After the debacle of the Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency and the EC comic-book witch-hunt, Bill Gaines had to drastically revise his publishing line, since the newly instituted Comics Code forbade practically all of the titles he had previously been offering, with words like “horror,” “crime,” and “shock” now strictly forbidden.

Gaines’ more adult-oriented “New Direction” comics made their debut in late 1954/early 1955, featuring titles like PIRACY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, VALOR, M.D. and IMPACT.  And it was in IMPACT #1 that can be found the first EC story I ever read, and the one that to this day is burned in my memory like the first time I ever saw it: Bernie Krigstein’s “Master Race.”

When I was a kid, there were no EC Comics collected editions available anywhere, and in the small town where I grew up, you just didn’t see old comic books from the fifties lying around. So my first and only exposure to EC came at my local library, which in 1981 got a copy of <I>A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics,” a hardbound collection of significant comics, or as editors Michael Barrier and Martin Williams put it, “a statement about the comic book at its best.” And their choices are spot-on.

Along with the historically necessary first appearances of Siegel & Shuster’s Superman and Bill Finger and Bob Kane’s Batman, the book contains a Jack Cole Plastic Man story, a wonderful C.C. Beck Captain Marvel story, some John Stanley Little Lulus, a Carl Barks Donald Duck, some Walt Kelly Pogo stories, several of the best Will Eisner Spirit stories, and an excellent selection of EC offerings, including the aforementioned “Master Race.”

I was drawn to the book for its Captain Marvel and Plastic Man stories, but soon discovered the incredible charm of the Pogos and the Lulus, and the sheer genius of the Eisners. But the EC stories scared me. They were dark, and serious. And even more disturbing, they felt real, and none more so than “Master Race.”

Written by editor Al Feldstein and designed and drawn by Krigstein, “Master Race” tells the story of a man on a subway who recognizes a fellow passenger from their mutual, terrible past in a Nazi concentration camp. As told in a haunted second-person narration, the story cuts back and forth between the protagonist’s guilty furtive glances at the man from his past and his memories of the horrible atrocities of the Nazi death camps. As the reader recoils at the horrors revealed, the mass graves, the ovens, the medical experimentation, the terrible point is made clear, as the fellow passenger recognizes the protagonist in turn:

As the tension mounts, Krigstein begins to divide the action into smaller and smaller panels, ratcheting up the tension in a manner unlike most EC Comics, which had a very strict and established storytelling grid, and using artistic devices such as the repetition of images to express the rapidity of motion.

Even today, some five decades later, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more keen understanding of what makes comics storytelling work. It’s shocking, it’s visceral and grimly satisfying in the end. EC at its best.

Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions

While other publishers provided testimony during the Senate hearings, the two central figures in the debate were Wertham and Gaines. Wertham, a respected psychiatrist, had impressive credentials, and he was seen as an expert in the field of comics and juvenile delinquency.

Gaines, by contrast, was the most outspoken of the four publishers who testified, but he did himself no favors during the hearings. Gaines’ testimony, scheduled for the morning, was delayed until the late afternoon, after Wertham got a chance to make his case, and the publisher suffered for it. Gaines’ biographer stated that Gaines was taking diet pills, and by the late afternoon, the medication caused fatigue that affected his testimony. Whatever the cause, the result was that Gaines’ matter-of-fact denials about questions of poor taste in comics fell flat. Gaines repeatedly stated that he thought comics were harmless entertainment, not necessarily good for kids but not harmful, either.

Gaines was publicly lambasted. His famous exchange with a Senator over whether or not a CRIME SUSPENSTORIES cover featuring a severed head was done in good taste (Gaines, admittedly lethargic from cold medicine, was backed into a corner and replied in a monotone that he thought it was in good taste, for a horror comic) was only the most publicly damning bit of coverage to come out of the hearings. Wertham was given a pass in the media, despite the fact that his book consisted largely of conjecture and opinion and that he misrepresented some of the comic stories he excoriated during the hearings.

Public sentiment turned against Gaines seemingly overnight as newspaper and television broadcast the “severed-head exchange” for all to see and hear. Gaines, and by proxy the comics industry, was seen as a group of amoral profiteers out to make a living at the expense of children’s welfare.

Gaines left the hearings in shock, knowing that he had done more damage than good. But still he fought to keep his comics free from censorship. While he was forced to cancel many of his comics due to their very titles containing now-banned words, he refused to join the newly created Comics Code Authority. But this stance was fatal to EC Comics — many distributors now refused to touch comics that didn’t carry the Code stamp of approval on their covers. Gaines persevered for a time despite constant haranguing by Code authorities, but EC published its last comic book in 1956.

Gaines tried other ventures, but none panned out. His one remaining bright spot was MAD magazine, which sold well throughout the hearings and beyond, and has outlived Gaines and is still being published in the 21^st century.

In 2006 Gemstone Publishing undertook the monumental task of producing newly recolored, hardcover reprints of all the EC material, so new generations can see these trailblazing, creatively stunning stories in their full glory.

Up to Code

Following EC’s demise, publishers continued to adhere to the Comics Code with only a few notable exceptions. In 1971, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare approached Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief Stan Lee to produce a comic book about drug abuse. However, depictions of drug use of any kind were outlawed by the code. Lee published the comics (AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #s 96-98) without the code.

The advent of comic-book specialty stores in the 1980s decreased the industry’s dependency on newsstand distribution, which allowed for the advent of more code-free comics being offered from smaller publishers. Finally, in 2001, the code’s relevance reached its nadir, when Marvel Comics officially withdrew from the Comics Code Authority and instead instituted their own ratings system. Today, DC Comics’ children’s line and Archie Comics are the only publishers still submitting their comics for code approval.

Through it all, the comic-book industry itself managed to live up to the standards set by many of the heroes who appear on its four-color pages: every time it’s been knocked out and left for dead, it has managed to right itself and live to fight another day. And such was the case here. The advent of the code led publishers like National, with their wide range of uncontroversial superhero titles, to create more and more superhero comics that appealed to an ever-increasing range of readers.

The loss of EC Comics is not easily measured but is profoundly felt. While the larger industry survived and even prospered, one can only imagine what Gaines, Feldstein and their unparalleled stable of artists might have accomplished had they been allowed to continue their work.

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

Toward the end of M.C. Gaines’ time at EC Comics, he had rebranded the humor comics with an “Entertaining Comics” logo. When Bill Gaines took over the company upon his father’s demise, he continued to advertise “Educational Comics” in the back of his publications, but publishing “Entertaining Comics” was his focus.

Bill Gaines had every intention of applying his new chemistry degree to a life of teaching until his father’s death forced him to reconsider. Thrust into a new role in which he had no experience and no real interest, the younger Gaines nevertheless did have an eye for talent, along with a willingness to let that talent create without restriction.

EC Masterminds Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein

Within three years’ time, the resulting comics Gaines published had transformed EC Comics into a powerhouse, one of the most successful comics publishers in history. Gone were stories based simply on the Bible and history. Instead, Gaines began publishing a wide array of horror, science fiction and war series. These comics were notable for advancing the medium in multiple ways:

• They put a premium on both writing and art. Gaines and his editors, Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, developed comics that attracted some of the biggest names in the 1950s comic-book world, including Johnny Craig, Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, Joe Kubert, Joe Orlando, John Severin and his sister Marie Severin, Al Williamson, Wally Wood and many others. Feldstein himself was an acclaimed artist who also wrote for and edited nearly every EC publication.

A few of EC's sci-fi titles.

• They promoted the comic-book artist as much as the comic itself. In the 1950s, with very few exceptions, creator names were not added to comic books. EC Comics changed that, having their talented writers sign their name to their works and hyping the artists to the public. In today’s world of superstar artists, this doesn’t seem unique, but at the time, it caused a sea change in comic-book credits. EC Comics talked directly to the readers through editorial pages, forming relationships and fostering loyalty among their fanbase, and they used this outlet to make stars out of their stable of talent.

SHOCK was known for its thrillers with twist endings, as well as the stories concerned with social issues that Gaines and Feldstein referred to as "Preachies."

• They expanded the marketplace. Comic books had largely been seen as children’s publications, with pre-teen readers numbering into the millions. Adult readers were rare, but EC’s more adult-oriented fare, their horror, crime, science fiction and war comics, brought in an older reader base while still entertaining younger readers with solid stories and beautiful art.

TWO-FISTED TALES, with its emphasis on war comics, was the brainchild of editor/writer Harvey Kurtzman.

However, as much as this last point was a boon to the industry, it also sowed the seeds for the company’s downfall. EC Comics under Bill Gaines had gained prominence by publishing titles like WEIRD SCIENCE, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES, CRIME SUSPENSTORIES, TWO-FISTED TALES and THE VAULT OF HORROR. But these comics weren’t just gratuitously titled stories designed to shock and titillate. Rather, the war comics pioneered by Kurtzman looked at the futility of war; the horror comics’ darkly humorous tales featured bad characters getting their comeuppance, often in shocking “twist” endings; and the science fiction comics held a mirror up to society with their explorations of weighty themes like racism and imperialism. They were truly innovative publications enabled by the creatively free and encouraging platform that Gaines provided.

This infamous cover would come back to haunt Gaines when he was forced to defend it before a Senate committee on juvenile delinquency.

Gaines followed these successes by branching out further, into satire, in the form of Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD comic book. Launched in 1952, the comic book was written almost entirely by Kurtzman and featured movie and comic-book parodies illustrated by the likes of Jack Davis, Will Elder, Russ Heath, Wally Wood and Basil Wolverton. The comic book was a wild success, running for 23 issues as a comic before being converted to a magazine that survives to this day.

MAD MAGAZINE became such a cultural institution in the 1970s and '80s that most people forget it began its life as an EC Comic.

For the most part, EC Comics thrived under the younger Gaines’ guidance. However, the company was soon beset by problems from which there would be no coming back. EC Comics, on top of the world in 1950, would be driven from existence within four years.

A Mad Look At… Censorship

EC’s more adult publications did succeed in expanding the marketplace. But, to the world at large, comics were considered kids’ stuff. And to the moralizing adults who feared comics’ effect on children, comic books that depicted gunplay, severed heads, rotting corpses, women in peril and other such staples of crime and horror comics would not stand.

In the past, there had been rumblings over the need to censor comics. But now, church and civic groups focused on comics’ effect on juvenile delinquency. The Red Scare was receding into the background, so a hungry press picked up on this story, giving it credence. The publication of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s 1954 book, SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, brought the debate fully to life.

The worst kind of muckraking masquerading as science, Wertham's book saw perversion lurking in every panel.

The book was a detailed but sensationalistic (and undocumented) look at the more extreme elements on display in crime and horror comics. Wertham’s public stature outweighed his lack of real evidence and the book led to an investigation of comic books by the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. The hearings lasted three days, and in that time, 22 witnesses were called and 33 pieces of evidence presented. At the end of those three days, the comic-book industry had adopted a self-regulatory code that persisted for over 40 years. The committee’s final report stopped short of blaming comics for juvenile crime, but it recommended that comic-book publishers tone down their material. Most publishers took this as a veiled threat that they had better police themselves before stronger censorship was handed down to them. They formed the Comics Code Authority, which banned violent images and even specific words, all of which were prevalent in EC’s comics. The code dictated that criminals must always get their comeuppance in the end. For superhero comics, this was already the expected outcome of their tales. For EC’s comics, which featured more realistic, ambiguous endings, it was a terminal conclusion.

To be continued…