The History of Comics Pt II: Who Killed "The Golden Age?"

If you haven't yet read my entry on The Golden Age of Comics, go check it out now!  NOW!  You can't read chapter two before reading chapter one!  Who do you think you are?!

As the Golden Age of Comics began to decline, and soldiers returned from the war, superhero comics began to decline, and other genres such as war, westerns, crime, horror, science fiction, and romance began to hit the stands.

More specifically, stories of crime, suspense, and horror became big sellers - and the company that published the most notable comics in these genres was EC Comics.

EC Comics set the standard for edgy, button-pushing comics, and included titles like Crime SuspenStories, and  Shock SuspenStories.

And of EC's horror comics, the most celebrated of all was Tales From The Crypt.

What separated EC Comics from other publishers at the time was its comic book art - both beautiful and detailed while at many times unsettling and disturbing.

"Hi, Bird.  I'm sick.  I need some smack, Bird."

Another unique thing about EC Comics was that storylines were almost always shocking and ended with an ironic twist for the suspect (either the protagonist or antagonist, depending on the story).  Here are some story synopses taken from Wikipedia:


Weird Fantasy

• "Revulsion," a spaceship pilot is bothered by insects due to a past experience when he found one in his food.  At the conclusion of the story, a giant alien insect screams in horror at finding the dead pilot in his salad.

Tales From The Crypt

• "Collection Completed," a man takes up taxidermy in order to annoy his wife.  When he kills and stuffs her beloved cat, the wife snaps and kills him, stuffing and mounting his body.

Shock SuspenStories

• "The Orphan" featured a ten-year-old girl murdering her father and framing her mother.
• "The Whipping" featured a bigoted father mistakenly beating his daughter to death under the impression that she was her Hispanic boyfriend.

EC Comics prospered out of the war and the decline of superhero comics.  However, not everybody celebrated in this success.

Fredric Wertham


This name should resonate by now.  It has appeared on this blog a few times, namely here.  But again, who is this man, and what did he do?  Let's begin with a brief summary snippet from Wikipedia:

"Fredric Wertham was a German-born American psychiatrist and crusading author who protested the purportedly harmful effects of violent imagery in mass media and comic books on the development of children."

Wertham had written a book, "Seduction of the Innocent," which detailed his thoughts and arguments. At the same time, the United States Congress launched an inquiry into comic books, as juvenile delinquency was on the rise.  Furthermore, public opinion began to view comic books as a negative form of literature

Now, given the pictorial examples above, it's not hard to see where he was coming from in his assessment, I'll grant Wertham that.  Perhaps not all of the content published at these times was for children.  But were comic books really the root of all problems?

My Opinion

It's been documented that after a war- any war - crime is on the rise.  I'd like to provide you with a direct link, but instead Google "violence risks post war" yourself and look at the results.  Crime rises not only in countries where the war takes place, but also in any country that participates in the war itself.  I'm not a psychiatrist, but perhaps because the focus of a nation is on violence, violence begets violence, and crime rises.  Maybe it's the thought that people are unnecessarily dying young, and it's a live-for-the-moment situation.  Again, I'll leave this one to the pros.

In Wertham's case, to pick a medium, any medium, and singly point a finger doesn't work.  Since comic books, television, movies, and especially video games have been scrutinized for subliminal messages, violent tonality, and causing children's minds to warp.  An extreme example of this is the Judas Priest trial where the artist's music was accused of causing a man to attempt to commit suicide.
The same thing happened after the horrific Columbine High School Massacre.  Was it video games like "Wolfenstein 3D" and "Doom"?  Was it the scene from "The Basketball Diaries"?
Perhaps the best description (and I use this term loosely) of that particular sad, horrific incident comes from Chris Rock's "Bigger & Blacker" - "Whatever happened to crazy?"

And now, back to the history lesson already in progress...


So Wertham hammers comic books, and the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency buys what Wertham's selling.  They bring him in as the key witness in hearings, and he starts delivering blows to the comic community.  Wertham had carefully sited his examples, and stories like "Murder, Morphine and Me" from True Crime Comics were used as examples of comics exceeding their boundaries.

I don't do drugs, but I don't think this is how to take them.

Enter William Gaines, the owner and operator of EC Comics, who had now cornered the market in crime and horror fiction.
Gaines's comics were considered risque and violent, and so William himself went before the committee to speak on behalf of the genres, and comic books in particular.

"The life of the wife is ended by the knife."

A wide variety of examples were used against Gaines, including the particular cover here.  Note the following dialogue (again from Wikipedia) between Gaines and the committee:

• Chief Counsel Herbert 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?
• Bill Gaines: No, I wouldn't say that there is any limit for the reason you outlined. My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.
• 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?
• Gaines: I don't believe so.
• Beaser: There would be no limit actually to what you put in the magazines?
• Gaines: Only within the bounds of good taste.
• Beaser: Your own good taste and saleability?
• Gaines: Yes.
• Senator Estes Kefauver: Here is your May 22 issue. [Kefauver is mistakenly referring to Crime Suspenstories #22, cover date May]This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman's head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?
• 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.
• Kefauver: You have blood coming out of her mouth.
• Gaines: A little.
• Kefauver: Here is blood on the axe. I think most adults are shocked by that.

In the end, however, examples like these coupled with Wertham's testimony were enough to sway the public, and comic book burnings began across the nation.  In an effort to save the medium and avoid an appointed government body weighing in on content published, the Comics Code Authority was put into place voluntarily by the comic companies themselves.

And that's when radical changes were set in motion.  Sure, no longer do you find a severed head on the cover of a comic book.  But now titles were not longer allowed to use the words "Terror," "Weird," "Horror," and limiting the use of the word "Crime."  Bad guys had to pay for their crimes, and see the error of their ways.  Vampires, werewolves, and zombies were not allowed to be depicted (sorry Bella).  Scenes of passion were limited, and instead books enforced the sanctity of marriage (much like the Hollywood Production Code already in place).

Many viewed the Comic Code Authority as taking a step backwards, or over-censoring comics.  But while a law was not in place indicating that comic books could not be sold without the approval of the Comics Code Authority, many distributors simply stopped carrying titles that did not bear the logo.

Final Thoughts

The Golden Age of Comics may very well have been killed by time itself.  When real heroes returned from war, perhaps the idea of the superhero was too supernatural and out of touch with the people of the time.   When superhero comics decline, and titles were taken off the shelves (including originals like Green Lantern, Flash, etc), other genres gained popularity, including crime and horror.

If a singular person had to be picked to have killed the Golden Age, it can be argued that Fredric Wertham attempted to kill the medium altogether, and nearly did.  William Gaines and EC Comics, on the other hand, may have pushed the medium to an extreme, prompting an intervention from the United States Senate and the creation of the Comics Code Authority.

Fredric Wertham

William Gaines

Even in appearance, Wertham and Gaines were obviously polar opposites.  While I may have come across as vehemently opposed to Wertham's position, I do owe him some credit for what he was trying to accomplish.  And I will give him that credit.  But that's another blog, for another day.

So for now, I leave you with a quote from William Gaines regarding creative freedom of expression:

"Entertaining reading has never harmed anyone. Men of good will, free men should be very grateful for one sentence in the statement made by Federal Judge John M. Woolsey when he lifted the ban on Ulysses. Judge Woolsey said, ‘It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned.’ May I repeat, he said, “It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned.” Our American children are for the most part normal children. They are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action. Perverted little monsters are few and far between. They don’t read comics. The chances are most of them are in schools for retarded children.

What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our own children? Do we forget that they are citizens, too, and entitled to select what to read or do? Do we think our children are so evil, so simple minded, that it takes a story of murder to set them to murder, a story of robbery to set them to robbery? Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic."

The Last Laugh

William Gaines was in trouble.  His company was in trouble.  Gaines was part of the solution in suggesting a censorship group, but lost control of the idea to John L. Goldwater, publisher of Archie comics, who took over the Comics Code Authority.  Gaines had pulled horror comics, but still refused to publish any of his other comics within the stringent guidelines of the code.  As a result, most of his comics lost distribution.

Sliding into debt, Gaines took his personal fortune and placed it all on one focused book, a comic book recently converted into magazine format:  Mad Magazine.  Through Mad Magazine, Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman would satirize the event, comic books, and essentially anything and everything in the media.

"What, me worry?"  Well done, Mr. Gaines.