HORROR COMICS 295
Wertham and his work came to the attention of the United States Senate Subcom-
mittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which had been established the year before his book
was published. Wertham was called upon to outline his beliefs regarding the link
between comics and delinquency, and he gave a damning indictment of what he saw as
the comics’ ability to pervert and corrupt.
EC comics publisher William Gaines also appeared before this committee. He was
asked to justify how the depiction of a decapitated head dripping blood (on the cover
of Crime SuspenStories issue #25) was in “good taste.” Gaines reacted by stating that
bad taste, as he judged it, would be a cover with more blood visible on the severed neck
of the body, and dripping from the head. Gaines, in trying to defend his magazines
as standard examples of the horror genre, inadvertently became a focal point for the
bad feelings and misunderstandings surrounding comics that had arisen in American
society at the time; infl amed by Wertham’s book and the subcommittee investigation,
Gaines was portrayed in negative terms by the media as a result.
Th e eff ect of these hearings caused widespread and far reaching consequences for the
creation and production of comic books. Publishers felt driven to create a body of self-
censorship called the Comics Code Authority in 1954, a censor dedicated to ensuring
that material that contravened the code would be subject to revisions or would not be
distributed. Th eir job was to enforce the Comics Code, which was similar in principle
to the Motion Picture Production Code (also called the Hays Code, after its author)
which outlined various acts which could not be depicted in fi lms between 1936 and
1968.
Publishers would submit their comic books to the CCA for approval and would
receive the CCA stamp once adherence to the code was attained. Scenes that would
prove problematic would usually involve violence (“Scenes of brutal torture, excessive
and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be
eliminated”); sex (“Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to
stimulate the lower and baser emotions”); horror (“Scenes dealing with, or instruments
associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism,
and werewolfi sm are prohibited”); or anti-authoritarian acts (“Policemen, judges, Gov-
ernment offi cials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to
create disrespect for established authority”).
Th e Comics Code was one of the most restrictive of any media, and its eff ect on EC
Comics was that it served to outlaw their successful line of horror comics. Th is led the
company to focus on Mad , a humor comic which soon became a magazine and, as such,
was not subject to the restrictions enforced by the CCA.
Th e eff ect upon the comics industry due to these events was profound and led to
job losses and company closures. Subject matter in comics became anodyne in some
cases, as companies felt obliged to produce low-risk material. One signifi cant eff ect was
the eventual re-emergence of the superhero as a code-friendly subject for comic books,
which became the main genre in comic books for decades after. Th e two companies who
dominated this trend were DC and Marvel.
