The Great Comic Book Scare

Summary

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HISTORY This Week: "The Great Comic Book Scare"

Episode Date: February 2, 2026
Host: Sally Helm
Guests/Commentators: David Hajdu (author, The Ten Cent Plague), Jeremy Dauber (author, American Comics)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the "Great Comic Book Scare" of the mid-20th century—a moral panic in the United States that targeted comic books as the cause for an alleged rise in juvenile delinquency. Through expert interviews, historical context, and memorable anecdotes from pivotal figures like Dr. Frederic Wertham and publisher Bill Gaines, the show examines why comics became the focus of mass anxiety, how the backlash shaped the industry, and what it can teach us about recurring cycles of public panic over new media.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Setting: Comic Books on Trial (00:39–05:00)

• Backdrop: February 1955, New York State—Comics are under scrutiny. Judge Charles F. Murphy, known as the "comics czar," is tasked with enforcing a new code meant to sanitize comic book content in response to mounting backlash against violence and immorality in comics.
• Demonstrations: Murphy shows legislators before-and-after panels to illustrate censorship in action—graphic violence and sexuality removed.
• Central Figure: Dr. Frederic Wertham, psychologist, dramatically presents a whip and knife (allegedly purchased from comic book ads) at a hearing, blaming crime comics for inspiring real-world violence, including the notorious "Brooklyn Thrill Killers" case.

  "I will go so far as to say that had it not been for the crime comic books, these particular crimes would not have been committed." —Frederic Wertham (03:44)

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2. Origins of the Moral Panic (05:00–11:00)

• Comic Strips Predecessors: Early comics like "The Yellow Kid" (1895) and "The Katzenjammer Kids" generated controversy from their inception—facing accusations of promoting illiteracy and bad behavior.

  "They were faulted for everything they were and everything they did." —David Hajdu (05:52)

• Comics as Immigrant Art: Comics were created by and for immigrants, sparking anxieties with roots in xenophobia.
• The Rise of Comic Books: By the 1930s and '40s, comic books evolve, gaining mass popularity with superheroes like Superman and Captain America.

  "Comics were a contagion. They were a plague on American culture that was infesting young people in particular." —David Hajdu (06:05)

• Wartime Approval—and Postwar Suspicion: Superheroes thrive during WWII (e.g., Captain America punches Hitler). After the war, concerns about youth behavior intensify.

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3. Comics and Juvenile Delinquency: The Postwar Anxiety (11:00–15:00)

• Societal Shift: Adults notice and fret about changing youth behavior: motorcycle gangs, leather jackets, rebellious attitudes, and experimenting with sex and drugs.
• Search for a Scapegoat: Comics are blamed, especially as their subject matter grows darker, reflecting the postwar cynicism and trauma lingering among veterans and the younger generation.

  "They started to fear that these comics could incite violent behavior in young people, that they were the cause of this new phenomenon, juvenile delinquency. And then all hell broke loose." —David Hajdu (11:38)

• Frederic Wertham Emerges: Popular psychologist Wertham becomes the figurehead for anti-comics sentiment, claiming every delinquent child he studied read comics.

  "We found that comic book reading was a distinct influencing factor in the case of every single delinquent or disturbed child we studied." —Frederic Wertham (14:00)

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4. Early Self-Regulation Failures and Escalating Paranoia (14:50–18:50)

• Self-Policing Attempt: Publishers create a toothless code to preempt government action—no gore, no crime-glamour, no racism or sexism—but enforcement fails.

  "Almost everybody had left this association... their business was doing gangbusters..." —Jeremy Dauber (15:48)

• Bill Gaines & EC Comics: Gaines takes over EC, pivots from "Educational Comics" to "Entertaining Comics," publishing noir, crime, sci-fi, and pioneering horror comics for young adults rather than kids.
• Public Backlash: Waves of legislation, book burnings, and consumer boycotts pressure stores to drop comics.

  "There were dozens of public burnings of comic books in schoolyards and other locations..." —David Hajdu (17:34) "Concerned shoppers would fill their supermarket carts with frozen food and refuse to pay unless the store stopped selling comics." —Jeremy Dauber (17:47)

• Wertham’s ‘Seduction of the Innocent’: His 1954 book becomes the anti-comics manifesto, mixing reasonable suggestions (against racism, for rating systems) with wild claims (comics directly cause crime and perversion, superhero/sidekick relationships promote homosexuality).

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5. The Senate Hearings & Public Humiliation (19:21–25:19)

• Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (1954): The federal government steps in to investigate, spurred by tens of thousands of concerned citizens.

  "Are we afraid of our own children?... Do we think our children so evil, so vicious, so simple-minded that it takes but a comic magazine story of murder to set them to murder, of robbery to set them to robbery?" —Bill Gaines (23:05)

• Key Testimony: Wertham, in a white lab jacket, leverages his "expert" status to denounce comics.

  "It is my opinion without any reservation that comic books are an important contributing factor in many cases of juvenile delinquency." —Frederic Wertham (22:31)

• Bill Gaines on the Stand: The EC publisher tries to defend the genre but falters under pressure and awkwardly justifies a grisly cover ("in good taste for a horror comic"), harming public perception.

  "A New York Times headline the next day reads, ‘comics publisher sees no harm in horror, discounts good taste.’" —Sally Helm (24:29)

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6. The Aftermath: Collapse & Code Enforcement (25:25–26:53)

• Stronger Comics Code Established: Under threat of legislation, the industry creates and enforces an even stricter code—virtually ending crime and horror comics.

  "The comics industry essentially collapsed after this. The most mature, sophisticated, adventurous kinds of comics all folded up. And comics for a while became juvenile, happy, cheerful, and just a shadow of what they had been." —David Hajdu (26:09)

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7. Cycles of Moral Panic & the Return of Underground Comics (26:53–28:48)

• The Pattern Repeats: The episode draws historical parallels—every generation faces a panic over new, challenging art forms (Plato, comics, video games).

  "All sorts of new things have some kind of moral anxiety that often comes about them. The kids are generally better off... We should be very leery about assigning any kind of monocausal explanation for a social phenomenon." —Jeremy Dauber (27:03)

• Alternative Comics Reemerge: Underground comics defy the code in the 1960s, leading its eventual abandonment (by 2011).
• Legacy of Bill Gaines: After quitting comics, Gaines founds Mad Magazine, which becomes a new countercultural touchstone, influencing subsequent generations.

  "Mad magazine, of course, became a central urtext in the development of juvenile delinquency, and countercultural feeling would go on to influence all the countercultural things." —Jeremy Dauber (28:38) "By 1960, almost 60% of American college students are reading Mad and being influenced by its countercultural ideas. The adults are not happy, and so the cycle keeps on going." —Sally Helm (28:48)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Frederic Wertham, villain or visionary?:

  "He was the Lex Luthor of the comic books debate." —Narrator/Commentator (13:27)

• On unfounded paranoia:

  "Look at a newspaper from 1948... there's a story almost every day about either the horror of comic books or the Red Scare or about flying saucers. And they're all of a piece of a post-war paranoia." —David Hajdu (14:33)

• Senate hearings spectacle:

  "An investigator makes his way solemnly through a series of posters... ‘The following picture shows the school teacher as she stabs her husband to death in order to inherit his money.’" —Senate Hearing Record (21:28)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Comics code enforcement and Wertham’s testimony | 01:39–04:51 | | Early comics and social anxiety | 05:00–07:31 | | Superheroes’ rise and onset of postwar panic | 07:31–11:38 | | Wertham’s crusade and postwar public fears | 12:15–14:33 | | Self-regulation, bill burnings, EC Comics | 15:14–18:50 | | Senate subcommittee: testimony and “public trial”| 19:29–25:19 | | Aftermath, code enforcement, industry collapse | 26:09–26:53 | | Moral panic cycles and the return of comics | 26:53–28:48 |

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Takeaways

• The Great Comic Book Scare was shaped by xenophobia, generational anxiety, postwar trauma, and a tendency to blame new media for society’s ills.
• The crackdown nearly destroyed creative, mature American comics for decades, demonstrating the impact of cultural panics.
• Such moral panics repeat with every new art form—then fade as the culture adapts.
• Meaningful reform (like labeling, ratings) can get lost in the extremes of panic.
• Mad Magazine rose from the ashes of the comics code, showing how suppressed creativity often finds a new form.

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Episode Tone

• Engaging, with a narrative drive and an eye toward big-picture historical patterns.
• Expert voices are authoritative but approachable; the host maintains a balanced, inquisitive tone throughout.

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Guests Cited:

• David Hajdu, The Ten Cent Plague (Columbia University)
• Jeremy Dauber, American Comics (Columbia University)

Host: Sally Helm

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Those interested in history, censorship, youth culture, or pop culture origins will find this episode a rich account of how comics came under fire, what was lost, and how the story echoes through today’s similar controversies.

Transcript

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[Narrator/Commentator]

The History Channel Original Podcast.

[Sally Helm]

History this week, February 4, 1955 I hi, I'm Sally Helm. The comics czar has been busy. Judge Charles F. Murphy is in charge of enforcing the new comics code, meant to make comic books less violent, more family friendly, to address a growing backlash against them. And Murphy's here today to report on that work to a New York state legislative committee. He's provided them with a series of before and after panels. In sum, it's clear that the comics czar or his minions have ordered that a character be plucked from the jaws of death before three men come across a flaming car, the speech bubble reads, we found all three dead afternoon, same car, no flames. And the speech bubble says the men had been knocked out when the car sideswiped into a tree. The comics code has been good to these particular reckless drivers. Another panel shows a dead woman in a tight black dress lying in a pool of blood. There's a crowd of onlookers, one of whom appears to be randomly naked. A note below the drawing reads, criticism put dress on girl in rear and change position on girl in foreground. Take out blood. In the next panel, no blood, and everyone is wearing clothes. The victim, unfortunately, is still dead. The committee praises Judge Murphy for his work. He has indeed cleaned up comics, at least a little. But later in the afternoon, another witness takes the stand. He's a noted psychologist named Frederick Wertham, who has been at the very center of the backlash against comics. And today, in this grand meeting room, he says that the industry has not nearly gone far enough. Maria Ayden describes the whole scene in her book, the Brooklyn Thrill Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book scare of the 1950s. At one dramatic moment of testimony, Wertham pulls out a whip and a knife, weapons he says he bought through ads printed in comic books. And he points to the recent case of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, a group of teenagers who went on a violent, murderous spree that Wertham says was partly inspired by what they saw in comic books. He says one of the killers was obsessed with horror comics and even imagined himself as a vampire. On the night of one of the murders, he made sure to wear the black leather pants of his, quote, vampire costume. Wertham testifies, I will go so far as to say that had it not been for the crime comic books, these particular crimes would not have been committed. The hearing comes to a close, and the committee is left to decide. What is the future of the comic.

[Emma Greed]

Book.

[Sally Helm]

Today, the war on comics. Why did one of the country's leading psychologists see them as a major threat to American children? And what can the great comic book scare teach us about moral panics? Before there were comic books, there was the humble comic strip. One of the earliest, released in 1895, was the yellow Kid, about an Irish immigrant child who wore a big yellow nightshirt with different messages written on it. Soon enough, there were the Katzenjammer Kids, a set of German twins, and foxy Grandpa, who's always getting the better of his mischievous grandsons. And basically, as long as there have been comics of any kind, there have been people who thought they were ruining society. They were faulted for corrupting morals, for encouraging illiteracy, for being bad for the eyes.

[Narrator/Commentator]

They were faulted for everything they were and everything they did.

[Sally Helm]

That's Professor David Haydew. He's a professor at Columbia University's School of Journalism and a cultural critic who wrote a book called the Ten Cent Plague.

[Narrator/Commentator]

The ten Cent Plague is a phrase I made up, but it grows out of the idea that comics were a contagion. They were A plague on American culture that was infesting young people in particular.

[Sally Helm]

Haydu says this partly has roots in racism and xenophobia.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Comic strips were made by immigrants, mostly for immigrants, mostly.

[Sally Helm]

And there was also just the fact that they were new. It's a classic story, a backlash to the hot new art form that eventually goes away when that art form becomes not so new. By about the 1930s, people have gotten used to the comics.

[William Gaines]

Yes, almost everybody reads the comics.

[Jeremy Dauber]

The moral panic about comic strips goes by the wayside. And comic strips are, you know, as red, white and blue, and American is apple pie.

[Sally Helm]

Jeremy Dauber is a professor at Columbia University and the author of a new book, american Comics. He says by the 30s, you really.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Had to follow what was going on in the comic strips. This was just part of the cultural currency.

[William Gaines]

On Sunday morning, at least this is America.

[Sally Helm]

But just when people are getting used to the comic strip, enter a new technological innovation, the comic book. It's a cheap form of entertainment that a kid can buy for a dime at a local store unsupervised.

[William Gaines]

Here is a medium of entertainment that appeals to all ages, tastes and backgrounds.

[Sally Helm]

Then in 1938, another big breakthrough, Action.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Comics 1 featured this new character of theirs, Superman.

[Sally Helm]

Costumed heroes explode onto the scene. Captain Marvel, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Good guys taking on evil. Which resonates especially as American troops go off to fight.

[Jeremy Dauber]

In World War II, you had characters like Captain America created by two Jews who really appeared to, you know, with a sock to Hitler's jaw.

[Sally Helm]

But there are some parents and teachers and moral crusaders who look at this new trend and say, you know, we're.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Not so crazy about the rise of this superheroing that seems to disregard a kind of law and order.

[Sally Helm]

Superman is not stopping mid flight to check in with the government or the police. And there's generally no due process for anyone in these stories.

[Jeremy Dauber]

They are establishing order through force, right? All these superheroes end up punching out people and all this.

[Sally Helm]

And to some of those moral crusaders.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Not many, but to a couple of them that even had certain kinds of overtones of fascism.

[Sally Helm]

During the war years, the allies are busy fighting real life fascists. But after the war, people have time to worry about other things again, and they start to worry about the kids.

[William Gaines]

Upon America's youth, the excitement and emotional tension of war is today exerting an influence which psychiatrists fear may be felt for years to come.

[Jeremy Dauber]

You know, the entire country has been on a war footing for years. All sorts of social arrangements have been thrown up in the air. There have been massive shifts in the labor system, tremendous strains and stresses on the family structure. And so there are a lot of questions about, are the kids gonna be all right after all this trauma?

[Narrator/Commentator]

And pretty soon, parents started noticing that young people were behaving differently.

[Sally Helm]

David Haydu, again, what are they doing?

[Narrator/Commentator]

Well, they're riding motorcycles, they're wearing leather jackets.

[William Gaines]

Youngsters are venturing into new and unwholesome worlds.

[Narrator/Commentator]

They're speaking in slang, they're acting tough.

[William Gaines]

Experiments with new sensations such as the smoke, smoking of marijuana are tempting more and more teenage youngsters along dangerous paths.

[Narrator/Commentator]

And looking for reasons for this. How could it be young people are acting so differently? They're acting out. What are the causes?

[William Gaines]

Juvenile delinquency now is recognized as a major problem by the top law enforcement officials of the land.

[Sally Helm]

The adults weren't totally wrong. Young people were acting differently.

[Narrator/Commentator]

One reason we know now is that that's what young people do. And two, these are young people who grew up in the wake of World War II and saw that the world is a complicated place and the world is a dark place and horrible things can happen and had a kind of cynicism about the world that their parents didn't have. So that was a gift to young people at the time, but one that older people saw as a failing, saw as a sin, saw as a crime.

[Sally Helm]

They begin looking around for causes, and.

[Narrator/Commentator]

They find one, comics must be the cause.

[Sally Helm]

In the post war years, comics have been covering increasingly adult subject matter, partly because people who loved comics as kids in the 30s are now growing up. So comic books are taking on new topics. Sex, romance, crime.

[Narrator/Commentator]

They grew darker and darker and more serious. And they spoke with particular urgency to GIs who continued to read comics during the war years and who came back from World War II with a dark feeling about the world.

[Sally Helm]

But younger people are reading those darker comics too, and the older people are getting worried.

[Narrator/Commentator]

They started to fear that these comics could incite violent behavior in young people, that they were the cause of this new phenomenon, juvenile delinquency. And then all hell broke loose.

[William Gaines]

The almost universal addiction of American youngsters to the comics is a cause of serious alarm to some parents, like this.

[Sally Helm]

Woman featured on a 1948 report about comics.

[Witness/Testifier]

Some comics are good, but most comics are killers.

[William Gaines]

They kill time, they kill imagination, and.

[Witness/Testifier]

They kill the urge to read books.

[Sally Helm]

One man in particular will become a key anti comics crusader, a psychologist named Frederick Wertham.

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[Sally Helm]

In many aspects of his life, Wertham was a real hero. He started one of the country's first free mental health facilities open to people of color in 1940s Harlem. His work is later cited in the Brown vs Board of Education decision to end school segregation. Both our experts told us he was.

[Jeremy Dauber]

A guy who had a lot of sympathetic features to him and the work that he did. In comics history, however, he's considered kind of the arch village.

[Narrator/Commentator]

He was the Lex Luthor of the comic books debate.

[Sally Helm]

In March 1948, Wertham is quoted at length in an article called Horror in the Nursery. He describes research he's conducted at his Harlem clinic for troubled young people.

[Narrator/Commentator]

In the course of his treatment, he asked the young people how they lived, what they did, how they spent their time, what they read.

[Sally Helm]

What they read were comic books.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Now, there's nothing extraordinary about that because at the time, virtually all young people read comics. To be a young person was to be a comics reader.

[Sally Helm]

Though Wertham was in many ways a respected scientist when it comes to comic books, he seems to have gotten carried away. He says, quote, we found that comic book reading was a distinct influencing factor in the case of every single delinquent or disturbed child we studied. Pretty soon Wertham and the anti comic movement start getting attention. Their message speaks to the anxieties of the era.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Look at a newspaper from 1948 and see what the headlines are on the front page. There's a story almost every day about either the horror of comic books or the Red Scare or about flying saucers. And they're kind of all of a piece of kind of a post war paranoia. Something has entered onto our shores that's changing our world. What is it?

[Sally Helm]

Comic book makers are looking around at this growing backlash and thinking, we have to do something. So a group of them forms a new association. They're hoping to head off government regulation by regulating themselves. Jeremy Dauber told us they come up with a code of standards.

[Jeremy Dauber]

They were not going to depict murders in a particularly gory light. Crime should not be presented in such a way to throw sympathy against law and justice. They outlawed scenes of sadistic torture, plus.

[Sally Helm]

A whole range of other things. No ridicule of racial or religious groups, no women in sexy clothing, no cursing. Minimize slang, don't glamorize divorce. But the code doesn't really have any teeth to it. And the new association doesn't actually have the resources to screen every single comic that's being published.

[Jeremy Dauber]

And so over the next five or six years, almost everybody had left this association. They didn't really care so much about it, and their business was doing gangbusters, particularly, and most notably a company called EC Comics led by a guy named Bill Gaines.

[Sally Helm]

Bill Gaines. Gaines is the anti wortham, the hero of the comic book story. He'd taken over EC Comics from his father. The name had been an abbreviation for educational comics, but Gaines changes it to Entertaining Comics. Here's David Haydu again.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Bill Gaines published comics with lots of noir content, stories of suspense and crime and intrigue and sci fi stories.

[Sally Helm]

EC Comics is also responsible for the invention of an entirely new genre, the horror comic.

[Narrator/Commentator]

It was hard for people to see them as appropriate for kids because they really weren't meant for kids. They were meant for young adults.

[Sally Helm]

But parents have it in their minds that comics are a thing for children. And as Gaines is publishing more innovative dark stories, parents and governments are taking notice. In April 1948, Detroit becomes the first city to legislate against comics. The city's police commissioner orders police to seize comics from newsstands to look for objectionable material. A few weeks later, the mayor of a town in Illinois bans the display or sale of any comic books. By 1950, there are over 100 acts of legislation around the country to regulate comics.

[William Gaines]

There is a rising current of protests from parents, welfare workers and educators.

[Narrator/Commentator]

There were dozens of public burnings of comic books in schoolyards and other locations around the country that like, echoed the burnings of books in Nazi Germany just a few years earlier.

[Sally Helm]

Jeremy Dauber told us about a movement of concerned shoppers who would fill their supermarket carts with free frozen food and refused to pay as long as the store was selling comic books and everyone.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Would have to hustle and put it back before the frozen food got ruined. Whether or not this story could be absolutely verified, it's a wonderful example of ground level communal pressures. And of course, if you were a store and there's a local boycott of your business because you sell comic books, you know, comics are not a very. They're a low Cost item. You're just gonna get rid of them. You're not gonna bother. Sort of dealing with the pressure.

[Sally Helm]

In 1954, Fredric Wertham publishes his ideas in a book called Seduction of the Innocent. It's more or less a manifesto of the anti comics movement. Now, to be fair, some of Wertham's ideas were reasonable, even noble things like limiting sexist and racist stories or enforcing a rating system to indicate how racy a comic was.

[Jeremy Dauber]

But some of the stuff that he says really, really largely seems very, very far fetched.

[Sally Helm]

He basically says that comic books cause youth crime. He also claims that Wonder Woman is an unwomanly lesbian and horrific model for young girls. He has a whole tirade against superheroes, relationships with their sidekicks. He thinks they're creepy and encourage homosexuality. The book gets rave reviews. And the anti comics movement continues to grow.

[Jeremy Dauber]

You have this increasing drumbeat of concern, of anxiety, of panic about comics.

[Sally Helm]

But it's coming at the same time that there's a growing drumbeat of concern about communism. These two trends are not directly linked, but the Red Scare is leading to increased censorship. There's panic about communists. And in Hollywood, for his book, Haydu talked to an artist who had worked on some EC comics who said it was a bad time to be weird because people would accuse you of being either a communist or a juvenile delinquent. In 1953, by some measures, juvenile delinquency is down. Still, the Senate chooses that year to form a subcommittee to look into it. In its first three months, the subcommittee's chairman receives 20,000 letters from concerned citizens. About 70% of them are about crime shows and comic books. And so, in early 1954, the subcommittee chairman announces. For two days this spring, they will devote the Senate investigation to comics.

[William Gaines]

Thousands of American parents are greatly concerned about the possible detrimental influence of certain.

[Witness/Testifier]

Types of crime and horror comic books upon their children.

[Sally Helm]

And just like that, the anti comics crusade takes the senate stand. It's April 1954. Members of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency gather in a courthouse in New York. Old timey microphones, coffee pots, and graphic pictures taken from the pages of comic books.

[Witness/Testifier]

The next comic is entitled Mysterious Adventure. This particular issue contains a total of six stories in which 11 people die violent deaths.

[Sally Helm]

An investigator makes his way solemnly through a series of posters.

[Witness/Testifier]

The following picture shows the school teacher as she stabs her husband to death in order to inherit his money.

[Sally Helm]

He shows the senators the mail order ads that appear at the back of these books.

[Witness/Testifier]

On one page, they were Killing two men on the opposite page. They were advertising dolls for little girls.

[Sally Helm]

After a lunch break, Frederick Wertham himself takes the stand, coming out in a.

[Narrator/Commentator]

White jacket that looked like a lab coat. With his severity and clipped accent, this.

[Witness/Testifier]

Research was a sober, painstaking, a laborious clinical study.

[Narrator/Commentator]

Just exuded authority and expertise.

[Sally Helm]

Wertham's testimony goes through the greatest hits of his anti comic arguments.

[Witness/Testifier]

Other people punished over and over again. Complete contempt for the police, evil. They want to be like Superman, not like the hard working, prosaic father and.

[Sally Helm]

Mother all supporting his thesis.

[Witness/Testifier]

It is my opinion without any reservation that comic books are an important contributing factor in many cases of juvenile delinquency.

[Sally Helm]

Wertham's a tough act to follow, but.

[William Gaines]

My name is William Gaines and I am the publisher of the Entertaining Comics Group.

[Sally Helm]

Bill Gaines had heard there wouldn't be any comic book creators testifying at this hearing, so he volunteers. Here's Jeremy Dawber.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Gaines has a very good opening statement. Are we afraid of our own children? He says, do we forget that they are citizens too and entitled to select what to read or to do?

[William Gaines]

Or do we think our children so evil, so vicious, so simple minded that it takes but a comic magazine story of murder to set them to murder, of robbery to set them to robbery.

[Jeremy Dauber]

So he's really taking on that point that just because you read something that doesn't make you a delinquent.

[Sally Helm]

But the strong start doesn't last.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Gaines had really been working most of the night on his opening speech and he had been taking Dexedrine speed, you know, amphetamines to kind of kick in at the time of his testimony. But the hearing was delayed, so the speed was wearing off and he was kind of crashing.

[Sally Helm]

During cross examination, Gaines is presented with the COVID of one of his own comic books. It's a drawing of a blonde woman's severed head. The examiner asks him, you think that's some good taste?

[William Gaines]

Yes, sir, I do.

[Jeremy Dauber]

He says, yes, this is in good taste for a horror comic, but this is in good taste.

[Sally Helm]

He says that bad taste for a horror comic would be to say, show the bleeding stump of the head, which he doesn't do. It's outside the frame of the image. But he's like a little blood here and there, a little severed head. What do you expect? That's kind of what this genre is. Whether or not Gaines has a point.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Sort of in the court of public opinion, he had really lost.

[Sally Helm]

A New York Times headline the next day reads, comics publisher sees no harm in horror discounts good taste. When the hearings end, the subcommittee releases a report. It tells comics publishers they have a responsibility to the nation's youth to ensure that their comics meet certain standards of morality and decency. It's not a regulation. It's an clean up your own house before we do it for you. That summer, comic publishers get organized. They develop a new comics code. It's more extensive than their first attempt and it'll be enforced by a paid director and staff. But two days before the new code is set to be announced, Gaines holds a press conference.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Bill Gaines, for his part, stopped working in the industry, right. He got out of the comics business entirely.

[Sally Helm]

EC will no longer publish crime and horror comics. The winter after the Senate hearing, New York politicians and lawyers and publishers gather in a conference room on that day in February to take stock of how things are going in the world of comics. That's when Wertham on the stand pulls out the weapons that he says he bought from comic book ads. And he talks darkly about the Brooklyn Thrill Killers. Afterwards, a report concludes that the new comics code just isn't enough. New York passes a law cracking down on comics and other states soon follow suit.

[Narrator/Commentator]

The comics industry essentially collapsed after this. The most mature, sophisticated, adventurous kinds of comics all folded up. And comics for a while became juvenile, happy, cheerful, and just a shadow of what they had been.

[Sally Helm]

David Haydu said the whole comics controversy is really a classic story.

[Narrator/Commentator]

And this goes back historically back to Plato. Every generation embraces art that engages with a set of ideas and themes and values that overtly challenge the. The values of the preceding generation. And that's what comics were doing at this time.

[Sally Helm]

You can see the same cycle play out today with something like video games. Jeremy Dauber says one thing the comic book controversy can teach us don't panic.

[Jeremy Dauber]

All sorts of new things have some kind of moral anxiety that often comes about them. The kids are generally better off. They're more alright than we think they that they're going to be by virtue of this material. We should be very leery about assigning any kind of monocausal explanation for a social phenomenon. People are more sophisticated readers and understanders of these things than we might give them credit for. And we should really give those works more credit for kind of the richness and variety that is in them than we often do in trying to reduce them to what we perceive to be some problematic moral component to them.

[Sally Helm]

Over the years, radical comics do make a comeback. In the 60s, there's a movement of underground comics publications that refuse to follow the code and are released without its seal of approval. As those comics gain an audience, more publishers ignore or reject the code, which will be updated and reduced in the coming decades. Finally, in 2011, the last of the comic publishers would finally abandon the code altogether. So it's a happy ending, but where does it leave our hero, Bill Gaines? When he quits the comic industry, Gaines decides to focus his efforts on another publication, one that isn't about horror or crime, but about humor. It's called Mad Magazine.

[Jeremy Dauber]

Mad magazine, of course, became a central urtext in the development of juvenile delinquency, and countercultural feeling would go on to influence all the countercultural things.

[Sally Helm]

By 1960, almost 60% of American college students are reading Mad and being influenced by its countercultural ideas. The adults are not happy, and so the cycle keeps on going. Thanks for listening to History this week. For more moments throughout history that are also worth watching, check your local TV listings to find out what's on the History Channel today. If you want to get in touch, please shoot us an email at our email address, historythisweekhistory.com or you can leave us a voicemail 212-351-0410. Special thanks today to our guests David Haydu, author of the Ten Cent Plague, and Jeremy Dawber, author of American Comics. This episode was produced by Julia Press. History this week is also Produced by Julie McGruder, Ben Dickstein and me, Sally Helm. Our editor and sound designer is Dan Rosado. Our researcher is Emma Fredericks. Our executive producers are McCamey Lynn, Jesse Katz and Ted Butler. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review History this week, wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next.