When I was a preteen, I had a subscription to the old Johnson Smith Things You Never Knew Existed catalogs. Roughly three to four times a year, my mailbox at the end of the street would give birth to this 6'“x 10” paper precursor to a drunken Amazon binge. While I wasn’t a frequent customer, I would spend hours and hours pouring over those pages, wondering just how informative the myriad books on ninjutsu, or krav maga would be to my own fledgling practice a preteen ninja and aspiring international man of mystery. When I got into magic, aged 15, some of the strongest pieces in my pathetic little repetoire came from TYNKE. One of the other items I would always glance at—though I never had the right dough to interest ratio to pull the trigger—were the collections of so called “banned” EC Comics.
If you’re not familiar, EC Comics was a mid twentieth century publishing company headed by a fellow named William Maxwell “Bill” Gaines. Gaines’s father, Max Gaines, was the publisher of the All American Comics line from the extant DC Comics. Max Gaines specialized in bringing bible stories to pictorial life. In Bill’s case, his apple fell far, far from the tree. Where Max Gaines had been interested in the well trodden narrative paths of biblical standbys like Noah’s Ark, Bill was interested in bringing more…Mature content to his audiences. Books like Weird Science, The Vault of Horror, and the infinitely more well known Tales From The Crypt soared to immense popularity in the early 1950s. Ostensibly created for more adult audiences, these comics, which featured stunning, often graphically violent artwork from legends like Al Feldstein, were also immensely popular with youngsters.
While the overall cultural impact of Bill Gaines’s comics might have been biblical in proportion, it pushed a moral—or amoral—envelope that the world, still in recovery from its recent bout of McCarthy-itis, would soundly push back.
Seduction Of The Innocent
In 1954, Dr. Frederic Wertham published a book called Seduction of The Innocent. In its pages, Wertham unfurled an indictment of American comics, and in particular, Gaines’s baby, EC Comics, as a primary contributor to the rise in juvenile delinquency and teen violence. Whether true or not, the impact of this book and the ensuing congressional hearings were the death knell for Gaines’s successful line of horror and adult science fiction comics. Art and morals have ever been at odds with one another, but in this instance, “morality” appeared to have won the day, and further pissed upon the corpse of its opponent with the creation of the Comics Code Authority (CCA).
If you’re old enough to remember seeing this stamp on the cover of newly released comics—probably on one of those classic spinner racks, maybe even at your local drug store—congratulations, you are officially old. While this seal of “quality” was, ostensibly, a voluntary measure, it largely spelled the difference between hitting the open road with a valid drivers license, or taking your chances on the highways and byways without. Rather like a restaurant that might eschew a health inspection. Less this stamp, buyer beware, in other words. Perhaps the biggest impact of this voluntary imposition was that, unless a publisher submitted their content for review of the CCA, they could not get their books distributed through any of the wholesalers responsible for getting their comics on the spinner racks. Many publishers simply went out of business as a result. The CCA had a lot to say about what could or could not be included in a comic book, and major publishers like Marvel and DC were largely cowed to its imposed authority over “decency” and “morality” as it related to the adventures of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, or hundreds of other superhero and pop culture mainstays. The only major publishing enterprises exempt from applying for this seal were Dell and Gold Key Comics, but their exemption was due solely to their existence under the greater moral umbrella of Walt Disney Studios, whose content they were licensed to publish.
So, the United States Senate had spoken, and Bill Gaines was out. Or, at least his groundbreaking, forward thinking line of horror and scifi comics sure seemed to be. One might think this would have spelled the end for Bill, but as it happens, he still had one hell of a Hail Mary left in store.
Going MAD
Though its first publication predated Wertham’s book and the resultant US Senate hearings by two years, Bill Gaines’s other brain child, MAD Magazine, became the sole funnel into which Gaines could continue to oil the cultural engine. There were no other irons in Gaines’s fire, and so the creative, artistic efforts of his stable of artists and writers spun away from horror into that great toppler of depotic regimes of the world for centuries over, satire.
As a senior in high school, I wrote a ten page paper about the history of MAD Magazine, and its progenitors. Many of my childhood artistic heroes, like Antonio Prohías (Spy vs. Spy) and Sergio Aragones (who I finally got to meet at San Diego Comic Fest back in early 2019) were featured in its pages for decades. Even where death, retirement or the impending bankruptcy of the publisher have conspired to remove them, their characters and ideas cannot and have never been suppressed. Moreover, and as I was beginning to witness in those old Johnson Smith catalogs, a sort of EC Comics renaissance was beginning to take shape.
CCA DOA
In 2001, Marvel Comics struck what would turn out to be a mortal wound to the Comics Code Authority when they withdrew from this “self regulating authority.” A decade later in 2011, the only two remaining major publishers in the CCA fold, DC and Archie Comics, would follow suit. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) still exists to protect the rights of comic book publishers and creators and provide legal advice and representation, particularly in instances where First Amendment rights violations are in the offing, but the CCA is effectively dead as old dad’s hatband.
With the downfall of the CCA, comics have been given a much wider berth for pushing envelopes, moral or amoral alike, to a much broader and diverse audience than ever before. Historically, we look back at books like Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, or Art Spiegelman’s incomparable Maus as sort of watershed moments where comics graduated from the level of juvenile entertainment meant almost exclusively for children, and elevated to the level of adult entertainment and art.
(Following some two decades on the heels of my ten page senior project paper on the history of MAD Magazine, I wrote my masters thesis on the viability of comics as instances of both high art and fine literature. Rather than poorly summarize those arguments here, I will instead leave access to that document below.—JS)
With this change in distinction, the door was open for some of these now older titles, demonized or dismissed in the context of their own time, to make a reappearance, as I had noted in those old catalogs. Numerous reprints of the entire archive of EC Comics have been published in various forms over the past three decades. In my early teens, I was an avid collector of the reprinted single issues, which I found but sparingly, but always snatched up whenever and wherever I could find them.
Then, in 2020, Dark Horse Comics began its own line of reprinted EC Horror and scifi comics. Done as larger, curated collections, these oversized paperbacks anthologized many of the standout stories from titles like Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear and the more ubiquitous Tales From The Crypt and Weird Science. Still very much in print and reasonably priced, these collections serve to introduce new generations of readers.
The Point, At Last
If not for EC Comics, I don’t know that I would have a career of any kind in comics. While I’ve spoken at length about wanting to pencil for Wolverine comics in my misspent youth, my style as a draftsman and artist doesn’t lend itself particularly well to the glossy and often visually explosive superhero world of capes and cowls. Rightly so. As much as I love a good superhero yarn, my deepest, most resonant influences have always been books or shows like Tales From The Crypt, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, or, my favorite—and probably the best—television show of all time, The Twilight Zone. I gravitate toward writers like Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and their successors; people like Stephen King, and Neil Gaiman.
I’ve told the story of my triple prom date to the Platform Comics 10K Comic Competition from back in 2020, which you can read about here. But, in 2021, I tried and failed to bring two dates to prom that year. The failed date, I will speak of another time. It is a comic I am very interested in finishing, but insomuch as time and tide wait for no man, alas, that day is not today. Still, one for two isn’t too bad, as I hope you’ll agree.
I am forever grateful to have friends and collaborators like J.L. Collins and Leland Bjerg, creators who share my deep and abiding love of all things comics, high fantasy and horror. In 2021, I had the honor and pleasure of collaborating with both of these gentlemen on a Twilight Zone/EC Comics inspired short called Estate Sale. While the short did not place, or finalize in the Platform 10k, and so far as I know has not been published elsewhere as yet, it is a story I am immensely proud to have had a hand in. If you’re an EC Comics fan, then you already know, but for those of you reading who perhaps have not yet been exposed to this brief but resounding golden age of comics art, I hope this little tale will inspire you to perhaps take a deeper look.
And, if you care to read my thesis, you can find your copy of that here:
Note
In my fairly brief summation of these very well documented historical events, I may have glossed over or oversimplified certain actions or events. The fall of EC Comics and the rise of the Comics Code Authority is well worth looking into for anyone interested in the history of pop culture, or the subset that comic books represent under the broader hang of entertainment and literature, in general. My apologies if I have misreported or mishandled anything here. For those interested in my thesis document, it is available below, south of the paywall.
J. Schiek is a comic book artist, writer and art professor currently living and working out of North Idaho. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies including Morsels from Joe Donahue, The Death of The Horror Anthology from A Wave Blue World and the popular webcomics site, HyperEpics.com. His first solo book as writer and artist, lettered by Leland Bjerg, Hush Ronin, will be available from Band of Bards in January, 2023.