Instead of trying to stop Seduction of the Innocent from being published they should have used Wertham’s words against him. On page 245 Wertham says: “It’s true that many children read comic books and few become delinquent. But that proves nothing.” They could have made a claim that their comics were not causing delinquency and that Wertham is disproving his own argument.
I actually have a few Dell comics in my collection. I find the whole thing very weird with the code. I think it is partly why we never had a comic culture here like say in Europe or Japan, because the code made folks in the US look at it as only for kids, and really I guess they already felt that way, which is why they felt they needed the code to begin with.
Even if they didn't see comics as "for kids only" it STILL would have happened. You only need to look at the Hayse Code to see that. Unfortunately there's ALWAYS been a segment of our population made uneasy by freedom of thought or action and either beg for the hand of authority or try to be it. And it doesn't matter left or right, and they often work in concert to fulfill that demand
@@nicholashodges201 You have a point. On the flip side, I wonder if it was all good for us. As we've loosened up on standards it's hard not to notice that our society has become a cesspit of debauchery and idiocy. Perhaps those former standards were holding that back on some way.
If anything the current stupidity is just an extension of what I was talking about. The jackwads we're dealing with only want things like free expression and "adult liberty for *themselves* They want the rest of us to just shut up and die
@@bluehero-96 what? Who is blaming religious parents for the erosion of standards? And you can blame capitalisms to a point, but they are just marketing. There is a reason marketing has changed, our standards have changes. I think you have that part backwards. Marketing will move with standards, because they want to sell. Back in the day, they were smart enough to realize offending people is not how you sell things.
I remember Tipper Gore's attempt to regulate content in music back in the late 90s - early 00s. It just led to the privatization of media. People sifted from public radio to Sirius. Public TV to cable's premium packages. I would argue, media consumption being so outrageously high in cost is a direct result of censorship.
Keep up this series. I once did a semester long research paper on this topic so I love hearing someone else talk abut it. The lack of actual scientific studies tocounter Wertham's arguments has lays bothered me. My professor called me out on not including any🎉 rebuttal studies in my paper and I had to tell him there weren't any. Big fan of your work on the comics code era. ❤❤❤❤
Another great history lesson Sasha! Knowledge of disingenuous censorship in the past should make it easier to recognize today. The past is indeed prologue.
The primary success of Dell comics is based upon the talents of writer/artist Carl Barks with one small, minor detail: Carl Barks was an outside contractor working for Disney so he never read the Dell Comics Pledge. So he broke it, constantly. You know, for kids. Honestly, he did for his own entertainment as he worked in pretty much an editor-less vacuum who only saw his work after it was completed. Dell DID send Barks a list of Don't, eventually.... in the 50s, after he broke most of them in the 40s. That's how you ended up with Donald Duck fighting a zombie in "Voodoo Hoodoo" or enjoying the sight of women in bikinis on the Riveria in "Dangerous Disguise". Barks would get lightly rebuked after the fact with notes of "Don't draw humans" or "don't do horror". Meanwhile, Barks creates added material "Trick or Treat" which gets censored prior to printing; "STOP doing horror". "Don't show death."... also Dangerous Disguise... "don't show snakes." Even Barks thought that one was weird. He did it anyways because... Barks really. Barks was Dell's silent, unknown cashcow so Dell didn't want to upset him all that much, least they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. They were dead the day he retired and they knew it.
In the 90s, Don Rosa did a series called The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck where he took a bunch of Barks references to Scrooge's past and turned them into a hilarious story. Disney recently banned that series from publication because of Bombie the zombie. ☹️
I have no problem with Dell's POV. If I'm Disney animation, I don't want to be lumped in with Ralph Bakshi! I'd like to hear more about the history of Harvey comics. When I was a kid in the 70's, I read as many of their books (Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, etc.) as I did the superhero ones.
This video is one of those things I didn’t know I needed, until you Brilliantly gave it to me 👊🏾…I think Dell’s strategy while largely C.Y.A. was also brilliant…If the public is crying out for wholesomeness, give it to them & convince them that you are doing for them , & don’t need big brother to regulate you 🤷🏾♂️ …More videos like this Please …Keep Up The Outstanding Work Sasha 🖖🏾
Fascinating stuff. I forget if there has been a video on this but it's still crazy how an American and British publisher both came up with Dennis The Menace within a couple of months and it really was a total coincidence.
I have really enjoyed both of your full vids on the comics code. I was born well after the code was adopted, and I started reading comics after the hysteria had died down and things relaxed a bit. But comics were still published with the little code stamp, and i used to wonder who this mysterious "authority" was. Some other companies could probably have made similar claims as Dell, such as Archie Comics, but they chose to adopt the code. I kind of respect Dell for their stance, as it didn't make sense to lump their brand in with publishers of more adult-themed Horror and Crime Comics. Personally, I prefer the freedom of the marketplace. Parents should have been the ones deciding what their children should read, and publishers that produced comics too edgy for the mainstream would have been restricted by lower sales and distribution, while still being available to those who enjoyed that content. But it is what it is, and a lot of great comics were produced in this era. You did such a great job with this; it was very professional and well informed and had all the personality and humor of a Casually Comics video that I love. I felt like I was in a college class, taking my favorite subject with the coolest teacher on campus who knows how to make the material fun. Your obvious talents have my utmost respect.
I read plenty of horror comics during the Silver Age not only in comics proper but also in comics magazines published by Warren and Eerie. Of the comics, countless titles featured monsters and scary stories. No less an influencer than Boris Karloff added his name to a title that ran for several years initially tied to his TV show, Thriller.
Not only did he (or a drawing of Karloff) introduce the stories, sometimes he was even featured as a character in the story. Not sure if Karloff himself was aware of the comics or cared.
Thanks as always for doing the research and bringing the receipts! I've often heard about William Gaines' testimony before the Senate, but never Helen Mayer's. It's interesting to speculate about what might've happened if the publishers had all presented a united front and argued against censorship, but pretty much everyone was just covering their own butts and were happy to throw each other under the bus. More comics history videos would definitely be welcomed by me, it's an endlessly fascinating subject.
Walt Disney Comics And Stories issue 123 features a sadly untitled story where Donald sleep walks into a strangers bed, and when the guy wakes up and sees a duck he says "(Gulp!) A duck! Now where did I pick up with a duck? I get acquainted with the darnest people!" This seems to be imply that this guy mistakeningly thinks he had a drunken one night stand with Donald, which, this was awhile before The Dell Pledge but still funny in hindsight. Also for some reason Donald wears his blue sailor suit from the cartoons, and the newphews wear color coded shirts, which is weird because it had become the standard a few years before to draw Donald wearing a black sailor suit in every comic, and the boys were black shirts with only the hats colored.
I think parents should just take an active interest in their kids media consumption and quit trying to ruin it for the rest of us and other parents by expecting book sellers, libraries, and online services to parent their children.
wow Sasha,.....just WOW!!!!!! Your thoroughness to the medium is SUPERB, love your content, AND LOVE YOU dear Sister. Keep up the MAGNIFICENT work, you have my Supreme Thanks and RESPECT. PEACE AWESOME Lady, and God bless you and your Family with Favor continually.
I love your channel and the expanded on the Comics Code! I only really know the TV and movie side of things and how the Hays code affected that. It's always good to know multiple aspects of History
An instant Casually Comics Classic! Well done! How about a future video on Dell's super-hero monsters that you touched upon. I think they just might be up your alley.
Frank Stone, Al U. Card & Wiley Wolf! All drawn (terribly) by Tony Tallarico. He also drew Dell's Lobo, the 1st comic named for an African American character.
Another fantastic video & a fascinating window into the past. I think we could delve a bit deeper & compare/contrast that "panic" with others in recent history & current events. Thank you so much for your amazing work
As a little kid in the 50’s I was a huge fan of Dell Comics, buying pretty much only Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and other “funny animal” books. I still collect vintage Dell Comics and Carl Barks reprint volumes. Dell Comics were a big part of my childhood.
One thing I know for sure about Dell is they released a series called Four Color Comics. It ran for 1,354 issues. I don't know of any other comic title that has run for so many issues, but some are only now getting close. If you do another video regarding the code, I'd like to see one on Archie Comics. Formerly MLJ Comics named after Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Leonard Goldwater, the name changed in 1946 to Archie Comics after a comic featuring a freckled redhead became popular. Not only did they go all in on the comics code, but they were one of the last holdouts to keep the code if not THE last. Haven't read one in awhile, but sort of hope Archie and Valerie as an item is still a thing.
Another Great Breakdown Sasha, I have some of these Dells in my collection, Disney-Warner Bros etc etc and my issues have the Dell Code. Great, back when big corporations were believed.
What would be also interesting to look at is Casper and Hot Stuff, one of whom is presumably the spirit a dead boy and the other a confirmed devil. Maybe it was just that common sense prevailed and the Comics Code Authority realized that while those characters violated the letter of the code, they were harmless enough to be in keeping with the spirit of the code.
I remember reading that they claimed that Casper was always just a ghost and not actually a dead person. I'm not sure if it was like that when the character was originally created, though. (And I think that live action movie shows how he died, so they obviously didn't stick with that story.)
Why does everyone leave Wendy out of this discussion? Is it the "Good" in the title? She's a practicing witch for crying out loud, the type that Colonial era Protestants (and a fair number of modern Born Agains) get all bent about and start collecting firewood for. Probably still has a third nipple for her familiar to suckle blood out of, "good" or not. :)
I remember Hot Stuff had an uncle who collected cuss words & came back from Mars with the worst thing a Martian can say: "Gazonka Lukas!!" (it's been over 50 years since I read that, so I could be a bit off)
Excellent documentary video. One thing that Dell got right was acknowledging that kids exist. That’s one things that modern comics have seemed to have forgotten. It’s great having more mature titles that adults can enjoy, but let’s not be so selfish in wanting to entertain ourselves that we forget about our own kids. I grew up loving Batman. I still love Batman. But try finding a Batman or Bat-family comic that a child can actually read or a Bat-related TV show or movie that a kid can actually watch. They virtually don’t exist. And eventually that means the end of Batman because today’s kids aren’t growing up with it. He’s being hogged by their parents who actually get pissed off if a comic or comic book movie seems too kid-friendly. A generation of parents who think only of themselves and not their own kids - which adds up to a dwindling market. Dell wasn’t wrong.
There are plenty of kid friendly comics being published by the big 2 and other companies. DC still publishes Scooby Doo, young adult, and all ages comics. I see them in my comic store all the time. Dark horse,boom studios and IDW publish a lot of licensed comics for children.
@@mttylerdurden9 - But no Batman? Why are superheroes suddenly relegated to adults-only? Are we that immature that superheroes are only for us now? Well, I guess they’ll die with us. Shame.
When I think of American comics I think Disney (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and their universe) and superhero comics (that I hardly read myself because there's so much among other things but find fascinating to hear about. I have read other American comics, The Prince and the Dressmaker, My Aunt is a Monster, and the Avatar/Korea comics, but with their Asian ambience and/or authors do I think of that. I also read many American WebToons and Web comics, but my head places them as "internet" instead 😅 But with what you said people feared about comics... So... Miyamoto say before complaining about video games it was rock and roll, then... It means before rock and roll it was action movies and before action movies it was comics and before comics it was books I guess? How dare the youth have fun?!
This is one of my favourite videos of yours. I have literally never heard any other comic on youtube talk about the larger landscape around the code. I am doing an animation module at university rn and am soo bringing this up with my lecturer next class to talk about censorship and the idea of cartoons/animation being for children! Such a good video
Growing up there were comics for everyone. Kiddy comics like Saturday mornings for the little ones, hero and romance comics for teens. I think Archies is the last of the romamace comics still around. Then there's the adult college age comics like Terror, Creep Show, Horror, and gore. This followed the local talent running Friday and Saturday night movies like Elvira Ghoulardi, The Ghoul, Hoolahan and Big Chuck... Nudes were a niche for Heavy Metal and Playboy...mostly Europe and Japan.
There's still a good mix for different age ranges and interests, but you won't find them all from just the Big Two. And you certainly won't find them in regular stores the way you once did. It's pretty much all specialty comic shops now, and even then many of the books will never get ordered unless you subscribe to them. No stumbling across something new at the newsstand (as if those exist any more) or the drug store or your supermarket.
I have a lot of fond memories of reprints of Dell comics. Loved those early Donald Duck and Scrooge comics. Was Harvey Comics part of this same 'good comics' move to preempt/reject the code?
Harvey published some of the most violent horror comics in the '50's, but when the Code was implemented they did a 180 & put out the most innocuous kiddy comics out there: Casper, Richie Rich, Little Audrey, Sad Sack, Hot Stuff (the Little Devil), all with the CCA Seal on the covers.
I pretty much learned to read because of Disney comics, so I guess I owe Dell comics thanks. In these parts they still reprint classic Carl Barks Duck comics now and again. I actually have a reprint of Anders And & Co. #1 (Donald Duck & Co.) from 1949 and on the back of the magazine they have a written statement ensuring parents that "this is enriching for the child and teaches them good values with fun adventures" (This is the same magazine that features Donald chasing his nephews with a stick to whoop their bums for teasing him btw, times have changed xD)
Disney recently told Don Rosa that two of his stories were now banned from being reprinted, one of which is part of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, due to the presence of Bombi the Zombie.
I had access to a variety of comics as a child including Dell - mostly Donald Duck and other Disney comics. My favorites were Harvey Comics which I can't imagine having the comic code stamp on them since they were books like Baby Huey and Casper, but after watching this video I'm not so sure now.
I had some Dell Comics years ago, and I never noticed that they didn’t have the CCA seal. Slightly mind blowing.😮 Thanks for this vid and aloha from Hawaii. 🤙
Great topic. Very educational video. I didn't know that Dell avoided the code. Do we know if they suffered in sales because they didn't adopt the code?
It probably wasn't quite that high, although that was the target audience. Remember that the late 40s and 50s were an era where gangster and noir crime films and shows (both radio and TV) were enormously popular and not just for kids. The 50s also saw the rise of the low-budget monster movie and a continuation of films about the classic literary monsters Universal had popularized. Kids were watching this stuff and reading the comics - but I doubt they amounted to more than 10-15% of the overall sales. Just enough to drive the hysteria and pearl-clutching.
*sigh* The never ending crusade to avoid saying "absent parenting leads to criminality among youth." Past few decades, it's been video games. There was time when I was young when it was table-top role playing games. Before that it was Saturday morning cartoons, and before that comic books. One of the biggest "gee this is kind of pointless" about the code is it wasn't installed until after the Korean War ended. WW2 ended in 1945, but the occupying forces in Germany and Japan remained. But when Korea started, the occupations finally started ending. So by 1954, the dads were finally being sent home. Also a not insignificant portion of the of the people who bought comics: GIs, stopped buying them as often. The need to buy cheap disposable entertainment at the PX dwindled. So yeah, Dell distanced themselves from the Comics Code. I'm not sure the CCA ever did any goo anyway.
I think I'd use the term "incompetent" rather than "absent" there. Plenty of people actually manage to make their children worse people by being there for them. Abusive behavior, addictions, bigotry, insane religious beliefs, those are all easily passed on, and as harmful or worse as absentee parenting is.
MAD Magazine - Bill Gaines' baby - was insanely subversive in the late fifties early sixties. Mister Gaines did what no one else could and he used writers and artists of horror and crime comics, which were basically outlawed.
For me, childhood Gold Key is all about their weird fantasy and scifi stuff. Magnus Robot Fighter, Space Family Robinson, Samson, Star Trek, Turok - oh, and Ripleye's Believe It Or Not, which was way stranger than it sounds. Almost lightweight EC fare, that one was.
Like Sasha said, the main reason for the outrage was the protection of children from questionable material... yet no serious study was given on who was actually buying that material. Soooo while self-indulgent, I think Dell made great points.
Lots of respect for you for taking the time to research the history behind the pledge to parents. I had a vague awareness of this pledge, but I never knew that it was created as a way of opting out of the Comics Code. I also did not consider the possibility that some comic publishers did not want their brand to be associated with the crime and horror comics being persecuted at the time. At some level, I feel that Dr. Wertham did paint all comics with a broad brush, and Dell while being disloyal to their competitors, did make valid arguments. I would be fascinated to see what observations and results other social scientists at that time would have discovered. I love how you take the time to understand the perspectives and pressures of the stakeholders during this period of tumult for the comics industry.
Why would anyone expect a company to be "loyal to their competitors" in the first place? That's not how business works. Besides, Dell wasn't ever competing with EC. They were just angry that their use of the comic book medium for very adult stories had attracted so much negative attention on comic publishing as a whole, of which they were by far the largest single company.
Fascinating glimpse in part of the reason why EC was never able to gather industry wide support against the establishment of the comics code. It's easy to see the situation as regulators vs the industry but each company often has different demographics and moral values. I can imagine companies trying to figure how to screw over their competitors or exploit the situation. I am vaguely reminded of the ESRP rating, where nintendo threw sega under the bus by using a similar argument that Dell did.
Love this history, I didn't know this about Dell though I remember seeing their pledge on older comics! Interesting times, and something I wouldn't have know about, thank you!
Does that one get into the boom in the "erotic novel" publishing industry as well? It doesn't get talked about as much as EC and the Code, but there was a titanic boom in demand for smutty books in the late 40s and 50s and the printers raced to get in on the market. Whole lot of big names in the pulp scifi/fantasy/horror/Westerns field wrote tons of erotica on the side - the money was too good to resist - and of course there were the "spicy" pulps themselves that doubled as early porn. All that helped drive the general hysteria about "corrupted youth" that led to the Code.
Dell actually had a "horror" line, "Ghost Stories" (1962-73). Weak compared to E.C.; but the few I read as a kid were "problematic". Dell also had a weak Mad Magazine knock off, "Yak Yak", which ran a couple of issues in 1962. Perhaps Dell was looking to expand to a "more mature" audience.
Growing up in the 80s and having people around me taking in the things said by wertham as absolute truth I can say that not having his books could have been a blessing. for some reason his reasoning became "common knowledge" where I grew up with, so it it did some damage. I remember people constantly judging me for reading comic books (older and people around my age as well) and pointing out the same idiotic reasoning (that I would be corrupted if I kept reading them). just the stigma alone (and fyi I am talking about a country outside of the US) is a big deal. the after effects of his "findings" and the introduction of the code brought forth a stigma in the comic community in my opinion. lets not forget that the psychologists back then had rage against (almost) everything they deemed "problematic" or unsystemic, like the damage made by them to the queer community in the past... Yes one might argue different times and all, but my point is: words and their subsequent enforced actions can hurt and manipulate people, making them kinda dangerous.
I hope there's a part 3 In my opinion, manga , sunday funnies , and super heroes comic are all different types of comics. It's anything, where the words of page share equal importance with pictures across planned out panels.
Why couldn’t they just put a label on the comic that said 15+ up or 18+ up so that parents could gauge whether to buy the comic for the kid or the vendor could sell it to a a kid that visited
Something that's interesting is that the story of the Comics Code was that the other publishers piled on EC/Gaines because they were being blown away in sales and could only take them in such an underhanded way. If Meyers's testimony is to be believed (And granted "most horror" could largely refer to most of the EC knocks off, not the Cryptkeeper himself*) its 250,000 per month sales would be comparable to say, "New Warriors" peak in the early 90's. Now, that's not nothing, NW was a hit and briefly treated as an important title, but it wasn't exactly shaking the industry up. I often wonder if the admitted excellence of EC, Gaine's very illustrious personality (And still had MAD), and that Tales of From the Crypt would be revived as an iconic TV show, mythologized EC as a martyr of censorship a little. (By contrast, Lev Gleason is rarely brought up.) *That said, if those knock offs weren't doing EC numbers, it would be strange for publishers to want to bring down EC, as that strategy would be lowering a bottom to feed from.
Funny how timely this video is for me, I was just looking into some of their old stuff. They had a Monkees comic for a bit, which automatically makes them the best comic company.
I would’ve loved to have seen all the publishers come together and defeat the Comics Code. I wonder how different the landscape would look nowadays if they had.
There would almost certainly have been direct governmental censorship put in place and comics would likely have been even more straightjacketed than they were, and far more infantilized. Imagine nothing but kiddie books and the tamest of educational fare with plenty of de facto propaganda baked into them. And since governments never like to ease control once they have it, that censorship wouldn't have quietly faded away the way the Code did, and would likely still be affecting things today.
That bit about not wanting to be tied to crime comics, even by a code limiting them, seemed to be genuine. They had already proven that kid (and parent) friendly licensed properties were lucrative. Keeping the market they had established seems to be their motivation. I do wonder how much influence those license holders had on Dell's decision to forego the code as well. Was that pledge just point of sale, or also for the entities whose IP they published to continue doing business with them?
I think there were a lot of comics that were a lot of a lot. I am very intrigued by the fact that Dell was selling millions and now doesn't exist anymore.
All the jabs at other comic companies in the statements to congress really reminded me of Nintendo of America vice president testifying in the hearings about video game censorship. He similarly stated that all the games they publish are family friendly. He even said Night Trap (controversial game at the time) would never appear on a Nintendo console. Buuut, Night Trap now has a Switch port.
Censorship in general is interesting - and vexed. Outside comics.....but directly linked as it is ALWAYS connected. When they cut the scene in the 30s Frankenstein when you actually see the the monster throw the little girl in the water.....they made it seem far worse. There is the old chestnut of the story in "the decameron" where the monk tells the girl about "putting the devil back in hell" - with some of the story actually switched to Latin/cut/edited to include a magic spell...etc - result? Lots of kids over many centuries/decades obsessed by 😅 it!! And getting hold of the "unexpurgatted" edition.
You should do a video about Gold Key comics. In particular Solar, Magnus, Turok and such. I think it would be interesting to hear how they basically made the Valiant Comics. And how they moved to Dark Horse and Dynamite. I bet the Valiant people are pissed they lost half their characters.
1950's 'Dell Comics are good comics'. Late 80's 'Dc Comics aren't just for kids!'. How times change. Imagine how Dr. Wertham would get yelled at nowadays for making a Hitler comparison. Interested to hear war comics had had their day by the 50's. Here in Britain they were a staple part of the weekly comics field well into the seventies, and only died out when we got into the 80's. Growing up in the 70's, with the war still just over thirty years before, it was still fresh in the national psyche. Not so much now. I read a piece on the bbc website once that said Action Man [our version of Gi Joe] was killed not by political correctness, but by Star Wars. Because when that came out everyone wanted science fiction toys and nobody wanted war toys anymore. So maybe it hit war comics as well.
War comics didn't totally die out here either. I was reading Sgt Rock and G.I. Combat well into the 80s. But they all went away after Crisis On Infinite Earths even though they played a part in it.
In the US it was mainly the direct market that killed comics variety. Comic book shops catered to superhero comic collectors and eventually everything that wasn't superheroes or sci-fi withered away saleswise. Without broad newsstand distribution the comics companies didn't need to diversify their publishing content.
Dell's arguments remind me of Nintendo's when video game classifications came around: objecting not because they were publishing objectionable content, but because they WEREN'T and they resented being tarred with the same brush. Right down to them eventually publishing exactly the sort of things they were originally saying they never would!
Reading The Comics Code
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Nice to see a follow up on this subject. Dell was something special back in the day.
Awesome video.
Love these history lessons on things like the Comics Code. More of such topics would be welcomed by myself and, i suspect, others.
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Instead of trying to stop Seduction of the Innocent from being published they should have used Wertham’s words against him. On page 245 Wertham says: “It’s true that many children read comic books and few become delinquent. But that proves nothing.” They could have made a claim that their comics were not causing delinquency and that Wertham is disproving his own argument.
I actually have a few Dell comics in my collection. I find the whole thing very weird with the code. I think it is partly why we never had a comic culture here like say in Europe or Japan, because the code made folks in the US look at it as only for kids, and really I guess they already felt that way, which is why they felt they needed the code to begin with.
Even if they didn't see comics as "for kids only" it STILL would have happened. You only need to look at the Hayse Code to see that.
Unfortunately there's ALWAYS been a segment of our population made uneasy by freedom of thought or action and either beg for the hand of authority or try to be it.
And it doesn't matter left or right, and they often work in concert to fulfill that demand
@@nicholashodges201 You have a point. On the flip side, I wonder if it was all good for us. As we've loosened up on standards it's hard not to notice that our society has become a cesspit of debauchery and idiocy. Perhaps those former standards were holding that back on some way.
If anything the current stupidity is just an extension of what I was talking about. The jackwads we're dealing with only want things like free expression and "adult liberty for *themselves*
They want the rest of us to just shut up and die
@@nicodemous52
No. The growing lack of standards is mostly the result of unfettered capitalism, not overly religious helicopter parents.
@@bluehero-96 what? Who is blaming religious parents for the erosion of standards? And you can blame capitalisms to a point, but they are just marketing. There is a reason marketing has changed, our standards have changes. I think you have that part backwards. Marketing will move with standards, because they want to sell. Back in the day, they were smart enough to realize offending people is not how you sell things.
I remember Tipper Gore's attempt to regulate content in music back in the late 90s - early 00s. It just led to the privatization of media. People sifted from public radio to Sirius. Public TV to cable's premium packages.
I would argue, media consumption being so outrageously high in cost is a direct result of censorship.
"Never let a good crisis go to waste." - vulture capitalists.
She wasn't getting any so she heard sex everywhere (twisted sister)
“The code is more what you’d call ‘guide lines’ than actual rules”
- Some guy at Dell
-Captain Barbossa
I'm loving this dive into the 40s/50s/60s and the comics code. I'd love to see you cover even more material.
Keep up this series. I once did a semester long research paper on this topic so I love hearing someone else talk abut it. The lack of actual scientific studies tocounter Wertham's arguments has lays bothered me. My professor called me out on not including any🎉 rebuttal studies in my paper and I had to tell him there weren't any.
Big fan of your work on the comics code era. ❤❤❤❤
Another great history lesson Sasha! Knowledge of disingenuous censorship in the past should make it easier to recognize today. The past is indeed prologue.
The primary success of Dell comics is based upon the talents of writer/artist Carl Barks with one small, minor detail:
Carl Barks was an outside contractor working for Disney so he never read the Dell Comics Pledge. So he broke it, constantly. You know, for kids. Honestly, he did for his own entertainment as he worked in pretty much an editor-less vacuum who only saw his work after it was completed. Dell DID send Barks a list of Don't, eventually.... in the 50s, after he broke most of them in the 40s.
That's how you ended up with Donald Duck fighting a zombie in "Voodoo Hoodoo" or enjoying the sight of women in bikinis on the Riveria in "Dangerous Disguise".
Barks would get lightly rebuked after the fact with notes of "Don't draw humans" or "don't do horror". Meanwhile, Barks creates added material "Trick or Treat" which gets censored prior to printing; "STOP doing horror". "Don't show death."... also Dangerous Disguise... "don't show snakes." Even Barks thought that one was weird. He did it anyways because... Barks really.
Barks was Dell's silent, unknown cashcow so Dell didn't want to upset him all that much, least they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. They were dead the day he retired and they knew it.
In the 90s, Don Rosa did a series called The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck where he took a bunch of Barks references to Scrooge's past and turned them into a hilarious story. Disney recently banned that series from publication because of Bombie the zombie. ☹️
Carl Barks was told to write for a pre-teen audience. He did, but he never underestimated the intelligence of the average pre-teen.:-)
I have no problem with Dell's POV. If I'm Disney animation, I don't want to be lumped in with Ralph Bakshi! I'd like to hear more about the history of Harvey comics. When I was a kid in the 70's, I read as many of their books (Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, etc.) as I did the superhero ones.
This video is one of those things I didn’t know I needed, until you Brilliantly gave it to me 👊🏾…I think Dell’s strategy while largely C.Y.A. was also brilliant…If the public is crying out for wholesomeness, give it to them & convince them that you are doing for them , & don’t need big brother to regulate you 🤷🏾♂️ …More videos like this Please …Keep Up The Outstanding Work Sasha 🖖🏾
Sasha tends to do it all brilliantly...if not with sass and salt.
No Arguments, this is my Favorite Channel 🖖🏾
I'd love to see a retrospective on EC Comics side in all of this. It sounds fascinating!
Fascinating stuff. I forget if there has been a video on this but it's still crazy how an American and British publisher both came up with Dennis The Menace within a couple of months and it really was a total coincidence.
More comics history please! Really enjoying this series on the Code
I have really enjoyed both of your full vids on the comics code. I was born well after the code was adopted, and I started reading comics after the hysteria had died down and things relaxed a bit. But comics were still published with the little code stamp, and i used to wonder who this mysterious "authority" was. Some other companies could probably have made similar claims as Dell, such as Archie Comics, but they chose to adopt the code. I kind of respect Dell for their stance, as it didn't make sense to lump their brand in with publishers of more adult-themed Horror and Crime Comics. Personally, I prefer the freedom of the marketplace. Parents should have been the ones deciding what their children should read, and publishers that produced comics too edgy for the mainstream would have been restricted by lower sales and distribution, while still being available to those who enjoyed that content. But it is what it is, and a lot of great comics were produced in this era. You did such a great job with this; it was very professional and well informed and had all the personality and humor of a Casually Comics video that I love. I felt like I was in a college class, taking my favorite subject with the coolest teacher on campus who knows how to make the material fun. Your obvious talents have my utmost respect.
I read plenty of horror comics during the Silver Age not only in comics proper but also in comics magazines published by Warren and Eerie. Of the comics, countless titles featured monsters and scary stories. No less an influencer than Boris Karloff added his name to a title that ran for several years initially tied to his TV show, Thriller.
Not only did he (or a drawing of Karloff) introduce the stories, sometimes he was even featured as a character in the story. Not sure if Karloff himself was aware of the comics or cared.
I’ve been reading comics for quite awhile and this kind of knowledge needs to definitely see the light of day! More please!🎯👍⚡️❤️
Thanks as always for doing the research and bringing the receipts! I've often heard about William Gaines' testimony before the Senate, but never Helen Mayer's. It's interesting to speculate about what might've happened if the publishers had all presented a united front and argued against censorship, but pretty much everyone was just covering their own butts and were happy to throw each other under the bus. More comics history videos would definitely be welcomed by me, it's an endlessly fascinating subject.
Walt Disney Comics And Stories issue 123 features a sadly untitled story where Donald sleep walks into a strangers bed, and when the guy wakes up and sees a duck he says "(Gulp!) A duck! Now where did I pick up with a duck? I get acquainted with the darnest people!" This seems to be imply that this guy mistakeningly thinks he had a drunken one night stand with Donald, which, this was awhile before The Dell Pledge but still funny in hindsight.
Also for some reason Donald wears his blue sailor suit from the cartoons, and the newphews wear color coded shirts, which is weird because it had become the standard a few years before to draw Donald wearing a black sailor suit in every comic, and the boys were black shirts with only the hats colored.
I think parents should just take an active interest in their kids media consumption and quit trying to ruin it for the rest of us and other parents by expecting book sellers, libraries, and online services to parent their children.
Amen. Every media panic comes back to this.
That would take time and a modicum of concern that most parents I know seem to lack.
This will never change.
wow Sasha,.....just WOW!!!!!! Your thoroughness to the medium is SUPERB, love your content, AND LOVE YOU dear Sister. Keep up the MAGNIFICENT work, you have my Supreme Thanks and RESPECT. PEACE AWESOME Lady, and God bless you and your Family with Favor continually.
I love your channel and the expanded on the Comics Code! I only really know the TV and movie side of things and how the Hays code affected that.
It's always good to know multiple aspects of History
Casual history lessons are the best history lessons!
An instant Casually Comics Classic! Well done! How about a future video on Dell's super-hero monsters that you touched upon. I think they just might be up your alley.
Frank Stone, Al U. Card & Wiley Wolf! All drawn (terribly) by Tony Tallarico. He also drew Dell's Lobo, the 1st comic named for an African American character.
Another fantastic video & a fascinating window into the past. I think we could delve a bit deeper & compare/contrast that "panic" with others in recent history & current events.
Thank you so much for your amazing work
As a little kid in the 50’s I was a huge fan of Dell Comics, buying pretty much only Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and other “funny animal” books. I still collect vintage Dell Comics and Carl Barks reprint volumes. Dell Comics were a big part of my childhood.
I don't understand how you manage to churn out the videos so frequently but I appreciate it.
Really liking these comics-code-era videos, looking forward to the next one.
Sasha, this is awesome, well-researched, beautifully edited, perfectly delivered. More comic’s history, plz❤
Very much enjoying your Comics Code historical series!
"Gaming! I mean comics!"
I want you to know I very loudly barked out a laugh
Take a shot every time Sasha says “good comics”
One thing I know for sure about Dell is they released a series called Four Color Comics. It ran for 1,354 issues. I don't know of any other comic title that has run for so many issues, but some are only now getting close. If you do another video regarding the code, I'd like to see one on Archie Comics. Formerly MLJ Comics named after Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Leonard Goldwater, the name changed in 1946 to Archie Comics after a comic featuring a freckled redhead became popular. Not only did they go all in on the comics code, but they were one of the last holdouts to keep the code if not THE last. Haven't read one in awhile, but sort of hope Archie and Valerie as an item is still a thing.
Another Great Breakdown Sasha, I have some of these Dells in my collection, Disney-Warner Bros etc etc and my issues have the Dell Code. Great, back when big corporations were believed.
What would be also interesting to look at is Casper and Hot Stuff, one of whom is presumably the spirit a dead boy and the other a confirmed devil. Maybe it was just that common sense prevailed and the Comics Code Authority realized that while those characters violated the letter of the code, they were harmless enough to be in keeping with the spirit of the code.
Yeah, the Harvey books were obviously not horror comics. Satanic panic didn't arrive until the Reagan years.
I remember reading that they claimed that Casper was always just a ghost and not actually a dead person. I'm not sure if it was like that when the character was originally created, though. (And I think that live action movie shows how he died, so they obviously didn't stick with that story.)
I've heard that claim too. But that begs the question: What is a ghost if not the soul of a dead person?
Why does everyone leave Wendy out of this discussion? Is it the "Good" in the title? She's a practicing witch for crying out loud, the type that Colonial era Protestants (and a fair number of modern Born Agains) get all bent about and start collecting firewood for. Probably still has a third nipple for her familiar to suckle blood out of, "good" or not. :)
I remember Hot Stuff had an uncle who collected cuss words & came back from Mars with the worst thing a Martian can say: "Gazonka Lukas!!" (it's been over 50 years since I read that, so I could be a bit off)
Teen age dope fiends was my favorite comic when I was young. You brought back many happy memories.
Excellent documentary video. One thing that Dell got right was acknowledging that kids exist. That’s one things that modern comics have seemed to have forgotten. It’s great having more mature titles that adults can enjoy, but let’s not be so selfish in wanting to entertain ourselves that we forget about our own kids. I grew up loving Batman. I still love Batman. But try finding a Batman or Bat-family comic that a child can actually read or a Bat-related TV show or movie that a kid can actually watch. They virtually don’t exist. And eventually that means the end of Batman because today’s kids aren’t growing up with it. He’s being hogged by their parents who actually get pissed off if a comic or comic book movie seems too kid-friendly. A generation of parents who think only of themselves and not their own kids - which adds up to a dwindling market. Dell wasn’t wrong.
There are plenty of kid friendly comics being published by the big 2 and other companies. DC still publishes Scooby Doo, young adult, and all ages comics. I see them in my comic store all the time. Dark horse,boom studios and IDW publish a lot of licensed comics for children.
@@mttylerdurden9 - But no Batman? Why are superheroes suddenly relegated to adults-only? Are we that immature that superheroes are only for us now? Well, I guess they’ll die with us. Shame.
When I think of American comics I think Disney (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and their universe) and superhero comics (that I hardly read myself because there's so much among other things but find fascinating to hear about. I have read other American comics, The Prince and the Dressmaker, My Aunt is a Monster, and the Avatar/Korea comics, but with their Asian ambience and/or authors do I think of that. I also read many American WebToons and Web comics, but my head places them as "internet" instead 😅
But with what you said people feared about comics... So... Miyamoto say before complaining about video games it was rock and roll, then... It means before rock and roll it was action movies and before action movies it was comics and before comics it was books I guess?
How dare the youth have fun?!
This is one of my favourite videos of yours. I have literally never heard any other comic on youtube talk about the larger landscape around the code. I am doing an animation module at university rn and am soo bringing this up with my lecturer next class to talk about censorship and the idea of cartoons/animation being for children!
Such a good video
Growing up there were comics for everyone.
Kiddy comics like Saturday mornings for the little ones, hero and romance comics for teens.
I think Archies is the last of the romamace comics still around.
Then there's the adult college age comics like Terror, Creep Show, Horror, and gore.
This followed the local talent running Friday and Saturday night movies like Elvira Ghoulardi, The Ghoul, Hoolahan and Big Chuck...
Nudes were a niche for Heavy Metal and Playboy...mostly Europe and Japan.
There's still a good mix for different age ranges and interests, but you won't find them all from just the Big Two. And you certainly won't find them in regular stores the way you once did. It's pretty much all specialty comic shops now, and even then many of the books will never get ordered unless you subscribe to them. No stumbling across something new at the newsstand (as if those exist any more) or the drug store or your supermarket.
@@richmcgee434 Yeah I got all my comics at the Drug store...they had a malt shop attached. Closed in 1979...
I have a lot of fond memories of reprints of Dell comics. Loved those early Donald Duck and Scrooge comics. Was Harvey Comics part of this same 'good comics' move to preempt/reject the code?
Harvey published some of the most violent horror comics in the '50's, but when the Code was implemented they did a 180 & put out the most innocuous kiddy comics out there: Casper, Richie Rich, Little Audrey, Sad Sack, Hot Stuff (the Little Devil), all with the CCA Seal on the covers.
@@johnpjones182 I didn't know that! Amazing - this is part of what u love about this channel.
I pretty much learned to read because of Disney comics, so I guess I owe Dell comics thanks. In these parts they still reprint classic Carl Barks Duck comics now and again. I actually have a reprint of Anders And & Co. #1 (Donald Duck & Co.) from 1949 and on the back of the magazine they have a written statement ensuring parents that "this is enriching for the child and teaches them good values with fun adventures" (This is the same magazine that features Donald chasing his nephews with a stick to whoop their bums for teasing him btw, times have changed xD)
Disney recently told Don Rosa that two of his stories were now banned from being reprinted, one of which is part of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, due to the presence of Bombi the Zombie.
OMG one of the finest analysis of this period of comic publishing I have ever read. God bless and thank you so much for getting this out there!!
The comics code is really interesting history to learn about. I hope you make this into a series.
I had access to a variety of comics as a child including Dell - mostly Donald Duck and other Disney comics. My favorites were Harvey Comics which I can't imagine having the comic code stamp on them since they were books like Baby Huey and Casper, but after watching this video I'm not so sure now.
I had some Dell Comics years ago, and I never noticed that they didn’t have the CCA seal. Slightly mind blowing.😮 Thanks for this vid and aloha from Hawaii. 🤙
Great topic. Very educational video. I didn't know that Dell avoided the code. Do we know if they suffered in sales because they didn't adopt the code?
I wish we got that counter study done. I'm 99% sure, a majority of those horror/crime books are adults 😆
It probably wasn't quite that high, although that was the target audience. Remember that the late 40s and 50s were an era where gangster and noir crime films and shows (both radio and TV) were enormously popular and not just for kids. The 50s also saw the rise of the low-budget monster movie and a continuation of films about the classic literary monsters Universal had popularized. Kids were watching this stuff and reading the comics - but I doubt they amounted to more than 10-15% of the overall sales. Just enough to drive the hysteria and pearl-clutching.
*sigh* The never ending crusade to avoid saying "absent parenting leads to criminality among youth." Past few decades, it's been video games. There was time when I was young when it was table-top role playing games. Before that it was Saturday morning cartoons, and before that comic books.
One of the biggest "gee this is kind of pointless" about the code is it wasn't installed until after the Korean War ended. WW2 ended in 1945, but the occupying forces in Germany and Japan remained. But when Korea started, the occupations finally started ending. So by 1954, the dads were finally being sent home. Also a not insignificant portion of the of the people who bought comics: GIs, stopped buying them as often. The need to buy cheap disposable entertainment at the PX dwindled.
So yeah, Dell distanced themselves from the Comics Code. I'm not sure the CCA ever did any goo anyway.
I think I'd use the term "incompetent" rather than "absent" there. Plenty of people actually manage to make their children worse people by being there for them. Abusive behavior, addictions, bigotry, insane religious beliefs, those are all easily passed on, and as harmful or worse as absentee parenting is.
You just made me fall in love with Dell all the more.
MAD Magazine - Bill Gaines' baby - was insanely subversive in the late fifties early sixties. Mister Gaines did what no one else could and he used writers and artists of horror and crime comics, which were basically outlawed.
Excellent Presentation. Thanks a lot Sasha
I read a lot of Dell Comics, I didn't remember it much. We also read a lot of Gold Key, usually a presentation of classical novels.
For me, childhood Gold Key is all about their weird fantasy and scifi stuff. Magnus Robot Fighter, Space Family Robinson, Samson, Star Trek, Turok - oh, and Ripleye's Believe It Or Not, which was way stranger than it sounds. Almost lightweight EC fare, that one was.
You're thinking of Classics Illustrated, which was published by Gilberton.
I’m glad you did your research this was definitely a eye opener
You are an amazing comic academic.
Like Sasha said, the main reason for the outrage was the protection of children from questionable material... yet no serious study was given on who was actually buying that material. Soooo while self-indulgent, I think Dell made great points.
Fantastic coverage as usual. Casually Comics are good comics (videos)!
Why do I watch every episode of yours? Videos like this one. 10/10
Lots of respect for you for taking the time to research the history behind the pledge to parents. I had a vague awareness of this pledge, but I never knew that it was created as a way of opting out of the Comics Code. I also did not consider the possibility that some comic publishers did not want their brand to be associated with the crime and horror comics being persecuted at the time. At some level, I feel that Dr. Wertham did paint all comics with a broad brush, and Dell while being disloyal to their competitors, did make valid arguments. I would be fascinated to see what observations and results other social scientists at that time would have discovered. I love how you take the time to understand the perspectives and pressures of the stakeholders during this period of tumult for the comics industry.
Why would anyone expect a company to be "loyal to their competitors" in the first place? That's not how business works. Besides, Dell wasn't ever competing with EC. They were just angry that their use of the comic book medium for very adult stories had attracted so much negative attention on comic publishing as a whole, of which they were by far the largest single company.
Fascinating glimpse in part of the reason why EC was never able to gather industry wide support against the establishment of the comics code.
It's easy to see the situation as regulators vs the industry but each company often has different demographics and moral values. I can imagine companies trying to figure how to screw over their competitors or exploit the situation.
I am vaguely reminded of the ESRP rating, where nintendo threw sega under the bus by using a similar argument that Dell did.
Love this history, I didn't know this about Dell though I remember seeing their pledge on older comics! Interesting times, and something I wouldn't have know about, thank you!
Hi Sasha, have you read David Hajdu’s “The Ten Cent Plague”? It’s really good and more depth on the scare than I’ve seen before with great research.
Does that one get into the boom in the "erotic novel" publishing industry as well? It doesn't get talked about as much as EC and the Code, but there was a titanic boom in demand for smutty books in the late 40s and 50s and the printers raced to get in on the market. Whole lot of big names in the pulp scifi/fantasy/horror/Westerns field wrote tons of erotica on the side - the money was too good to resist - and of course there were the "spicy" pulps themselves that doubled as early porn. All that helped drive the general hysteria about "corrupted youth" that led to the Code.
I think my grandparents had some dell comics. I’d read them on occasion
Very informative and interesting, thanks for the video!
Dell actually had a "horror" line, "Ghost Stories" (1962-73). Weak compared to E.C.; but the few I read as a kid were "problematic".
Dell also had a weak Mad Magazine knock off, "Yak Yak", which ran a couple of issues in 1962. Perhaps Dell was looking to expand to a "more mature" audience.
i would love more comic book history lessons
Yes, I love hearing about the history of this era and I'm really looing forward to seeing more videos about it.
12:08 So that's why some of my Carl Barks Donald Duck reprints have blank panels
I love these deep dives! Fantastic work. I love all the weird silver age nonsense you indulge in.
I was a big fan of Dell comics in the early '60s. 😉
I wish there were comics for kids today.
Growing up in the 80s and having people around me taking in the things said by wertham as absolute truth I can say that not having his books could have been a blessing.
for some reason his reasoning became "common knowledge" where I grew up with, so it it did some damage. I remember people constantly judging me for reading comic books (older and people around my age as well) and pointing out the same idiotic reasoning (that I would be corrupted if I kept reading them).
just the stigma alone (and fyi I am talking about a country outside of the US) is a big deal. the after effects of his "findings" and the introduction of the code brought forth a stigma in the comic community in my opinion. lets not forget that the psychologists back then had rage against (almost) everything they deemed "problematic" or unsystemic, like the damage made by them to the queer community in the past...
Yes one might argue different times and all, but my point is: words and their subsequent enforced actions can hurt and manipulate people, making them kinda dangerous.
i love this series!!! i only know a surface level of the CODE
I hope there's a part 3
In my opinion, manga , sunday funnies , and super heroes comic are all different types of comics. It's anything, where the words of page share equal importance with pictures across planned out panels.
Why couldn’t they just put a label on the comic that said 15+ up or 18+ up so that parents could gauge whether to buy the comic for the kid or the vendor could sell it to a a kid that visited
Something that's interesting is that the story of the Comics Code was that the other publishers piled on EC/Gaines because they were being blown away in sales and could only take them in such an underhanded way. If Meyers's testimony is to be believed (And granted "most horror" could largely refer to most of the EC knocks off, not the Cryptkeeper himself*) its 250,000 per month sales would be comparable to say, "New Warriors" peak in the early 90's. Now, that's not nothing, NW was a hit and briefly treated as an important title, but it wasn't exactly shaking the industry up. I often wonder if the admitted excellence of EC, Gaine's very illustrious personality (And still had MAD), and that Tales of From the Crypt would be revived as an iconic TV show, mythologized EC as a martyr of censorship a little. (By contrast, Lev Gleason is rarely brought up.)
*That said, if those knock offs weren't doing EC numbers, it would be strange for publishers to want to bring down EC, as that strategy would be lowering a bottom to feed from.
When I was a teenager I bought comics from yard sales. Old comicd from before the code. They were cool horror and crime comics.
Funny how timely this video is for me, I was just looking into some of their old stuff. They had a Monkees comic for a bit, which automatically makes them the best comic company.
I always thought those companies just published in a different format, i.e. magazine or newspaper format.
I would’ve loved to have seen all the publishers come together and defeat the Comics Code. I wonder how different the landscape would look nowadays if they had.
There would almost certainly have been direct governmental censorship put in place and comics would likely have been even more straightjacketed than they were, and far more infantilized. Imagine nothing but kiddie books and the tamest of educational fare with plenty of de facto propaganda baked into them. And since governments never like to ease control once they have it, that censorship wouldn't have quietly faded away the way the Code did, and would likely still be affecting things today.
@@richmcgee434 I would argue that the Code is still affecting things today.
So my only question is how did Harvey get away with Casper and especially Hot Stuff
And what about Wendy?
That bit about not wanting to be tied to crime comics, even by a code limiting them, seemed to be genuine. They had already proven that kid (and parent) friendly licensed properties were lucrative. Keeping the market they had established seems to be their motivation.
I do wonder how much influence those license holders had on Dell's decision to forego the code as well. Was that pledge just point of sale, or also for the entities whose IP they published to continue doing business with them?
I think there were a lot of comics that were a lot of a lot. I am very intrigued by the fact that Dell was selling millions and now doesn't exist anymore.
WOW, I remember when I started collecting - Dell Four Color's were the thing to collect.
Between Dell publishing and Dell comics you could say it was a pledge on both their houses
They still publish crossword puzzle magazines. Not sure if they still put out paperbacks.
All the jabs at other comic companies in the statements to congress really reminded me of Nintendo of America vice president testifying in the hearings about video game censorship. He similarly stated that all the games they publish are family friendly. He even said Night Trap (controversial game at the time) would never appear on a Nintendo console.
Buuut, Night Trap now has a Switch port.
awesome content, very illuminating
I told Jim Lee, that he should study Donald Duck comics in how to tell story. True story
Im still perplexed how Dell's Four Color Comics #165 got published! Little Lulu smokes her doll's hair and trips out throughput the story 😅
I'd like to see you do some of the Dell (Western, Gold Key) Silver Age comics like Turok Son of Stone and Mighty Samson.
Censorship in general is interesting - and vexed. Outside comics.....but directly linked as it is ALWAYS connected.
When they cut the scene in the 30s Frankenstein when you actually see the the monster throw the little girl in the water.....they made it seem far worse.
There is the old chestnut of the story in "the decameron" where the monk tells the girl about "putting the devil back in hell" - with some of the story actually switched to Latin/cut/edited to include a magic spell...etc - result? Lots of kids over many centuries/decades obsessed by 😅 it!! And getting hold of the "unexpurgatted" edition.
Wertham MIGHT have had a vendetta against comics. He apparently didn't get along with William Moulton Marston.
You should do a video about Gold Key comics. In particular Solar, Magnus, Turok and such. I think it would be interesting to hear how they basically made the Valiant Comics. And how they moved to Dark Horse and Dynamite. I bet the Valiant people are pissed they lost half their characters.
1950's 'Dell Comics are good comics'. Late 80's 'Dc Comics aren't just for kids!'. How times change.
Imagine how Dr. Wertham would get yelled at nowadays for making a Hitler comparison.
Interested to hear war comics had had their day by the 50's. Here in Britain they were a staple part of the weekly comics field well into the seventies, and only died out when we got into the 80's. Growing up in the 70's, with the war still just over thirty years before, it was still fresh in the national psyche. Not so much now. I read a piece on the bbc website once that said Action Man [our version of Gi Joe] was killed not by political correctness, but by Star Wars. Because when that came out everyone wanted science fiction toys and nobody wanted war toys anymore. So maybe it hit war comics as well.
War comics didn't totally die out here either. I was reading Sgt Rock and G.I. Combat well into the 80s. But they all went away after Crisis On Infinite Earths even though they played a part in it.
In the US it was mainly the direct market that killed comics variety. Comic book shops catered to superhero comic collectors and eventually everything that wasn't superheroes or sci-fi withered away saleswise. Without broad newsstand distribution the comics companies didn't need to diversify their publishing content.
Dell's arguments remind me of Nintendo's when video game classifications came around: objecting not because they were publishing objectionable content, but because they WEREN'T and they resented being tarred with the same brush.
Right down to them eventually publishing exactly the sort of things they were originally saying they never would!
This was really interesting. Thanks for sharing!
I love learning about the history!
Thanks for another interesting video.
Reminds me of nintendo of America back in the day. This blows my mind.
The Recommending Ones & Zeros apologizes for the devastating and overwhelming distress that must have happened while waiting on our blessing.