Comic Book Journal

With great power comes great responsibility, but with great tragedy comes great irresponsibility. Just last night I heard certain laundry cleaners had been linked to the mental condition of the Virgina Tech murderer.

Comic books, like movies, music, video games and apparently, ummmm, laundry detergent, are all privy to same blame game in response to both tragedy and paranoia - something which runs hand-in-hand. In the 1950’s, Dr. Frederic Wertham lead a crusade against comics that ran all the way up to the Senate Subcomittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Of course, Wertham’s pursuit of comics as a demonic presence in pop culture wasn’t the only incursion against the graphic medium - but it was certainly the biggest.

Listed below are top ten comic book scapegoats of the last fifty years.

10. Batman and Robin: Out of the Closet - Seriously, do you even need a Ph.D. to make this claim? I’m pretty sure Saturday Night Live said it all with the Ambigously Gay Duo. But Wertham said it anyway in Seduction of the Innocent. Though Bruce Wayne specifically claims Dick Grayson as his ward in the Golden Age comics, Wertham asserts a less-than-platonic relationship on the pages of the famous comic, referring to Robin’s bare legs as sign of homosexuality.

End Result: Though Wertham failed to rub out either the Caped Crusader or the Boy Wonder, his writings had a large impact on the adventures of Batman nevertheless. The Dyamic Duo strayed away from solving crimes and mysteries - as noir comics often took the blunt of Wertham’s inquisition, and the resulting Comics Code Authority soon made solving any kind of felony practically impossible - the showing of corpses of any kind as well as concealed weapons and kidnapping was strictly forbidden.

9. Comic Shops: Porn Stashes - Nothing will scare a comic book shop owner faster than mention of Georgia vs. Gordon Lee. The defendant accidentally gave a copy of Alternative Comics #2 to a youngster. The comic displays Pablo Picasso painting the nude, which is clearly the type of thing hot-blooded males all across the country are clicking on porn sites. Offering a sincere apology, Lee was arrested for “Distribution of Material Containing Nudity and Sexual Content”. You might think this is, like Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, yet another case of past overreactions and misteps, but you’d be wrong, because this happened in 2005.

End Result: More like What Result? As of 2006, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund had spent $72,000 defending Lee, and not an end in sight, as the case goes to trial for the second time sometime this year!

8. Denny O’Neil: Murderer - Way before Superboy Prime knocked something loose in the grand scheme of things and caused yet another comic book resurrection, the second Robin Jason Todd was beaten and blown to bits by the Joker. Jason Todd’s fate, however, was not decided by editors, but instead, by fans. Through votes from a 900 phone poll, Jason Todd’s fate was sealed - the character was an odd fit, sandwhiched between fan favorites Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. Still, however the reaction was anything but awkward, but major new media outlets comparing the death to the days of Roman gladiators! Upon mentionin his trade to a local diner, then-Batman editor Denny O’Neil heard the patrons reply “This is the guy who killed Robin!” To be fair, much of the mainstream mistook Todd for Dick Grayson, the original Robin whom they might remember from the 1960’s Adam West Batman. Still, it wasn’t O’Neil or even writer Jim Starlin who slammed the nail in Todd’s (admittedly fragile) coffin, but the 5,343 comic fans who demanded his death!

End Results: Denny O’Neil wrote the book on comic book writing. Seriously. He also had a nice long career throughout the subsequent decade before retiring - though it won’t be the last we hear of him! Jason Todd, on the other hand, is alive and well, as of Infinite Crisis, and a major figure in the weekly comic Countdown.

7. Marv Wolfman: Illegally Named - One major tenant of the Comics Code Authority was the forbidden portrayal of vampires, ghouls, zombies, and you guessed it, werewolves. So where does this leave you if you just so happened to share a name in common with the hairy lycanthropes? In 1974, Marv Wolfman revealed at the 1974 New York Comic Art Convention he was unable to use his name in print in the beginning days as a comic book writer due to DC’s interpretation of the comic code - apparently the very mention of the Wolfman - in ANY contest -forbidden at this time.

End Result: Marv Wolfman went on to create several characters the Code would not have approved of, including Blade in the Tomb of Dracula. He also made the Teen Titans a force to be reckoned with at DC, providing a breakthrough hit which rivaled Marvel’s X-Men. Not bad for a guy who can’t work on a full moon!

6. Denny O’Neil: Sexist - It seemed like a good idea at the time. Wonder Woman basically tripped over her lasso on a monthly basis. For all his noted feminism, WW creator William Marston began an odd tradition of the statuesque Amazon constantly being entangled in her own magic lasso and rendered powerless. In the late 60’s, Denny O’Neil and Mike Sekowsky radically transformed the feminist icon in a practical update. Martial arts and self-defense training replaced the magic lasso, the red, white and blue bathing suit now a loose fitting white leisure suit. The changes, of course, were not too popular and caused an outcry. It took a feminist icon to restore the iconic character, and Gloria Steinem did so by placing Wonder Woman in her original costume on the cover of Ms. Magazine, along with an essay on the Amazon within the issue.

End Result: Denny O’Neil later conceded it probably wasn’t the best idea to strip away everything that made the character so classic in the first place. Poor Denny can’t even catch a break! But the precedence serves a glimpse of just how murky the line between campy and classy is in comic books.

5. The Gruesome Fate of EC Comics - With titles like “Tales from the Crypt” and “The Vault of Horror”, EC Comics were a bullseye for the Comics Code Authority. While the Code made it hard for superheroes, but almost impossible for horror. Ironicially, EC Editor William Gaines first suggested the formation of the Comic Magazine Assocation of America, but the organization was taken over by John Goldwater of “Archie”. As a result, the CMAA put out the Code, which all but outlawed horror content in comics. In one such case, the CMAA opposed Gaines for using an African-American protagonist. Gaines resisted and printed the story anyway - the last published by EC. Even more ironic, Frederic Wertham was a civil rights adovocate - whose writings were included as evidence in Brown vs. Board of Education. The CMAA - a company formed out of Wertham’s findings - opposed the depicting of Afican-American heroes in comics - a cause championed by Willaim Gaines, the editor of the very books Wertham opposed!

End Results: Though Gaines lost the battle for comics, he was victorious in the publication of a magazine which fell outside of Code restrictions - Mad! The Code gradually loosened to re-include monsters in the 70’s - resulting in a boom of books ranging from Tomb of Dracula to Swamp Thing. Today, the Code is all but obsolete, carried only by certain DC books and - not surprisingly - Archie.

4. Matt Baker: “The Marijuna of the Nursery” - Matt Baker was probably the first major African-American comic book artist. It is difficult to know if Frederic Wertham, himself an advocate of racial equality, knew of Baker’s race when he inadvertantly singled out the artist for his “illustration of an intolerable corruptor of American youth.” Matt Baker drew a scantily-clad superheroine known as the Phatom Lady, who drew the wrath of Wertham before too long. Ironically, though Wertham interpreted Bake’s cheese-cake drawings of superheroes of signs of impending immorality for the youth of the nation, he failed to note the content of the work, as many of Baker’s cover depict the virtous Sandra Knight aka Phantom Lady thwartimg criminals time and time over with the familiar phrase “Crime Never Pays!” outlined in a police officer’s badge on the cover.

End Result: Matt Baker suffered a stroke in 1957, though he continued to draw a variety of comics until 1963, when he died of a heart condition. Comic writer Karl Dabney wrote that, though “Baker’s career lasted a little more than 15 years, it was one of the most prolific careers ever enjoyed by an Afican American comic-book artist before the late 70’s.”

3. Spider-Man: Drug Addict - Though Marvel and DC stood out in the decades to come as the companies survived adaptation to the Comics Code Authority they were still similarly effected by the Code’s oversight. In 1971, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare approached Stan Lee about the possibility of doing an anti-drug story. The Code immediately refused - so Lee, with the approval editor Martin Goodman, removed the Code for Amazing Spider-Man #96-98. The story arc garnered approving coverage from the press, and the issues sold well, rendering any further objections from the Code moot.

End Results: In 1971, the Code was revived as a result of the Spider-Man story to include drugs (if depicted as a vicious habit) as well as the aforementioned monsters (save zombies. Poor guys.) The drug story plays a very big role in Spider-Man mythos - it is Harry Osborn’s overdose in LSD which drives the enraged Green Goblin to ultimately kill Gwen Stacy in Amazing Spider-Man #121 in 1973.

2. The Superman Complex - What you have to remember is that Superman was even more of a champion of the people than the Big Blue Boy Scout he later became. Superman was a major moral boost on the home front, seen tussling with Nazis overseas and corrupt labor practioners at home. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman was made to specifically confront the issues of the time. Frederic Wertham had a much harder time tackling Supes, who was already on his way to becoming a cultural icon (unlike all the others, Superman had already appeared newspapers, the radio and the TV). Instead, Wertham asserted Superman gave way to “phantasies of sadistic joy in seeing others punished over and over again while you yourself remain immune.” Again, as with Baker’s Phantom Lady, Wertham overlooked all good done by a superhero in lieu of possibly psychological harm. Wertham also claimed Superman was an unhealthy role model because children might also believe they could fly.

End Results: Despite an extensive review by Wertham, Superman was the least affected by the resulting backlash. His inherently science fiction genre created a sancturary of stories Superman could pursue, whereas others, like Batman, were forced out of crime comics to awkwardly pursue tales of alien invaders and magical enemies. It is likely Wertham’s accusations of Superman leading children to attempt to fly was the core root of Human Torch exclusion urban legend which circulated during the animated series, though it is possible Wertham heard of or treated first hand children who had tried to fly. An episode of Lois and Clark also made mention of Wertham’s Superman Complex.

1. Wonder Woman: Lesbian - Though Wertham would champion equal rights among the races, he wouldn’t do the same for women. In particular, Wertham opposed Wonder Woman as “the lesbian counterpart of Batman”. Though Wertham was able to prey upon the bondage issues Marston incorporated into the character at her inception, his claims that Wonder Woman was an inherent lesbian because of her strength and independence were certainly less logical. In much in the same way that Wertham expounded on Batman’s connection to boy sidekick Robin, the same connection between Wonder Woman and the helpers Holiday girls was made. Creator Marston’s public feminism made Wonder Woman an even bigger target - not only for Wertham, but also for Comics Code Authority as well. But Wonder Woman was not yet the icon of her male counterparts - though Marston received encouragement and the go-ahead from Max Gaines (the father of William) - the character would not make a lasting impact until later generations. Marston died in 1947, and his departure from Wonder Woman left the female figure in the hands of both new writers under the restrictions of the CCA.

End Results: Though Wonder Woman’s change was not as drastic as Batman and Robin, the character was notably less of a feminist and more interested in men throughout the subsequent era. Coupled with these changes, Denny O’Neil would try to return Wonder Woman to her feminist roots in the 1970’s- but we all saw how that turned out.