Comics and Literature #7: Erotica for the Juvenile Mind
More on The Comics Journal, and how much they loved comparing people to pornographers
The anti-comics crusade of Fredric Wertham occurred within living memory for the original Journal writers and most of the creators they described. For many readers and fans, Wertham became a villainous figure responsible for the fall of the more diverse and rewarding comics world of the 1950s (Beaty, Fredric Wertham 197). Critics such as Paul Lopes and Joe Sutcliff Sanders have argued that the history of comics must be viewed through the lens of the stigma created by the association of comics with juvenility and perversion (Lopes 1, Sanders 161). The stigma was certainly influential on the writers of The Comics Journal, who attempted to dispel the image of comics as juvenile trash. But the idea of comics as deviant, dangerous and illiterate had more influence on the Journal than a simple target of opposition, shaping the way the Journal’s writers discussed comics even as they attempted to scrub away the medium's filthy connotations. In many instances, they would turn to the language of deviance and normalcy that Wertham had introduced.
Despite the complexity of Wertham’s psychiatric practices, the more mythological image of Wertham as censor dominated accounts of comics history in the world of fandom (Beaty, Fredric Wertham). The Comics Journal's presentation of the past was no exception. Early issues of TCJ featured multiple columns praising and mourning EC Comics, spurred by Russ Cochran's efforts at reprinting the company's output, with a representative example being R. Fiore's lament for the company in issue #60 entitled “And Then Some Idiots Turned Out the Lights!” Fiore credits E. C. publisher William Gaines with creating an environment of artistic freedom, allowing adult-oriented work and flouting censorship. This description more closely resembles the values of TCJ than those of EC, whose comics were still genre pieces aimed at a young audience. The imposition of the Comics Code, a result of the crusade Wertham supported, is figured in Fiore's account as comics' original sin, responsible for the relegation of comics to formulaic writing for children. Dwight Decker even cited the censorship of comics, along with the rise of television, as the cause of declining literacy, imagining the 1930s as a lost paradise where “people read more” and specifically “every kid read comics” ("Doc's Bookshelf" 76). Perhaps because of the legacy of the Comics Code, TCJ was a fierce and vituperative opponent of censorship in any form, covering any instance of censorship from the big companies or obscenity suits directed against publishers and retailers with detail and fierce rhetoric.1 In the background was always the fear, sometimes raised but usually denied, that another wave of comics censorship was on the way, spurred by a 50s-like gap between the decade's mainstream conservative values and the increasingly adult nature of comics.
However, this emphasis on free speech was not the only response to Wertham. The central character of The Seduction of the Innocent, the child warped and stunted by comics, made surprisingly frequent appearances in the pages of the Journal. The exact character of this warping differed depending on the writer. The comics fan was sometimes described as a misunderstood genius and sometimes a demented man-child. These two approaches to the comic fan are both present in the first issue of The Comics Journal entitled as such. Dwight Decker writes about “The Dilemma of the Adult Comic Fan”, stating bluntly that “comics are for kids” and that reading comics into adulthood requires a carefully-constructed worldview (11). Decker goes on to detail a number of self-justifications ranging from the practical to the delusional and ends the list with a mix of all of them – the “Decker” ("Dilemma of the Adult Fan" 12). Articles like this periodically appeared in the first decade of The Comics Journal, offering an anatomy of comics fans and often casting them into various types and extremities. Most striking is an article by David Stallman diagnosing the “Cult of the Superhero” and offering a range of severities of superhero obsession from “browser” to “freak” and “junkie” (107-109). Stallman explains that his purpose for writing is to “get [superhero fans] to examine their participation [in the 'cult'] more closely and consider how worthwhile their support of that genre is, and if their interest and money could be better invested elsewhere” ("Cult of the Superhero" 109). There is an element of insider humour to these classifications, with both Decker and Stallman concluding by diagnosing themselves under the schema they provide. But these articles, especially Stallman's statement of purpose, suggest that the comics fan and particularly the superhero comics fan was to the writers of The Comics Journal a pathologized subject, one prone to irrational manias and childishness. This also surfaces in numerous Groth editorials berating comics fans for their poor tastes and underdeveloped morality. The Journal's adult comic fan is certainly less violent than Wertham's children, but he (and it is always a “he”) is no less disturbed.
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