Ker-Splat! - social influence of comic books

Washington Monthly, June, 2001 by Jacob Heilbrunn

Ironically, comic books became dull as dishwater because of the more ghoulish fare published by EC comics--as distinct from DC--which triggered a mini-culture war. Wright explains that EC comics offered something of a precursor to the upheaval of the 1960s, questioning authority before it was fashionable to question anything. In perhaps the most notorious panel printed by EC comics, a murderous baseball team plays a midnight game with the limbs and entrails of a victim. Little was left to the imagination, and what little was left was amply spelled out. "See the catcher with the torso strapped on as a chest protector, the infielders with their hand-mitts, the stomach-rosin bag, and all the other pieces of equipment that once was Central City's star pitcher, Herbie Sat-ten," read one caption. Another issue depicted a man holding a bloody ax in one hand and a woman's severed head in the other. "Corpses in various states of decay and reanimation," Wright says, "regularly adorned the covers."

"A commercial expression of cultural defiance," he writes, "EC brilliantly perceived the alienated generation among young people and recognized youth dissatisfaction as a marketable commodity." The reaction came quickly. By 1948, Catholic schools were conducting bonfires of comic books. Wright notes that questions about the moral staunchness of youth and its ability to resist communism hovered over an entire generation.

Dr. Fredric Wertham, a New York City psychiatrist who had emigrated to the United States from Germany, soon became the industry's blood-hound. In 1948, he presented his findings to the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy in an address titled "The Psychopathology of Comic Books. In coming years, Wertham would find plenty of material to decry, resulting, in 1954, in his 400-page indictment, Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham complained, for example, that "one of the stock mental aphrodisiacs" in comic books was to show large breasts; when that wasn't the case, the publishers were promoting homosexuality. Batman's sidekick, Robin, he said, was "usually shown in his uniform with bare legs" and often stood "with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident." Wertham's charges were taken seriously. Soon enough, William M. Gaines, the publisher of EC, found himself facing off against a Senate investigative committee headed by Estes Kefauver. It was a rout. Kefauver declared that a panel in the July issue "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?" "I think so," was all Gaines could answer. The prudish Comics Code was slammed into place, and the industry ground out boring, uncontroversial bilge.

The decisive change came in the early 1960s, when Stall "the Man" Lee revived Marvel Comics. Lee's accomplishment cannot be exaggerated. He invented the superhero as anti-hero. Spider-Man was a smart-aleck outsider who enraged the establishment newspaper run by cigar-chomping J. Jonah Jameson; as Peter Parker, Spider-Man was a nerdy student, mocked as a wimp and tormented by the class bully, Flash Thompson. The rest of the time, his Aunt May was fussing over him, or he was desperately trying to earn money to keep her financially afloat by snapping pictures for, of all people, J. Jonah Jameson. The Incredible Hulk may not have been financially strapped but he was even more alienated than Spider-Man, battling the U.S. Army as well as the Fantastic Four.