Gwandanaland Comics

Gwandanaland Comics’ index of citations accompanies their nine-volume classic comic book reprint series, Wertham’s Weapons, with specific panels that Dr. Fredric Wertham referenced in his 1954 polemic, Seduction of the Innocent, which, combined with the 1954 United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings, led to an industry-wide crackdown on comic books and the rise of the Comics Code Authority.

These citations include examples from Crime Smashers, Blue Beetle, Crime Does Not Pay, Black Cat, and others. These examples led to the formation of the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA), which achieved legal recognition on September 7, 1954 with six directors from Toby Press, Allen Hardy Associates, Famous Funnies, Stanhill Publications, National Comics, and Magazine Management Company. The CMAA appointed Judge Charles Murphy at its head to oversee content in the comic books.

The first code, adopted that same year, effectively banned horror and crime books. Its provisions for sex stated, “Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for morbid distortion.” Further, “The treatment of love-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage” and “passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.” Comics writers and publishers subordinated themselves to respecting traditional sexual arrangements. Publishers stopped producing horror and crime comics and approximately 800 people left the comics business, never to return.

Wertham’s Weapons Series- Index of Citations is useful for those with an interest in comic book history, but is best read in combination with the reprinted comics in Gwandanaland Comics’ Wertham’s Weapons trade paperbacks or with a copy of Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent.… (meer)