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Library of Congress Opens Records of Anti-Comic Book Shrink
eldavojohn writes "Some light is being shone on comic book history today as the Library of Congress opens up the 222 boxes of a German psychiatrist's evidence and papers against comic books. Dr. Fredric Wertham is well known by comic book fans as the author of Seduction of the Innocent, a bestselling book linking comic books and juvenile delinquency — leading to a full blown congressional investigation (some say witch hunt) of the comic book industry. Wertham was long involved with criminal trials before campaigning against comic books and promoting industry and government censorship for children. Ars adds a little more context for the younger crowd and notes that he later tried to move against television violence but couldn't find the publisher backing he had against comic books."
I love how some of the most outspoken people against video games (as well as comics, porno, etc) are often the same people who are against government expansion. Government intervention is always bad...unless it regulates something these people don't agree with.
I'm looking at you, Mitt Romney...amongst others.
Living With a Nerd
Dr. Wertham is just an early predecessor to Jack Thompson. These idiots think that anything they don't understand or enjoy should be banned because "clearly it has no moral value". It's a myopic view of art and entertainment that would lead to everyone buying and enjoying the exact same things....
I take a possibly more cynical view that like so many other politicians, pundits and activists, their "cause" is nothing but a horse they've hitched their career cart to.
Those dang kids and their __________, it's ruining them!
Video games
Magic the Gathering cards
Dungeons and Dragons
Comic books
Rock and Roll
Jazz music and dancing
How far back you want to go?
As much as Dr. Dickhead and Congress should be excoriated appropriately, let's not forget that the Comics industry bent over backwards to censor itself. If they'd shown a little more backbone, imagine what Lee and Kirkby could have done with the "Marvel Way" in the sixties. Imagine not having that fucking glut of saccharine Archie products. Mind you, we probably wouldn't have gotten Mad magazine if things had turned out differently, so it's hard to be judgmental.
The problem with this is that you are applying modern behavior to events that happened over 50 years ago. Or to put it another way, what you suggest is kind of like going back in time to the 1950s and getting angry because nobody has a cell phone. (That's "mobile phone" to you non-North Americans).
I've read some books that talk about the era, which was before I was born. One of the problems is that people and American society were a lot less litigious back then. Sometimes people screwed you over and you didn't go to court over it. You just took it and moved on. People didn't run around suing each other over everything like they do today. I guess, in theory, Bill Gaines of EC and publishers of similar fare could have tried to stand up, but the reality was that the distributors wouldn't touch books that weren't blessed by the "Comics Code" and the Code was specifically written to put companies like EC out of business by forbidding them from doing exactly what they had done. And keep in mind too that plenty of publishers of what I will call "family safe" comic books such as Archie, various Disney comics (these are a lot better than many realize - look up Carl Barks for more info) and others were more than happy to play along with the Comics Code because they didn't do what it forbade and they were really happy to see competitors driven out of the business. Some people probably really did believe that comics turned kids into juvenile delinquents and those people thought that the Code was just doing a public service. There's always been a rumor that John Goldwater, the publisher of Archie Comics, was infuriated by Mad's (then a comic book not a magazine) parody called "Starchie" and he vowed to put EC out of business. Goldwater did substantial work for the Code and it's probably no coincidence that a lot of what the Code forbade applied to EC directly.
Mad became a magazine specifically to evade the Code. It was a huge gamble that worked. But many artists, writers and others in the comic industry lost jobs and had to scramble to find new ones thanks to the Code. I'm pretty sure that if Bill Gaines and others could have stood up to the Code they would have.
While it's true that necessity is the mother of a great deal of creative invention, there are a great many stories which simply could not be threaded through the eye of the needle which is the Comics Code.
The Code did more than just say things like "no boobs" and "no decapitations". It dictated which points of view could be expressed. A writer couldn't write a story which questioned the authority of the police. A writer couldn't do a story which expressed the idea that maybe crime does pay. These were specifically disallowed. The Code even declared entire topics off-limits. You couldn't write a story about drug use... pro or con. (The first mainstream comics to defy the Code were about the dangers of drug use.) You couldn't write a story expressing an opinion about homosexuality, because the subject couldn't even be mentioned. At best you might be able to fashion a Star-Trek-like metaphor for the topic you wanted to comment on, but that kind of vagueness leaves your point open to misinterpretation or just going over people's heads, which makes for a weaker story, not a stronger one.
The Code's overriding principle was that all comics should be suitable for children. It was tantamount to requiring that all movies in cinemas be rated G or PG. That wasn't just a challenge to storytellers' creativity, it was an assault on it. You simply cannot write a sophisticated, nuanced story about complex themes, on an adult reading level under the Code. Because kids couldn't handle that.
If you want writers who "look at both sides of a situation", read a newspaper. Most good writers of fiction have an actual point of view, and use their writing to express it. They shouldn't have to work around a system which declares their point of view impermissible, or the topics they wish to explore off-limits.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Yes, it is important to give Wertham his due props, because he did contribute positively to his community and our society in many ways. He was precisely the kind of complex shades-of-grey character that the Code prevented later comic book writers from depicting in their work.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/