by Chris Ryall
Gaines's pioneering spirit had always allowed him to move toward bigger and better things in comics, and it's possible he could have done so again with EC Comics. However, fate played a different hand, and Gaines exited the world in a manner worthy of the many characters he helped create in 1947. He died in a heroic, tragic boating accident in Lake Placid, New York. A speedboat rammed the craft that held Gaines, a friend and the friend's son. Gaines managed to save the young boy's life at the cost of his own.
In the tumultuous time following his death, EC Comics was turned over to Gaines's twenty-five-year-old son, William “Bill” Gaines. This is where EC's story truly begins.
EC's comics and its logo became more entertaining under Bill Gaines.
MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW
Toward the end of M.C. Gaines's time at EC Comics, he had re-branded its 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 ad pages of his publications, but publishing “Entertaining Comics” was his focus.
Bill Gaines had every intention of applying his recent 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 had an eye for talent and a willingness to let the talent create without restriction.
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.
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; it had its talented writers sign their names to their works and hyped 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 its fanbase, and it used this outlet to make stars out of its stable of talent.
They expanded the marketplace. Comic books had largely been seen as children's publications, with preteen readers numbering into the millions. Adult readers were rare, but EC's more adult-oriented fare — horror, crime, science fiction and war comics — drew an older reader base while still entertaining young readers with solid stories and beautiful art.
However, as much as EC Comics 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 explorations of weighty themes like racism and imperialism. These truly innovative publications were enabled by the creatively free and encouraging platform provided by Gaines.
EC Comics 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 Jack Davis, Will Elder, Russ Heath, Wally Wood and Basil Wolverton. The comic book was a wild success, running for twenty-three issues as a comic before being converted to a magazine that survives to this day.
A half-century after being shut down, EC Comics is finally getting proper respect for its pioneering work with these deluxe archive editions.
EC ARCHIVES: CRIME SUSPENSTORIES, VOL. 1© 2007 WILLIAM M. GAINES, AGENT, INC. PUBLISHED BY GEMSTONE PUBLISHING. ART BY JOHNNY CRAIG.
FredricWertham's 1954 book, exhibit A in the case against comics.
PUBLISHED BY OPEN ROAD BOOKS © 1954.
For the most part, EC Comics thrived under the younger Gaines's guidance. EC Comics was on top of the world in 1950. However; the company would be beset by problems and 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, gunplay, severed heads, rotting corpses, women in peril and other such staples depicted in 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 the story, giving censorship for comic books credence. The publication of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham's 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent, brought the debate fully to life.
The book was a detailed but sensationalistic (and undocumented) look at the more extreme elements within the pages of 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 on Juvenile Delinquency. The hearings lasted three days, and in that time, twenty-two witnesses were called and thirty-three pieces of evidence presented. At the end of the three days, the comic-book industry had adopted a self-regulatory code that persisted thoughout the next forty 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. 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 also dictated that criminals always get their comeuppance in the end. For superhero comics, this was always the expected outcome. For EC's comics, which featured more realistic, ambiguous endings, this was a terminal conclusion.
SNAPPY ANSWERS TO STUPID QUESTIONS
The two central figures in the Senate hearings were Wertham and Gaines. Wertham, a respected psychiatrist, had impressive credentials and was viewed as an expert in the fields of both comics and juvenile delinquency. Gaines, by contrast, was the most outspoken of the four publishers who testified, but his matter-of-fact denials about questions of poor taste in comics fell flat and did him no favors during the hearings. He repeatedly stated that he felt 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 (he replied that it was in good taste — for a horror comic) was the most publicly damning bit of coverage to come out of 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 an amoral profiteer out to make a living at the expense of children's welfare. Wertham was largely passed over by 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.
CHRIS SAYS
For us kids of the 1970s, Mad magazine mattered in a way that is hard to explain today.
Its now-gentle prods at pop culture and politics don't resonate in today's age of ironic detachment, but for a time, every issue I read as a kid made me feel like I was getting away with something. It was counterculture for the junior-high set, but the writing and art from guys like Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés, Don Martin, Dave Berg, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Antonio Prohias and so many others were consistently amazing, and it was the same Usual Gang of Idiots (their term) month in and out, for decades. It's hard to imagine the magazine ever mattering again in the way it did then. “What, me worry?,” indeed.
Gaines left the hearings in shock, knowing that he had done more damage than good. Still, he fought to keep his comics free from censorship. While he was forced to cancel many of his comics because their very titles contained now-banned words, he refused to join the Comics Code Authority. This stance was fatal to EC Comics. By now, many distributors refused to touch comics that didn't carry the Code stamp of approval on their covers. EC Comics persevered for a time despite constant haranguing by Code authorities, then published its last comic book in 1956.
The Comics Code Authority seal, as designed by Ira Schnapp in 1954.
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 twenty-first century. In 2006, Gemstone Publishing undertook the monumental task of producing newly recolored, hardcover reprints of all the EC material. New generations can now see these trailblazing, creatively stunning stories in their full glory.
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 (The Amazing Spider-Man #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 offered by 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 its 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 managed to live up to the standards set by many of its four-color heroes: every time it was knocked out and left for dead, it managed to right itself and live to fight another day. Though the loss of EC Comics is not easily measured, it is profoundly felt. Still, the larger industry survived and even prospered, and the ashes of this unfortunate moment in comic-bookhistory paved the way for the Silver Age of comics.
8 Marvel and DC
The big two
The Big Two logos.
DC COMICS LOGO © DC COMICS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. MARVEL LOGO: © MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT, INC. USED WITH PERMISSION.
For comic-book neophytes, the notion that there are two big comic-book publishers can be hard to grasp. For the most part, the American comic-book market has been more or less dominated by these two publishers for much of its existence, and certainly for the last five decades.
SO, DC AND MARVEL.
WHO PUBLISHES WHAT?
Television has made this one pretty easy to answer. If you ever watched Super Friends as a kid, then you're familiar with the bulk of DC's lineup: Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Hawkman, the Atom.
If it's a recognizable superhero and it wasn't on Super Friends, then odds are we're talking about a Marvel character: Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, the X-Men, Daredevil, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man.
Granted, there are a few comic-book characters who aren't DC or Marvel who have broken through to the mainstream in the last few years, such as Spawn and Hellboy, but for the most part, it's one or the other. It's a happy coincidence that the two biggest comic-book icons in existence, Superman and Spider-Man, belong to separate companies; it makes things easier to identify. Just remember: Supes = DC, and Spidey = Marvel.
WHAT ABOUT PLASTIC MAN?
WHO OWNS HIM?
Plastic Man, the creation of the great Jack Cole, was first published in the 1940s by an entirely different outfit called Quality Comics. Quality also boasted its own stable of super-heroes, such as Uncle Sam, the Black-hawks, Phantom Lady, Black Condor, the Ray, Doll Man, Firebrand and (Scott's personal favorite) the Human Bomb. After Quality Comics ceased publishing comics in the late 1950s, DC purchased all the characters and incorporated them into its own line of comics, which is why nowadays you can see Plastic Man hanging out with Superman and Batman in the pages of Justice League of America (JLA). In fact, DC has made a habit out of buying up stables of superheroes from defunct publishers — they later did it again with the acquisition of Captain Marvel and the related Shazam! characters from Fawcett, and still again with Charlton Comics' assortment of hero-types, including Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, the Question, Nightshade and the Peacemaker.
DC OR MARVEL — WHICH ONE CAME FIRST?
Well, they've both been around in one form or another since the 1930s. Back then, DC was known as National Periodical Publications, or National Comics (although the DC symbol still appeared on all its covers before the imprint took its name from its longest-running and most popular series, Detective Comics). In those days, National's most popular characters were Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, with characters such as Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman running a close second. As for Marvel, back then it operated under the name of Timely Comics, and it had its own first string of superheroes that sold many a comic book: Captain America and Bucky, the Human Torch and Toro, and Prince Namor, the Sub Mariner.
HOLD UP. BUCKY? TORO?
Oh, yeah. After the runaway success of adding Robin the Boy Wonder to the already popular Batman, kid sidekicks popped up all over the place. Captain America had Bucky, the Human Torch had Toro, there was the Sandman and Sandy, the Green Arrow and Speedy, Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr., and plenty more. National even tried to reverse the trend with the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, a kid hero with an adult sidekick. The fact that you're not hearing about Star-Spangled Kid: The Movie should tell you how successful the experiment was.
WERE DC AND MARVEL ALWAYS THE BIGGEST COMPANIES?
No, not by a long shot. While National was always the 800-pound gorilla with Superman and Batman, Timely was never in the same league. Sure, Captain America, the Torch and Sub-Mariner were popular, but not Superman- popular. And for a while, National was living in the shadow of Fawcett Comics, whose Captain Marvel family of books sold at unprecedented numbers. That is, until National sued them so relentlessly that they eventually got out of the comics business altogether (see chapter five).
National Comics stayed one of the biggest kids on the block through the 1950s and '60s (alongside Dell Comics, which had a corner on the humor and “funny animal” market, at one time publishing comics simultaneously for both the Disney and Warner Bros. properties, as well as dozens of other cartoon characters), until editor/writer Stan Lee and artists/storytellers Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and their revolutionary Marvel Comics came along and slowly began chipping away at National's decades-long dominance.
WHO WRITES (AND DRAWS) FOR WHOM?
The nature of the business is such that talent is always jumping from one publisher to another, seeking the best deal, the most creative freedom, you name it. It was like that at the outset, and today is no exception. However, there are a few names that demand attention.
On the DC side, the company owes its decades of success to six people: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created Superman; Bob Kane and Bill Finger, the creators of Batman; and William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter, the originators of Wonder Woman. Although countless writers, artists
and editors have contributed greatly to DC's works over the decades, without these three landmark characters, DC most likely would not be publishing today.
As for Marvel, the most important names to know are the Holy Trinity of Marvel Comics: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Everybody working at the House that Stan, Jack and Steve Built is treading in their colossal footsteps. While new and exciting stories continue to be told involving the characters these three men created, it's important to remember whose original creations you are enjoying. The new coat of paint on the house may be flashy, but it's the structure that makes it stand up.
SO WHICH IS BETTER, DC OR MARVEL?
Hey, we can't answer that for you; no one can. It all depends on your personal tastes, not to mention the creative outputs of each company in any given month or year. Take your humble narrators as examples: As kids, it was Marvel all the way. In junior high, DC was getting most of our (then very limited) comic-buying dollar. Marvel got back in the game in a big way in high school, then lost out again to DC during our college years.
To make a modern-day, sweeping generalization, DC has more of an eye toward the history and lineage of its characters, and Marvel depends more on topical themes and big, event-type, companywide storylines. Of course, in the mercurial comic-book business such broad analyses can change quickly and often. Your mileage may vary.
9 Image Comics
Image is everythingIn 1991, Marvel Comics dominated the comic-book world. It was selling copies hand over gloved fist. A year earlier, the first issue of a new Spider-Man series written and drawn by creator Todd McFarlane sold more than two million copies. A brand-new X-Men series written by X-stalwart Chris Claremont and new superstar artist Jim Lee sold a staggering eight million copies. To this day, it remains the best-selling comic book of all time.