it a number of comic publishers and their books?
Silents going elsewhere because they are tired of bland comics vice the pre-Code era stories, or just aging out of comics altogether?
Boomers too wrapped up in Television to really get hooked on comics and reading like their older siblings did?
The horrors of the Code that drove out both publishers and creators?
Some or all of the above?
That is a tough nut to crack. Bill Gaines and EC comics and several other larger publishers, to include Lev Gleason (Crime) and Fiction House (Jungle Girls, Action/Adventure), left the market due to the Code. The smaller “Horror & Crime” exclusive publishers probably went away quickly, much like EC. The Comic Book industry and its new industry-created Comics Code take the hit for those losses.
Some major publishers of Horror swapped to other genres, such as Harvey shifting to its Cartoon/Humor lines with Casper, Wendy, Spooky, Little Dot, Hot Stuff, and Richie Rich, and did quite well for themselves. Richie Rich especially did quite well for Harvey well into the 1980s.
Some publishers such as Dell Comics were not players in the Code, but likely took some blowback from the hearings and aftermath just from being comic book publishers. Their sales were not overly affected due to their business model of publishing comics featuring well-known commercial properties. Adaptations of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Woody Woodpecker, and other cartoon characters was their stock and trade, along with book and movie adaptations.
The existing cache of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz, and other cartoon and entertainment properties, by virtue of their public reputation and recognition from film and television, protected the Dell Comics reputation. Dell Comics was also one of the very few companies (if not the only company) to sport national advertising and to reject mail order advertising present in other comic books.
Additionally, since Dr Wertham’s concerns over violence in comics bled over into many genres that Dell offered, the company became one of his staunchest critics. Dell was also a strong opponent of Wertham’s book, and took out several national ads against its statements.
While negatives with the Code and its application in the mid-1950s existed, one can also argue that without the Code we might not have seen the resurgence of the Superhero genre in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1956, Horror and Crime were out, Romance was doing ok though declining, Action, Adventure & Mystery were holding their own, but nothing was on an upward trend.
Then, National Periodicals reintroduced The Flash. Between 1956 and 1961, National Periodicals re-imagined many of their Golden Age superheroes, and introduced new heroes and teams of heroes under its brand. Marvel Comics — formerly Atlas — began its introduction of superheroes when they saw the success of National’s efforts in the market. The Fantastic Four was Marvel’s first foray back into superheroes since 1955, and it was a success.
Now, take a look at the 1954 Comics Code and compare it to the Superhero character. In some ways, the Comics Code was almost made for the Superhero trope — it had aspects of the generic Superhero’s “code” built into the bones of it.
Is this one of the reasons that the Superheroes flourished through the Silver Age of Comics? Was the Code of some real value to publishers after all?
In the respect that proper restraints on any of the tools of Fallen Man tend to be for the Good, then the Comics Code was probably a general positive for Comics and for their readers.
Our tools may be neutral, but the passions and temptations we experience are anything but neutral. Dr Furman noted this in his time working at American Comics Group with Editor-in-Chief Richard Hughes, when the publisher asked them to “push the envelope” a bit more on Horror stories in the Pre-Code era.9
“We both really didn’t want to do it. I remember stories, for example, in which kids were playing a baseball game and using different body parts [ published by EC ], but we had all kinds of vampire stories, tearing people apart.
“The history of television, and especially the history of the movies, has shown this: There is no limit to the degree of violence you will have, and there appears to be no limit to the degree of verbal obscenity and also of pornography.”
The question then becomes whether Creativity is stifled and destroyed by controls and limitations imposed upon it, or whether Creativity discovers itself and flourishes within the bounds of those controls and limitations.
I have my answer to that question. Perhaps this series and the references it provides will help if you are still seeking that answer.
REFERENCE MATERIALS USED FOR PART C
References used here include, but are not limited to the following books and testimonial references. I strongly recommend to you all four books for your reading pleasure, and specific links that host source material from the events. These are essential if you want to understand these events.
Layers of myth have built up and surround the comic book “censorship” that followed U.S. Senate sub-committee hearings in 1954. Without reading source materials or materials that capture the most direct evidence and testimony from the principle participants and witnesses of these events, you will likely find yourself in the loop of blaming a single party due to misinformation that has circulated for decades around these events.
Book ISBNs are provided for commercial copies of these books which are available through various book sellers and outlets.
I. Books.
Seduction of the Innocent, Frederic Wertham, 1954 [ISBN-10: 159683000X; ISBN-13: 9781596830004] - The book that everyone points at, but likely few have actually read, other than for a pull-quote. Read it if you have any hope of understanding what Wertham was about, what he wanted, and how he came to the conclusions he came to over more than seven years of researching comic books, specifically crime and horror books. You likely won’t agree with all of his opinions or his conclusions, but you may be surprised by what he intended, and what he wanted to accomplish.
Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code, Amy Kiste Nyberg, 1998 [ISBN-10: 087805975X; ISBN-13: 978-0878059751] - Nyberg provides a well-researched yet accessible analysis of the events associated with the Public’s concern over comic books, the juvenile delinquency problem, the Senate hearings, as well as associated events that contributed to the unfolding of events; read this book if you read nothing other than Wertham’s book.
Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group, Michael Vance, 1996 [ISBN-10: 0313296782; ISBN-13: 9780313296789] - Vance provides a history of the American Comics Group (ACG) and its long-time editor, Richard Hughes, as well as testimonies from assistant editor, AGC freelance writer, and future academic, Norman Fruman (do some research on him as well). Chapters 11 and 12 are especially relevant to this discussion.
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, David Hajdu, 2009 [ISBN-10: 0312428235; ISBN-13: 978-0312428235] - Hajdu provides a wealth of testimonial material from publishers, writers, and artists, as well as those people associated with comic book distributors, the CCMA, and the CCA.
II. Articles and Transcripts.
Jamie Coville’s “The Comic Books” website. Jamie obtained the Subcommittee meeting minutes in 1999, scanned them, then typed up the OCR’d version into HTML. If you know what OCR was like in back ‘99, then you have to respect Mr Coville’s dedication! These are webpages of the Senate hearing testimony, and you may find them to be more readable and more easily searched than the PDF book linked below. [LINK]
Juvenile delinquency (comic books): Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-third Congress, second session, pursuant to S. 190. Investigation of juvenile delinquency in the United States. April 21, 22, and June 4, 1954 - These are written transcripts from the Senate Subcommittee hearings held in New York City. Portions of the hearings were televised, to include testimony by Wertham and other witnesses. [LINK]
Website of WNYC Public Radio. The archives of WNYC host around 9 hours of the Senate Subcommittee hearings originally broadcast on radio as audio recordings. Four files of 2+ hours each allow you to listen to much of the testimony. Each linked page also offers some commentary on the audio file and its contents. [LINK 1] [LINK 2] [LINK 3] [LINK 4]
The Library of Congress Blog Site. At the link below is an excellent summary article on the Comic Book concerns, the Senate Judiciary Sub-committee hearings in New York City, and the resulting events with several good links to references. [LINK]
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This is an organization that defends creators from obscenity charges and other legal challenges in publishing and distributing their works. They have several articles on the publishers’ defense of comics, the ACMP Code, the CCMA Code, and their ramifications, as well as some history of the events. Amy Nyberg also has an excellent summary post with analysis from her book Seal of Approval.
The LOST Seduction of the Innocent. An excellent website collecting some rare artifacts of the Seduction of the Innocent (SOTI) book, excerpts from Dr. Wertham’s papers, as well as some samples from the example comics used in both the SOTI book and during the Senate hearings.
The Comics Forum. A number of scholarly research materials are collected here. Especially of interest may be Steven Mitchell’s thesis on the comic book controversy and two articles on Lev Gleason by Peter Y. W. Lee.
David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: the Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2008, Chapter 13.
Michael Vance, Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group, Greenwood Press, 1996, pg 104.
Ibid, pg 105.
Amy Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code, Univ Press of MS, Jackson, 1998, pp 110-111.
David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: the Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2008, Chapter 15.
Op cit, pg 114.
In Chapter 16 of Hajdu’s book, he relates the story of Stan Lee firing the Atlas staffers and freelance creators. That firing was due to the ANC closure, and not directly related to the Comics Code issues. Martin Goodman, the Atlas publisher, had shut down his own distribution business and signed on with ANC. When ANC abruptly announced it was closing, Atlas — like many other comic book publishers — was left without a distributor, and thus could not publish its books, prompting the firings. Goodman eventually signed a deal with Independent News Company (INC), which was the distributor owned by National Periodical (DC Comics). Goodman had to radically pare down the number of titles he printed, as INC didn’t have the capacity of ANC. Atlas went from about 50 titles printed per month to about one dozen per month.
David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: the Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2008, Chapter 15.
Michael Vance, Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group, Greenwood Press, 1996, pg 104-105.
What a dynamite piece! Great read.
Gosh, Gaines really torched himself, didn't he? But imagine being a parent with comic reading kids, watching these hearings on TV, and the severed head covers flash up on screen. My gosh, I'd have outlawed comics in my house on the spot.