April 21, 1954: The Day Horror Comics Died

Today, most Americans associate comic books with superheroes. But in the early 1950s, horror comics were king, and the king of the horror comics was EC Comics.

EC was known for pushing the envelope. Their horror and suspense titles often featured dark, gory tales that occasionally dipped into social commentary and almost always ended in a grisly murder. This made them very popular with readers, but it didn’t sit well with certain demographics, such as Christian religious leaders. They objected to the violence and to the bad morals these comics were allegedly teaching children. Most notorious of all was psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who, as Dr. Carol Tilley showed in her 2012 paper, falsified data to make it seem as if comics—all comics—were contributing to juvenile delinquency.

In response to these specious allegations, Congress convened the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency to hear testimony, mostly from people who disliked comic books, about the supposed negative influence of comics on young people. One of the few pro-comics people to testify was EC’s president, Bill Gaines. This turned out to be a very bad idea.

The hearings occurred over several days, but the most infamous exchange occurred on April 21, 1954. Senator Estes Kefauver questioned Gaines about the cover of Crime SuspenStories #22, pictured below, which features a man holding a black-blood-covered ax and the head he has presumably just cut off with it. (Be warned, the image is indeed unpleasant.)

Gaines quickly became embroiled in a silly yet catastrophic debate on “good taste,” with Gaines defending the cover as it was published and insisting it would only be in “bad taste” if the bottom of the woman’s severed head were shown.

It was immediately apparent what a mistake this was. In his book The Ten-Cent Plague, David Hajdu relates how Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, co-creators of Captain America, reacted:

“Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were watching the hearings with their friend and collaborator, the comics writer Jack Oleck, at Simon’s apartment in Midtown Manhattan. At this moment in Gaines’s testimony, Kirby groaned and Simon chided Gaines through the TV screen: ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!'”

Thanks in part to this exchange and the negative publicity it generated, the comic book industry decided not to wait for the Subcommittee to release any conclusions or recommendations. To “protect” their interests, they created a self-censorship program, the Comics Code Authority, that was so restrictive it forced many publishers, including EC, out of business. Horror comics were among the genres hit hardest: the new Code not only banned most forms of violence and would not allow characters to get away with illegal acts, but also strongly discouraged the use of words like “terror” and “horror” in comic titles. That spelled doom for titles like EC’s The Vault of Horror, not to mention the careers of hundreds, if not thousands, of artists and writers. Despite the popularity of superheroes today, the American comic book industry as a whole never fully recovered.

Things have changed since then, at least in some ways. The Comics Code Authority ceased to exist in 2011. Recently, Oni Press revived EC’s line of horror comics with titles like Catacomb of Torment and Cruel Universe.

But the attitudes that led to EC’s downfall in the first place are still alive and well. Self-appointed moral crusaders are still willing to make up threats to justify banning “dangerous” books, which are generally just books that introduce readers to ways of being and thinking that the banners personally dislike. Whether you’re a fan of horror comics or not, the right to publish them—and any other comic— must be protected. If even one book is successfully banned, then no book is safe.

Read more about the history of comics censorship with these two essays from Dr. Brian Puaca, as well as this look at the contemporary landscape of book censorship with Dr. Carol Tilley.