Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga

Detail from the cover of Crime SuspenStories #22 (April 10, 1954).

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? We think our children are so evil and 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.

— Testimony of EC publisher William Gaines during the Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Juvenile Delinquency (April 21, 1954)

In July of 1942, writer Charles Biro and artist Bob Wood created Crime Does Not Pay, a true-crime anthology comic with storylines ripped from the police blotter. The title's sales eventually skyrocketed in the late 1940's, driven by GIs returning from WWII who found themselves uninterested in the now-childish-seeming superhero comics crowding the racks. Other publishers took notice, with the most zealous imitator being Entertaining Comics (EC), which soon became known for its gruesome crime and horror titles, including Tales from the Crypt and Crime SuspenStories.

These popular comics genres came to the attention of Frederic Wertham, a child psychiatrist specializing in juvenile delinquency. His book, Seduction of the Innocent, which drew a direct link between children's consumption of such media and a rise in "antisocial behavior," was a bestseller, sparking a moral panic among parents, educators and librarians. Wertham's ideas influenced the high-profile Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Juvenile Delinquency in April of 1954, where he also testified as an expert witness. The hearings were best known for the exchanges between Senator Estes Kefauver of New York and EC publisher William Gaines, who was forced to repeatedly defend some the lurid imagery in his comics:

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?

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.

— Transcript of Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Juvenile Delinquency (April 21st, 1954)

The public outcry led to the establishment of the Comics Code Authority, a trade group dedicated to regulating comics' content. While the CCA had no legal authority to enforce its strictures, vendors generally wouldn't carry comics that did not bear the Authority's stamp of approval. The CCA held sway over the mainstream comics publishing landscape until 1971, when Marvel published The Amazing Spider-Man #96-98 without the Authority's approval. The three-issue arc, which dealt with the dangers of drug abuse, went on to be a bestseller, leading other publishers to reassess their relationship with the CCA.