It’s a Bird! No, It’s a Plane! No, It’s Censorship!

Taylor-Thomas 10








It's a Bird! No, It's a Plane! No, It's Censorship!


Beth Taylor-Thomas
Hickman
The Long 1960's
24 April 2013

Superman decked out in ridiculously bright, primary-colored tights, zooming through the air, saving the day. Batman, lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on some miscreant causing mayhem in his city. Wonder Woman flying around with her lasso of truth. The late 1930's and to the mid-1940's saw the rise of the Golden Age of comics, in particular the advent of Superman. Superman would be DC comics' first 'superhero' in 1938 and was accompanied the following year by Batman. The reappearance of the Flash in 1956 is considered the start of the Silver Age of comics.
Comic books were not just popular reads but they also tended to come with a message. This message would reflect the views of the writer. With this came the fear within parent of what these messages might be teaching their children. Studies taken in the 1940's and 1950's showed that nearly all children had read at least one comic book. Roughly ninety percent of children fourth through sixth grade reported that the read comics regularly. New forms of media, including penny navels from the 1860's, had always led to the fear that violence within them would cause delinquent behavior.
Since the creation of superhero comics in the 1940's, there have been studies concerning the major characters such as Superman and Batman. Even Wonder Woman, who is as old as the rest of these superheroes, does not receive as much accreditation. When the sidekicks are mentioned in scholarly works, it is in relation to their respective mentors. As such, it makes the historiography of the subject a bit tricky. And the secondary research even more so.
A national senate subcommittee was organized in 1953 to investigate the charge that new media was causing a rise in delinquent behavior. While they were unable to come to a consensus on the issue of comic books, it led a psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham, to write a book that would have far reaches when it came to comic books.
Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham was published around the same time that the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency was formed. His book was inflammatory that fed on fears that parents had concerning their children as well as introduced new ones. The publication was intended to rekindle the threat of comics which had been placed back-burner at the time. The style of Wertham's writing is to give anecdotal evidence that speaks to how he saw that comic books affected children. One example is a mother complaining to Wertham that her son, when playing with younger children, took a knife out and threatened the other children with it; in another instance, he threatens to hang a three-year old boy. According to Wertham, the boy told him that he was avid comic book reader and that he liked reading crime books where women are tied up so that the criminals can do things to her later. The question Wertham neglects to ask, possibly because it would go against his argument, was why this mother allowed her ten-year-old son to play with a knife.
The thesis of his argument can summed up as this: "The most subtle and pervading effect of crime comics on children can be summarized in a single phrase: moral disarmament." Comics desensitize the reader to the brutality of the violence within them. This is the same arguments made presently about video games. According to him, he found "sadism, masochism, masturbatory situations, and homoerotic art" as well as racism, fascism, and sexism. However, within Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham reveals his on sexist tendencies. He neglects any evidence provided that does not support his claims of the inappropriateness of comic books. Wertham at least acknowledges –in Seduction of the Innocent- that children with a high disposition are more likely to fall victim to comic books. This was a shift from an earlier article in which he declared that any child could be influenced.
What is revealing about Wertham is that his study group of children came from parochial schools. Parochial schools are Christian schools but the word 'parochial' means narrow-minded. Wertham was likely angry when he realized the subcommittee was unwilling and unable to enforce any laws concerning comic books. The first amendment and freedom of speech impeded any of their efforts.
Part of the fear of comic books came from how they presented adult authority. The comic Teen Titans was a prime example. In 1964, the sidekicks of Aquaman (Aqualad), the Flash (Kid Flash), and Batman (Robin the Boy Wonder) team up in issue 54 of 'The Brave and the Bold'.
In their first solo mission without their mentors, the Titans are summoned to Hatton Corners where the teenagers and the adults are fighting. The adults want more control over their children and the teenagers who want more freedom –and a new clubhouse. When the Titans arrive, the teenagers have disappeared, their clubhouse has been destroyed, and the adults are refusing to do anything about it though the Titans suspect foul play. In chapter two, the adults are beginning to miss their kids and are more willing to help the Titans find the teenagers, who have been brainwashed and forced into slave labor. In the final chapter, the Teen Titans rescue the teenagers and defeat Mr. Twister.


The message of this comic to its readers is 'mind your parents or you will be abducted by a mad man with a grudge against them and forced into slave labor.' By the end of the comic, both sides have begun to appreciate one another which was an excellent way to debut a team of teenage superheroes dealing with other teenagers. In later comics, when their mentors are shown, even the superheroes act like grumpy adults.
The Comics Code
In 1955, Washington State passed the Comic Book Act which stated that the possession of a comic book with the intent to sell without a permit was illegal. Los Angeles County rewrote an ordinance stating that the selling of crime comics to a minor was illegal. Both were overturned as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The Comics Magazine Association of America was legally formed in 1954. The CMAA would be the creators of the Comic Code which would define what could be allowed in comics. Wertham was approached by the publishers to assist in creating the code, though this was mostly a public relations consideration of his fame courtesy of Seduction of the Innocent.Gilbert considered this a scrupulous attempt to shut him up but he refused to take the bait.
The code was meant to cool the public's consternation towards comic books and Judge Charles Murphy who was in charge of overlooking the comics took the job seriously. Murphy comic book code was considered laughable because it read as a document approved by the church but dealt with issues rarely commented on in comics. He came into conflict with the publishers because he failed to realize that the publishers only wanted the "appearance of self-regulation."
The CMAA's Comics Code of 1954 was made of eight sections and comprised mostly of prohibitions. Sample rules are:
(General Standards Part A: Rule 1) "Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals." This essentially was the crux of the argument against comic books during the Senate subcommittee meetings.
(General Standards Part A: Rule 3) "Policemen, judges, government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority." This was an important one because adults continuously suspected that comic books caused adolescents to be disrespectful of adult authority figures.
(General Standards Part A: Rule 6) "In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds." While the sentiment behind this rule is commendable, it does not allow for any dynamic within the story and as such is one that was frequently broken.
(General Standards Part B: Rule 4) "Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor as to injure the sensibilities of the reader." The first part of this rule was commonly upheld but not particularly intentionally. Many of the writers of comic books used the comics to make social commentary. A fact that Wertham overlooked.
(General Standards Part B: Rule 4) "Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism and werewolfism are prohibited." This was just a bit ridiculous but also showed Murphy's religious leanings as he wrote this.
(Dialogue: Rule 3) "Although slang and colloquialisms are acceptable, excessive use should be discouraged and wherever possible good grammar shall be employed." Teen Titans ignored this rule and it helped save the day.
(Costume: Rule 4) "Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities. NOTE: It should be recognized that all prohibitions dealing with costume, dialogue, or artwork apply as specifically to the cover of a comic magazine as they do to the contents." A specific example of this would be the shift in Wonder Woman's appearance.
(Marriage and Sex: Rule 2) "Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at or portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable." The critics asserted that comics such as Batman had homoerotic themes without clear evidence but they also discouraged allowing clear evidence to confirm that Batman and Robin were both heterosexual.
DC comics took the role of women one step further when in an editorial policy in the 1950's declared that "the inclusion of females in stories is specifically discouraged. Women, when used in plot structure, should be secondary in importance, and should be drawn realistically, without exaggeration of feminine physical qualities." The change in gender dynamics caused excessive worry and new enforcement to try to hold on to the past.
Feminism, Sexism, and Sexuality in Comic Books
I placed these three subjects together because in the view of comic books, they were intertwined. Wonder Woman, who was created to be this powerful woman who could not be subjugated by a man, was attacked for that same reason. In the 1950's through the 1960's, Wonder Woman would undergo changes to her storyline and to her character to accommodate the views of the public.
When Wonder Woman was created in 1941, William Moulton Marston meant for her to show the new woman emerging in World War II America. This woman had to be strong, driven, and willing to contrast the male-dominated masculine culture in America.
Wertham on the other hand described Wonder Woman as a "frightening image" for boys and "a morbid ideal" for girls. He considered Wonder Woman a lesbian and believed that it was impossible for anyone else to miss it. To rebut this, Robert Kinigher's Wonder Woman comics would star her boyfriend, Steve Trevor in a more active role.
Her followers, the Holliday girls, he calls "the holiday girls, the gay party girls, the gay girls." However, in a 1961 Wonder Woman comic called "Three Wishes of Doom," it is stated that the name "Holliday" comes from the college that the girls attend. The Holliday girls do not reappear again until "Invaders of the Topsy-Turvy Planet". This was likely an attempt by Kanigher to keep the Holliday Girls around a bit longer in consideration of Wersham's allegations but ultimately it is soon after that the Holliday girls disappear altogether; though McClelland-Nugent says that the girls disappeared when Robert Kanigher took over the comic in 1947.
In the 1960's, under Kanigher, Wonder Woman takes another shift. Wersham poses a dislike for the lack of a nuclear family within comic books. This causes Kanigher to start exploring Wonder Woman's history and creating an even more elaborate backstory for her.
Wonder Woman comes from an island of all women, though Kanigher makes a shift by saying that there were once men but they had all died. In one comic, Queen Hippolyta tells her daughter about her own relationship history. She is courted by Hercules and pines over a lost love named Prince Theno. While this was meant to show that Queen Hippolyta was not a lesbian, neither of those men are Wonder Woman's father. It is probably fortunate that Wersham's book came out before this issue or he would have taken offence to that.
Under Marston, Wonder Woman had bondage themes that concerned the publishers. When Wonder Woman's bracelets were chained together by a man, she lost all of her strength. When Kanigher took over the story, that vulnerability was removed. McClelland-Nugent does not mention it in her article. What is even more curious is that in his tirade against Wonder Woman, Wersham neglects to mention the sexual connotations.
To this affect, despite his assertions of the "homosexual connotation" in Wonder Woman, it could be that he neglected this because it went against his thesis or that it did not concern him. While Marston probably meant for the binding of the bracelets to simply be a vulnerability for Wonder Woman, Wersham could have considered the implication of sexual bondage acceptable. At the same time, it went against his thesis that Wonder Woman was an explicitly homosexual comic.
In the 1960's, homosexuality was a hot button topic. In the opposite spectrum of Wonder Woman was Batman and his possibly inappropriate relationship with Robin. However, in the early 1960's, both Batman and Robin were given heterosexual relationships in the form of Batwoman and Batgirl.
When Batgirl reappeared in 1967, she had taken on the character of Barbara Gordon, daughter of the police chief. When she appears, she is at work in a female-dominated position: librarian. The first thought that the reader sees of her in her costume is Batgirl thinking how attractive she looks in her costume. This Batgirl debunked many of the views of sexism within comics. Barbara Gordon is studying for her PhD at Gotham State University. She also appeared in the Batman television show that was airing at the time to avoid the homosexual view that existed with it as well. In June 1972, Batgirl appears for the last time in the Detective Comics (Batman comics). In this last issue, she wins the election and becomes a United States congresswoman.
Despite the superpowers of other heroines, Batgirl goes the furthest within the commonplace spectrum. Her story, like Batman in general, is saying that not having 'superpowers' does not mean that a person cannot make a difference. Barbara Gordon's Batgirl has even more powerful connotations in that unlike Bruce Wayne (Batman), she does not have a fortune to rely and has to rely on her own strength and perseverance. She might have been created to subvert the claims of homoerotism in Batman but she deserves to be hero-worshipped for showing what the ordinary girl can do.
Domesticity in Comics
A complaint that Wertham had about comic books was the lack of domesticity in comic books. In Seduction of the Innocent he wrote, "In vain does one look in comic books for seeds of constructive work or of ordinary home life. I have never seen in any of the crime, superman, adventure, space, horror, etc., comic books a normal family sitting down at a meal." The logic that Wertham refused to accept was that readers had begun to prefer escapism. The stress of the Cold War caused a shift from the realism of the antagonists (Hitler, the Nazis) to the fantastic.
In 1959, Superman got a younger cousin by the name of Kara Zor-El. However, Superman did not adopt and put her in an orphanage until she was adopted. It would have been inappropriate for a single man to adopt a teenage, especially by Wertham's standards. Superman requires that she keep a secret identity as well; she even has to wear a black wig to cover her blonde hair.
The audience for Superman, and by extension Supergirl, was boys and girls aged eight through twelve. Many of the Supergirl comics dealt with normal problems such as family, boys, and school then deviating to Supergirl problems, such as saving the world. There are entire comics that center on the boys in her life ("Supergirl's Super Boy-Friend's") and her family ("Supergirl's Rival Parents"). "Supergirl's Rival Parents" fed into a fear that every child, preteen, and teenager has ever had: more than two parents to yell at them.
In "Superman's Super-Courtship!" Supergirl gets it in her head to set Superman up with someone. First, she tries Helen of Troy who turns out to be a diva and does not like Supergirl taking the attention away from her. She then tries Saturn Woman, a member of The Legion of Superheroes, but neglects to find out whether or not she's married. It is fortunate for them that Supergirl had led them further into the future than they normally went. The comic then takes a distinctly disturbing turn when Superman tells his cousin that if he was going to marry anyone it would have to be someone just like her. This leads her to find another woman that looked exactly like her, but it was a doomed romance since the other girl could not live on Earth and Superman could not live on Staryl.
In Kanigher's Wonder Woman, Steve is continuously trying to propose to Wonder Woman and often goes as far as to try and trick her. In "Wonder Woman's Surprise Honeymoon!" Steve and Wonder Woman finally get married. After all his effort in trying to get her to marry him, he is still not happy because of her fame as Wonder Woman. He becomes annoyed because he feels like he is being made irrelevant and insists on her being called Mrs. Steve Trevor. Steve quickly realizes that Wonder Woman makes an inept housewife due to lack of practice and her refusal to give up saving the day. Kanigher undermines the adage 'A woman's place is in the kitchen' by exploiting her ineptitude in the kitchen. Luckily for him, it was only a hallucination though as he was waking he made the mistake of saying that he would be happier not being married to her. Women in the 1960's were fighting for equal pay and equal respect. Wonder Woman is a superhero with great power but that does not stop a man from trying to subjugate her into the role of a housewife.
In Wonder Woman's "Impossible Tales" which included Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, and Wonder Tot. The three characters were actually one and the same, despite functioning as independent characters. The three versions of Wonder Woman called each other 'sister' and was often referred to as the 'Wonder Woman Family.' Once again, this was an attempt to domesticate the Wonder Woman comic and provide it with a familial feel. Issues such as "Wonder Tot and Mister Genie" features Wonder Woman as a child and provides more back story. "The Capture of Mer-Boy" from 1962 was a Wonder Girl adventure. The most complicated story was "The Amazing Amazon Race" in which Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, and Wonder Tot compete against one another.
This would become a problem when the second issue featuring the Teen Titans appeared in The Brave and the Bold with Wonder Girl joining Robin, Aqualad, and Kid Flash. Bob Haney, the writer of the Teen Titans, and Robert Kanigher, the writer for Wonder Woman, did not communicate so Haney did not realize that Wonder Girl was a younger version of Wonder Woman and not a sidekick. It was not until issue twenty-two of the Teen Titans comic that Wonder Girl's origin is revealed and she is given a name, Donna Troy.
Teen Titans
The writers of Teen Titans were courageous in that they were not afraid to push boundaries. That is the reason Teen Titans make an excellent case study. It was not a particularly famous comic and received its start in a lesser superhero comic. Soon after its inception, the comic was floundering due to lack of direction.
When Haney is creating his team, he knew that he needed to have a female team member and ultimately chooses Wonder Girl as there is a lack of other female sidekicks. Despite this, Haney continuously reminds the reader that Wonder Girl is ultimately just a girl; in the first panel featuring Wonder Girl, Queen Hippolyta reminds Wonder Girl that "despite your Amazon powers- you're just a girl amongst male superheroes!" Wonder Girl, unsurprisingly, responds that she can do anything a boy can do.
The third official Teen Titan, called "The Revolt at Harrison High," is about a large group of high school students that drop out of school. These teenagers are then taken advantage of by an unscrupulous mechanic who, as it turned out, was brainwashing the teens so that they would drop out of school and work for him. At the end, the teenagers have seen the error of their ways and decide to go back to school. Many of the Teen Titans' missions are like that where the teenagers are rebelling and the Titans inadvertently persuading them to listen to the adults.
Under the Marriage and Sex rules of the Comics Code, sex should not be explicitly or implicitly referenced. In a comic featuring teen superheroes and targeted towards teens, is it surprising that this is the rule that is most often broken in Teen Titans? Most references towards sex are euphemisms.
Haney had Wonder Girl snag Ding-Dong. Ding-Dong is a euphemism for the male genitalia. He calls her 'honey' which is a euphemism used in romance novels for the byproduct of a female orgasm.
This scene from an issue of Brave and the Bold featuring the Teen Titans and Batman is curious. Especially considering homoerotic nature that critics like Wersham considered to be the staple of Batman comics. When Robin is shot, Batman tells the shooter, "That boy meant more to me than anything in life." However, this comic also has a somewhat positive moral which the comics' code promotes. The dying boy, Lance, had caused the Teen Titans and Batman to be kidnapped and after seeing the error of his ways, he sacrificed himself to save them.
This particular superhero has an interesting publication history. Appearing in the Teen Titan comic "Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho," Joshua was supposed to be DC comics' first African-American superhero. However, right before the comic was sent to the press the new publisher announced –without a reason- that the comic would not go to print as it was written. Wolfman and Wein, the writers of that issue, were so angry that they refused and Neil Adams was forced to redo the story in a week so that it could go to the publishers. It would not be until the following year in 1970, issue twenty-six "A Penny for a Black Star," that an African-American would join the Teen Titans as a member and he would not have any superpowers. It was likely the idea of an African-American superhero that led the publisher to refuse allowing "Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho" to go to print.
Lilith would be the second female to join Teen Titans in "The Titans Kill a Saint." She first appears as an exotic dancer at a club the team visits on their time off. They are put off by her because she is psychic and knows exactly who they are. She tries to warn them that they are going to do something wrong but they do not listen. The name 'Lilith' is also supposed to be Adam's first wife and was kicked out of the Garden of Eden when she refused to submit to him. Outside of Eden, Lilith became a demon but the legends from that point are not particularly clear.
Even though they are bothered by her, Speedy jokes that he would still like to have sex with her and the Kind Flash reminds him that it would anger Wonder Girl. Speedy then jokes that they do not call him speedy for nothing. That is not exactly a compliment and it breaks the rules of the comic code as it is an overt sexual comment. This particular comic breaks a majority of the rules. The Teen Titans accidently kill a Nobel Peace Prize winner at a peace rally.
Fredric Wersham claimed that the problem with comics was that parents did not realize what was in them for there was no reference from their childhoods. However books that are considered too violent or too prejudicial were and still are banned. Dime novels from the 1860's had faced a similar problem. Wertham said, "The children needed it, the parents wanted it, the legislators drafted it, the intellectuals opposed it, the pillars of the community slapped it down." The problem was not delinquency, it was control. The Cold War had the United States spinning out of control. When so many outside forces inhibit the control, it is human nature to grab ahold of something that can be controlled. Admittedly the comics did have some questionable features, sometimes fiction will be fiction.


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Jerry Siegel, "The Six Red 'K' Perils of Supergirl!" in Showcase Presents: Supergirl vol. 2 ed. Sean Mackiewicz (New York: DC Comics, 2008), 9.
Tye, 161.
Jerry Siegel, "Supergirl's Super Boy-Friends!" in Showcase Presents: Supergirl vol. 2 ed. Sean Mackiewicz (New York: DC Comics, 2008),108-120.
Jerry Siegel, "Supergirl's Rival Parents!" in Showcase Presents: Supergirl vol. 2 ed. Sean Mackiewicz (New York: DC Comics, 2008), 369-381.
Jerry Siegel, "Superman's Super-Courtship!" in Showcase Presents: Supergirl vol. 2 ed. Sean Mackiewicz (New York: DC Comics, 2008), 105.
Siegel, "Superman's Super-Courtship!"101.
Siegel, "Superman's Super-Courtship!"105.
Siegel, "Superman's Super-Courtship!"105.
Siegel, "Superman's Super-Courtship!"105-107.
(Image) Robert Kanigher, "Wonder Woman's Surprise Honeymoon!" in Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman vol. 2 ed. Peter Hamboussi and Sean Mackiewicz (New York: DC Comics, 2008), 259.
McClelland-Nugent, 120.
Kanigher, "Wonder Woman's Surprise Honeymoon!" 258.
Kanigher, "Wonder Woman's Surprise Honeymoon!" 259.
Kanigher, "Wonder Woman's Surprise Honeymoon!" 260-266.
Kanigher, "Wonder Woman's Surprise Honeymoon!" 267.
McClelland-Nugent, 123.
Robert Kanigher, "Wonder Tot and Mister Genie!" in Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman vol. 2 ed. Peter Hamboussi and Sean Mackiewicz (New York: DC Comics, 2008), 217-230.
Robert Kanigher, "The Capture of Mer-Boy!" in Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman vol. 2 ed. Peter Hamboussi and Sean Mackiewicz (New York: DC Comics, 2008), 259.
Robert Kanigher, "The Amazing Amazon Race!" in Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman vol. 2 ed. Peter Hamboussi and Sean Mackiewicz (New York: DC Comics, 2008), 399-413.
(Image) Kanigher, "The Amazing Amazon Race!" 405.
Brian Cronin, Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed (New York: Plume, 2009), 66.
Cronin, 67.
Bob Haney, "The Origin of Wonder Girl," in Showcase Presents: Teen Titans vol. 1 ed. Anton Kawasaki (New York: DC Comics, 2006), 124-128.
Cronin, 66.
Cronin, 68.
Haney, "The Astounding Separated Man," 36.
Bob Haney, "The Revolt at Harrison High," in Showcase Presents: Teen Titans vol. 1 ed. Anton Kawasaki (New York: DC Comics, 2006), 134-158.
Haney, "The Revolt at Harrison High," 158.
(Image) Haney, "The Revolt at Harrison High," 158.
Nyberg, 186.
I did not expect that to be as awkward to say.
(Image) Bob Haney, "Punish Not My Evil Son," in Showcase Presents: Teen Titans vol. 2 ed. Bob Joy (New York: DC Comics, 2007), 56.
Haney, "Punish Not My Evil Son," 52.
Haney, "Punish Not My Evil Son," 49-56.
(Image) Neil Adams, "Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho," in Showcase Presents: Teen Titans vol. 2 ed. Bob Joy (New York: DC Comics, 2007), 59.
Adams, "Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho," 59.
Cronin, 68.
Cronin, 68.
Robert Kanigher, "A Penny for a Black Star," in Showcase Presents: Teen Titans vol. 2 ed. Bob Joy (New York: DC Comics, 2007), 206-229.
(Image) Robert Kanigher, "The Titans Kill a Saint," in Showcase Presents: Teen Titans vol. 2 ed. Bob Joy (New York: DC Comics, 2007), 187.
Kanigher, "The Titans Kill a Saint," 189.
Kanigher, "The Titans Kill a Saint," 181-204.
(Image) Kanigher, "The Titans Kill a Saint," 190.
Kanigher, "The Titans Kill a Saint," 190.
Kanigher, "The Titans Kill a Saint," 181-204.
Wertham, 253.
Nyberg, 2.
Wertham, 390.