1The traditional narrative of the 1950s comic book panic focuses solely on juvenile delinquency and the writing of Fredric Wertham, very much like the traditional narrative of movie censorship revolved around the Payne Fund Studies. More recent scholarship highlights the broader set of “interest groups” composed of moral reformers working as psychologists, teachers, librarians, and legal professionals, many of them women, wrote in magazines and newsletters for mothers and psychological journals in order to target comic books in their own right, thus situating Wertham in a larger milieu of activists while also noting how his work drew upon his work connecting harm to children’s psychological well-being with larger societal issues including racism and witnessing acts of violence. They charged comic books with promoting male violence and aggressive women, and pushed for the removal of harmful comic books from the home, the classroom, and newsstands. Moral reformers established their position as expert witnesses by building upon the work of early twentieth century psychologists who argued for their expertise in evaluating everyday concerns (Lunbeck 3, Beaty 51). While film censorship in the beginning of the 20th century had focused mostly on emigrants and youngsters, and the peril of public disorder stemming from these allegedly fragile audiences (De grazia and Newman 7), the moral panics surrounding comic books revolved mostly around gendered lines, drawing heavily on the notion of psychological impact. The writers believed crime comic books increased readers’ aggressiveness and they sought to limit unhealthy outlets for male aggression and to curtail female aggression, attracting the attention of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Their work changed public perceptions of comic books, relegating them to children’s reading materials and scaring the major comic book publishers into adopting the Comics Code Authority to self-censor their publications in order to forestall government regulation. Further, as Jean-Paul Gabillet observes, the Code imparted respectability to a once-unrespectable medium and conferred legitimacy through censorship to offer a counter to more conservative elements in society (Gabillet, 242). Moral reformers’ actions thus defined comic books as children’s media regardless of actual readership while publishers reaped the benefit of an official stamp of approval to secure sales at newsstands.
2These actions therefore mirrored moral reformers’ fears about the U.S. film industry. In fact, many historians have noted the parallels between the actions leading to the Comics Code Authority and political concerns about films’ influence on audiences leading to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigation of the film industry in the 1950s, much like the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency’s investigation of comic books (Newfield). The result of these earlier concerns prior to HUAC was the Motion Picture Production Code of 1934, which closely foreshadowed the limitations that comic books would later face, including limits on descriptions of sexuality and a clear message that crime does not pay.
3By the 1960s, Hollywood and the US film industry in general underwent a significant evolution, aptly summarized by Columbia executive William Fadiman, who, in 1959, stated in an interview with Saturday Review that “the movie making fraternity should abandon its comfortable assumption that the mental age of its audience is twelve” (quoted in Gorfinkel 41). As E. Gorfinkel explains, “the task at hand was both seeking out an adult audience and producing one.” (Ibid.) As we’ll see later on in this paper, however, this “figure of the adult film spectator”, whom industry executives perceived as more mature than sixteen-to-twenty-four year olds would clash with the studios’ desired audience in future decades when they studios adapted comics into blockbusters (Gorfinkel 12-13).
4In the 1960s and 1970s, however, comic book advocates successfully challenged many of the 1954 Comics Code restrictions. At times, they split the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the Code; as Archie Comics and CMAA co-founder John Goldwater had indicated “everyone is entitled to one slip” (Van Gelder 44). The presence of something to rebel against gave comic book creators who advocated for their medium a sense of rightness in their work, even when they rebelled against the Code by working with government authorities as in the case of Marvel’s anti-drug stories in Amazing Spider-Man and even as the Code helped protect their distribution channels. Comic book advocates argued for the artistic legitimacy of the comic book medium at mainstream publishers. Meanwhile underground comix creators flouted local obscenity laws and worked to challenge social conventions. The combined efforts of mainstream and alternative comic book creators made possible far more significant changes in the 1980s.
5In the 1980s, the Comics Code Authority’s power further lessened following the changes to the Code in the 1970s and the expanding outlet for more adult material in the direct market. Though the Code’s authority declined, it protected the mainstream industry from a new generation of conservative moral entrepreneurs and their revitalized critique of popular culture. The decade’s moral crusaders “pressur[ed] department stores into not carrying music by certain artists, theaters into not screening certain movies, while taking sideways jabs at comics” (S. Miller 44). For example, during this time U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop warned that children were becoming addicted to video games “body and soul” (Around the Nation A16) while, in September 1985, the Parents’ Music Resource Center held hearings investigating the supposedly pornographic content of rock music, leading to the creation of a warning label (Chastagner 184-185; Jordan 243).
6The protections of the Comics Code Authority and the direct market, even if they served only as a paper shield, enabled comic book advocates to explore more adult content during a period in which the New Right invoked the concept of family values in policy decisions (Self 399; Strub 179-180; Witcher 71). Even as mainstream comic book publishers began examining sexuality and deconstructing heroic archetypes, the Code made it possible for them to create a two-tiered publishing system, with some books for general readers – including children – and others featuring more mature content that would not appear on traditional newsstands. This two-tiered system also worked to uphold the New Right’s agenda, with Code-approved, newsstand comic books clearly supporting the conservative version of “family values” and more experimental works or those intended for adults appearing only in comic book shops. Those sold directly to comic book shops made up the direct market in contrast to comic books sold to newsstand and other, non-specialist distributors. The decade closed with a final revision to the Comics Code in 1989, though the changes within the industry made this revision less notable than the 1971 decision to allow discussions of drugs, horror, crime, and corruption.
7Graphic novels represented a cultural high point for the comic book industry ironically made possible through comic book advocates’ efforts to craft work beyond the strictures of the Code. The format embodied the renaissance in comic book storytelling during the 1980s. Ironically, this process occurred at the time when Hollywood was shifting to a blockbuster-focused economy, targeting a wide audience and shifting away from the boldest experiments from the previous decades. The emphasis “high concept” films set on “frenetic editing rather than continuous actions” (Wyatt 45), the appeal of “action-adventure” as a distinct, recognizable genre, which would, later on make comic book adaptation franchises highly appealing to the majors. The graphic novel, which began at the end of the 1970s, rose to prominence as writers and artists began to tell more long-form stories that would not fit in a standard comic book. Some writers worked within the zeitgeist of cultural changes related to the public discussion in the 1970s of the true horrors from the Second World War (Baetens, 81-83) while others looked to European albums in search of a model for attracting adult readership (Williams 76-106, 136-166). Three graphic novels dominate most histories of this decade: Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. All redefined the types of stories comic book advocates could tell with the medium while demonstrating that the growing number of specialty comic shops represented an audience ready for these types of stories. As standalone works, they left a large impact in the public consciousness, but Moore, Miller, and Spiegelman did not work in a vacuum. Under the weakened 1971 Comics Code, publishers began to push for more mature books that would only appear in specialty shops, began publishing horror comics again that used the medium to play a role in the stories popular culture told about gender – both incorporating feminist elements as well as reinforcing the highly masculinized nature of the New Right (Blee 278) – and further developed the graphic novel as a medium. Smaller publishers used the newsstand as an outlet for stories that questioned or challenged the Code since the 1960s, but Marvel embraced it in the 1970s to greater effect (Labarre). Comic book advocates also began to publicly debate the artistic integrity of their work, arguing against what they saw as industry-imposed censorship and for the maturity of comic books as an art form.
8The creation of the direct market of comic book distribution further divided the comic book industry from the 1960s-1970s division between Code-approved mainstream comics and non-Code underground comix as comic book advocates could now publish a subset of mainstream comics outside the purview of the Code. While companies like Archie, DC, and Marvel continued to submit most of their stories to the Comics Code Authority for approval, they also began to publish more adult-oriented stories intended solely for the direct market rather than the newsstand. Smaller independent companies, like Comico and Eclipse, also began publishing work specifically for specialty shops (S. Miller 44). Writers and artists working on mainstream comics began to focus on grittier stories set in urban environments full of vice while underground and alternative comix continued to do while expanding to include more women, people of color, and LGBTQ writers and illustrators.
9Through all of this, the Comics Code Authority remained in force with the majority of mainstream American comic books bearing its seal of approval. Though the seal began as a means to protect comic books on the newsstand, publishers figured out that they could circumvent some of these restrictions by printing comics for the specialty shop. Writers and artists regularly incorporated stories of drug abuse, mental illness, and corruption, expanding upon the urban folktales that began in the 1970s (S. Miller 43-44). Comic book advocates continued to either accommodate or challenge the dominant political culture even as it grew more conservative in the 1980s while also accommodating and challenging conservative aesthetic culture, though not always in the same combination. Some writers incorporated authoritarian elements and aggressive masculinity into their stories in a manner that created a layered text, simultaneously celebrating and critiquing elements of 1980s conservatism – another evolution strongly reminiscent of the process Noel Burch, discussing several well-known works from the 1970S, termed the “double-speech” of US cinema (2000). While Hollywood films had mirrored the contradictory impulses of the late 1960s, comic books expressed the complexity of US 1980s culture wars, in particular in terms of gender norms. Others published both Code-approved and non-Code books, with the paper shield of the Comics Code Authority offering nominal protection to both types of work against challenge. At the end of the decade, DC threatened to leave the Comics Magazine Association of America under DC vice-president/executive editor Dick Giordano’s lead, but the publisher and the organization arranged a compromise to allow for more liberalization, culminating in the 1989 revision to the Code.
10Having fought to change the Comics Code once, Marvel supported its artists and writers in resisting pressure to change things that they felt did not violate the Code. Writer Louise Simonson described some resistance she faced after her editors at Marvel were concerned over the covers to Power Pack nos. 30 and 32 (June and October 1987). Power Pack focused on a family of child superheroes and the stories were targeted to Marvel’s younger readers. The cover to issue 30 depicted the child heroes carrying what appears to be a dead child, which matches the content of the story in which a child dies from an overdose of crack cocaine. According to Simonson, the Code prohibited the depiction of dead children on a comic’s cover. She and her artistic team – Carl Potts, Jon Bogfanove, and Hilary Barta – argued that the child on the cover was merely stunned or unconscious despite his ghastly appearance, leading Marvel to persuade the Code authorities to approve the cover art. The publicity of Marvel’s previous anti-drug stories may have persuaded the Code authorities to approve the art on the basis of the story’s message. For issue 32, featuring the first appearance of the Garbage Man, the artists depicted the new villain carrying the unconscious child heroes. Marvel also resisted this, though Simonson was able to get approval from her editors and the Code authorities (Simonson).
- 1 See: Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, The New Teen Titans: Drug Issue no. 1 (June 1983). This was joi (...)
11DC’s titles grew bolder over the course of the 1980s, with comic book advocates reinventing characters in order to tell more relevant stories or entirely dismantling the DC continuity, as in the case of Crisis on Infinite Earths. As comic book scholars Keith Dallas and John Wells argue, “With each passing year, the dying newsstand business model was less relevant” (Dallas and Wells 124). Writers George Pérez and Marv Wolfman used the New Teen Titans to address issues like drug use in a way that aligned with government anti-drug programs and portrayed their teen characters having problems, doubts, and conflicts that would resonate with teenaged readers even as they reinforced the Reagan Administration’s policies (Wolfman).1 After the post-Crisis DC continuity reboot in 1985-86, Pérez reinvented Wonder Woman, using many of the title’s secondary characters to discuss serious issues in the real world. For example, teenager Vanessa Kapatelis suffers from depression after a friend of hers commits suicide (Pérez, 2018 26, 42, 77). Despite these types of stories facing strict scrutiny in the 1970s, the weakening power of the Comics Code Authority meant that Pérez had no trouble with the Authority and stories discussing drug use or teen suicide raised no issues (Pérez, 2019).
12Around the same time that major American comic book publishers began finding workarounds to the Comics Code Authority, the motion picture industry broke free of the constraints of the Motion Picture Production Code. Mark Harris notes that the films of the late 1960s and early 1970s touched on a “deep chord of longing” that moviegoers experienced amid the American war in Vietnam (Harris 7-8). Similarly, Robin Wood argues that the changing nature of Hollywood film in this era included a greater focus on sex and class politics (7). The end of the Production Code led to a brief period in which Hollywood filmmakers experimented with new storytelling motifs, closely examined previously-taboo social issues, and interrogated the medium of film itself. In this, Hollywood filmmakers paralleled the work of comic book writers and artists of the 1970s and early 1980s.
13DC’s Swamp Thing began as a horror title under creative team Len Wein and Berni Wrightson’s care in the 1970s, closely resembling other horror titles both at Marvel and DC following the 1971 revision to the Comics Code. Writer Martin Pasko and artist Dan Mishkin revived the series in the early 1980s as The Saga of the Swamp Thing, continuing the tone of Wein and Wrightson’s stories while straying into progressively darker territory. One story from Pasko’s tenure stands out in particular. In The Saga of the Swamp Thing no. 4, the titular monster must fight a demon that had previously possessed a children’s entertainer, granting him confidence in exchange for his help killing twelve children. Pasko writes the entertainer, Uncle Barney, as a Mr. Rogers-type character who uses puppets and song to discuss emotions on children’s television. News reporter Lizabeth Tremayne argues to her station manager that the channel bears some responsibility for not helping warn children properly about danger since they run Uncle Barney’s show:
What are we telling our kids when we only show them a world without conflict – a gentle, ‘non-threatening’ world? A world without madness, without random violence, without senseless death? …Yet we still scratch our heads in fear and uncomprehension when they step into an alley with a stranger who cuts them into pieces? Don’t you see? We’re telling them they live in a world that doesn’t exist… And that world is killing them (Pasko 12).
14In this, Pasko evoked 1980s fears of darkness lurking just beneath the surface and waiting to attack children through Satanic Ritual Abuse. Popular culture and horror films from the 1960s through 1970s conditioned people to expect darker motives of authority figures, in particular those working with children, leading to a panic that reflected back through popular culture (Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen 112). Pasko’s story goes beyond the usual classic monsters that appeared in Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula to feature the monster on the nightly news, one who, like most accused of Satanic Ritual Abuse, was Christian (Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen 108). The message also serves as its own justification for a horror comic book as something capable of warning children about the dangers of the world.
15Author Alan Moore took over writing duties on The Saga of the Swamp Thing with issue 21 in February 1984, revamping the title to tell more serialized stories that played out across multiple issues while also changing Swamp Thing’s origin so that he was entirely non-human, rather than a mutated human. While previous writers engaged with adult content to a somewhat limited extent, Moore’s writing firmly set an adult tone for the series. Beginning with The Saga of the Swamp Thing no. 29 in October 1984, DC dropped the Comics Code Authority seal from the series’ cover. It briefly appeared on issue no. 30, but was removed again on issue no. 31, which also began including the tagline “Sophisticated Suspense” on the cover above the title, as if to suggest the maturity and artistic quality of the horror stories readers would find within. One of DC’s editors addressed the change in the letters column of issue no. 29:
Sorry for the confusion, guys, so let’s try to rectify the problem. It was right after SWAMP THING #29 was disapproved by the Comics Code Authority that DC decided to no longer submit the book to them. The decision was made not because we want to get incredibly gory or have half-naked people running around Louisiana. Alan [Moore] tends to write stories dealing with more adult themes than is common in most Code-authorized books, with ‘horror’ (not gore) being very prevalent. No one is creatively handling the book any different than before; we just now don’t have to worry about possible Code disagreements. “Sophisticated Suspense” was added to inform consumers that the book’s content is in fact meant for an “older reader.” (Editor’s letter 31)
16The change evidently did not hurt the title’s market, though, as the editor claimed that “direct sales orders alone have increased fifty percent” over the course of six months (Editor’s letter 32).
17Following this change, Moore wrote Swamp Thing as an operatic story commenting on the nature of humanity in the tradition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The purest expression of this occurs in The Saga of the Swamp Thing no. 34 from March of 1985. Abby Cable, her estranged husband in a coma, confesses her love to the Swamp Thing. Moore previously made clear with his first story that Swamp Thing was no longer human, but entirely composed of plant matter only containing an echo of Alec Holland’s soul. When Swamp Thing and Abby kiss, she remarks that he tastes like lime. Swamp Thing responds, “You… are human… You need… more from love… than the taste… of lime…” Abby responds, “Uh… you’re uh… you’re talking about… about sex, right?” (Moore, 1985 8). Artists Stephen Bissette and John Totleben depict this exchange by focusing on their hands entwined, Abby’s smooth human fingers and Swamp Thing’s rough, mottled-green plant-based hand. For Abby’s response, they portray the two walking toward the light on a wooded path, each with their arm around the other.
18Evoking the Eucharist, Swamp Thing gives Abby a hallucinogenic potato from his body, which allows her to see the life energy of the Green, a network connecting all plant life on Earth. Bissette and Totleben portray her sudden awareness in warm tones of pink, orange, and yellow, rotating the panels of the comic art so that the reader holds the book lengthwise, with the book’s spine running horizontally. As the glowing figures marvel at the world around them, they draw closer, embracing in silhouette while a crackling energy radiates from the area where their pelvises meet. Over the following two-page splash, Bissette and Totleben depict Swamp Thing’s eyes opening in the upper corners with the protagonists’ hands holding each other in the middle, all surrounded by images of nature, energetic in its effervescence as the water of the swamp bubbles around fleeting glimpses of caresses and sighs. Moore’s captions focus on the blending of personalities, primarily telling this portion from Abby’s perspective, though as the two blend and she sees the world through the Green, he begins to alternate between Swamp Thing and Abby’s inner monologue, further conveying the blending.
19The next page continues the psychedelic imagery, going beyond the swamp to view the planet from above. Moore writes in Abby’s voice,
In him, I ride the amber sap, oozing through miniature labyrinths. Clusters of insect eggs burn like nebulae, suspended in their unique and vine-wrought cosmos… Through him, I sprawl with the swamp, sopping, steaming, dragonflies stitching neon threads through the damp air surrounding me… Beyond him, I wrestle the planet, sunk in loam to my elbows as it arches beneath me, tumbling endlessly through endless ink. The bark encrusts my flanks. The moss climbs my spine to embrace my shoulders… We… are… one creature… And all… that there is… is in us… (Moore, 1985 17)
20The focus shifts to life and death, cold and hot, ending with a close-up of Abby and Swamp Thing’s faces on either side of the page while the plant-like structure Swamp Thing has in place of a human heart burns and glows between them like the Sacred Heart of Jesus, further adding to the religious symbolism of this scene. Both Abby and Swamp Thing purse their lips while sweat beads on her face at their moment of mutual orgasm. Moore’s caption simply reads, “…” (Moore 1985, 20). For a scene depicting a woman making love with an anthropomorphic plant, Moore, Bissette, and Totleben portray it beautifully and without the titillation that characterized underground comix. They introduced sexuality into a mainstream comic book – even though it lacked the Code seal of approval – and banish the exploitative sexuality of the underground comix a decade before. At no point do Bissette and Totleben depict nudity. Even when Abby appears as a being of light, she has human form but no detail within the lines themselves.
21In this moment, Alan Moore fully demonstrates his philosophy as a comic book advocates of what comic books can offer as narrative fiction. The categories of American culture have shifted over time based on power relationships such that, cultural products once produced for mass audiences – like Shakespeare – became the purview of the cultural elite, while other works were permanently barred from attaining cultural cachet (Levine 8). Cultural promoters sought to segregate audiences into distinct groups in order to encourage individual reactions and consumption rather than collective enjoyment, reinforcing the importance of order for pure culture, which conversely portrayed mass culture as disordered and, by extension, impure (Levine 195-206). Since their beginning, comic books had been mass culture printed on cheap paper stock and sold on newsstands, which firmly situated them among low culture. Further, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, by nature of its investigation and findings, had declared comic books to be children’s reading material. It was work that social and moral authorities argued they should oversee to protect children, but unworthy of any further critical scholarship. Though authors and writers in the 1970s worked to challenge this by aligning themselves with those same social and moral authorities, Moore and his fellow comic book advocates argued that comic books required specialized knowledge both to produce and to appreciate, which made them high culture (Moore 1986, 47).
22Moore described his amazement at Len Wein’s original Swamp Thing stories, which he felt elevated the comic book medium. He wrote, “It was the first time I’d realized how horror and poetry, if placed side by side, can complement and enhance each other by always providing something of beauty with which to contrast the starkness of the horror, or conversely something grim and forbidding with which to give sentiment and lyricism a harder cutting edge” (Moore 1986, 47). Moore himself rebelled against “an obsession with the demands of a concrete and linear plotline,” believing that it would “crush all the life and energy from [a] story and make it simply an exercise in mechanical narration” (Moore 2003, 29). He carefully avoids this in issue 34. While the characters grow and change, at no point does the story feel like it must move from point to point. Despite Moore’s description of the industry after the fact, scholars such as Isabelle Licari-Guillaume argue that early Vertigo writers and editors avoided references that their readers might miss (See: Licari-Guillaume). In moving beyond the limits of the Code – indeed, beyond its purview – Moore’s work argued for the legitimacy of comic books as a narrative art form capable of discussing the human condition with the same specialized language that characterized other high culture works.
23Moore’s work exemplified many of the shifts occurring in storytelling throughout the comic book field in this period, culminating in the annus mirabilis of 1986-1987. Spiegelman’s Maus, Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Moore’s Watchmen all appeared within months of each other and forever changed the comic book market. Writer and artist Art Spiegelman first published an early, three-page version of Maus as an underground comic in the 1970s. Publishers Stan Lee and Dennis Kitchen included it with their anthology series, Comix Book (Spiegelman, 2013 91-93). This short story beings with a portrayal of mice wearing striped clothing and blankets behind barbed wire, an arrow indicating one in particular with the caption, “Poppa” (Spiegelman, 2013 91). He transforms the funny animals typical to underground comix into a visual shorthand for his story, basing it on his father’s retelling of his experiences in a concentration camp during World War II. On the first page, a cat wearing a German stahlhelm and an armband bearing a whiskered skull holds a mouse by the neck with one hand while pressing the muzzle of a gun into the mouse’s mouth. He relates the emptying of the ghetto, mice hiding in concealed rooms, the paranoia of those in hiding, their attempt to flee, eventual capture at the hands of Die Katzen, and transport to Mauschwitz. The story concludes with the father crying as he tells his similarly crying son, “I can tell you no more” (Spiegelman, 2013 93). This brief comic from the 1970s demonstrated the power of the comics medium to address material that was traditionally the purview of documentaries, historical texts, and other “highbrow” works while telling personal stories. Where Robert Crumb and others used underground comix as an outlet for ideas they themselves linked to adolescent desires (Groth 55), Spiegelman addressed the larger issue of historical memory and trauma. In the 1980s, he expanded the story into a book of its own.
24Spiegelman serialized Maus in Raw magazine between 1980 and 1991, though a collected edition of the first six chapters brought the work to mainstream critical attention in 1986. In creating a visual shorthand that would both guide the reader and show the absurdity of arbitrarily dividing people by national origin or religion, Spiegelman portrays Jewish characters as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as Pigs. For example, when Spiegelman portrays his father, Vladek, needing to sneak across the border within Poland from the Protectorate to the Reich without papers, he appeals to a Polish train official by pretending to be Polish as well. In the comic, Spiegelman depicts Vladek as a mouse wearing a pig mask, complete with strings tied behind his head, drawing further attention to the absurd divisions the Nazis created (Spiegelman, 1997 66). The story alternates between Spiegelman’s interviews with his father and events in Nazi-occupied Poland, with maps and diagrams as necessary to explain events to the reader (Spiegelman, 1997 62). In the present of the story, Spiegelman focuses on the way Vladek manifests his trauma through hoarding and stubbornness, straining their father/son relationship (Spiegelman, 1997 69-71 133-134). Spiegelman was also suffering from his trauma following his mother’s suicide. She had also survived the Holocaust, but later took her life, leading Spiegelman to address his feelings in an expressionistic comic strip titled “Prisoner on the Hell Planet.” Vladek came across the comic, leading Art to ask his father for her diaries. His father responds, “I looked, but I can’t find” (Spiegelman, 1997 107). Vladek later admits that he burned the diaries and notebooks in his depression. Art responds, “God damn you! You- your murderer! How the hell could you do such a thing!!” (Spiegelman, 1997 161). He departs his father’s company, calling him a murderer one last time. This story concluded the original volume as it appeared in 1986, capturing the enduring sense of loss and pain that permeates Maus.
25Academic scholarship examining Maus has struggled to define the work. Cultural historian Thomas Doherty reaffirmed the book’s nebulous nature while acknowledged the difficulty the Pulitzer Prize committee encountered during the 1990s in finding an appropriate category for Maus. He writes, “Spiegelman’s medium is associated with the madcap, the childish, the trivial. By its very nature it seems ill-equipped for the moral seriousness and tonal restraint that have been demanded of Holocaust art. But – also by its very nature – the cartoon medium possesses a graphic quality well-suited to a confrontation with Nazism and the Holocaust” (Doherty 71). Later, Joshua L. Charlson described its success as “its very ability to cross conventional boundaries and unsettle oppositions” while invoking Levine’s highbrow/lowbrow dichotomy to say that Maus straddles “elite and mass culture” (Charlson 92). In many ways, Spiegelman built on the foundation Will Eisner laid with his 1978 graphic novel, A Contract with God, demonstrating how comic book advocates could use the comic book medium to tell deeply personal stories that gained mainstream literary praise.
26Spiegelman achieved success with the first volume and the eventual complete book following publication of the second volume. Further upsetting the boundary between high and low culture was Raw magazine’s tagline, “High Culture for Lowbrows,” which announced from the start its writers’ intent to transgress these boundaries (Doherty 69). In 1987, Spiegelman was among those honored at the Eighth Annual Present Tense/Joel H. Cavior Book Awards luncheon for his work’s discussion of Jewish themes (Awards for Books). When Spiegelman published the second volume of Maus, Lawrence L. Langer of The New York Times intended to praise his work when he wrote, “Art Spiegelman doesn’t draw comics” (Langer). In this, he argued that Maus was good enough to rise above what he perceived as a low-class art form. Langer’s summary of Maus resembles the summary a literary reviewer might write of any traditional print narrative, though he cites Spiegelman’s “distinctly post-modern flourish” and “the struggle to transform history and testimony into art” (Langer). Langer concluded, “Art Spiegelman has found an original and authentic form to draw us closer” to the bleak heart of the Holocaust (Langer). Spiegelman did not operate in a vacuum, however, as other writers and artists were telling Holocaust stories in comic books during the 1980s and 1990s (Claremont, 1977; Claremont, 1987; Claremont and Lee). Maus, however, received the highest mainstream honor of any comic to date with a 1992 Pulitzer Prize (Special Awards and Citations).
27Writer Frank Miller created a definitive break in portrayals of Batman with his 1986 miniseries, The Dark Knight Returns. Batman comics began changing in the 1960s under Julius Schwartz’s editorial control, introducing shades of grey to a character that most of the public perceived through the lens of ABC’s Batman television series (Johnson 39). The character further changed in the 1970s, when Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams added gothic sensibilities to the Batman stories (Johnson 55). These alterations merely worked to restore elements that Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger used in their stories of the late 1930s and early 1940s, but Frank Miller did something with the character that was without precedent. He set his story in a bleak future extrapolated from the 1980s, full of income inequality, roving street gangs, and omnipresent television talk shows. Miller both wrote and illustrated his story, employing his unique brand of exaggerated features and chaotic linework to evoke a heightened reality that broke from the clean lines, and clean-cut morality, typifying traditional Code-approved superheroes. Lynn Varley, his colorist, used washed-out colors for most scenes, adding a grittiness to the action and suggesting the maturity of the story as compared to the brighter colors typical of DC’s mainstream comic book titles. As a prestige format miniseries, the title appeared on the direct market and enabled Miller to follow or discard established continuity, to say nothing of Comics Code guidelines, as the story demanded. Of note is the fact that Miller’s reworking of his character, mudding the boundary between good and evil, occurred at a time when, Hollywood underwent an “ideological shift in how violence functioned in the narratives, shift[ing] to the “pure action genre” (Kendrick XII), turning the “kinds of violent subjects matter that were troubling in 1979S films like The French Connection (1971) and Marathon Man (1976), [making] them palatable and acceptable to a more conservative-minded in films like Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Top Gun (1986) (Kendrick Ibid).
28Miller’s Batman gleefully enjoys dispensing justice at the end of his fists, his hulking form leaping through the night stands in contrast to the lither Batman appearing in Detective Comics at that time, who did not indulge in violence for its own sake. In a battle against the leader of a gang of mutants in Book Two, Batman arrives in Miller’s redesigned Batmobile, more resembling a tank than a car, before he leaves the safety of his mechanized war machine to fight the grotesque gang leader hand-to-hand. Miller uses a full-page image to portray the Batman’s exit from his vehicle, grinning wildly as he raises his fists and appears to dance. Over the course of the next few pages, Miller depicts Batman and the mutant leader in close-up and medium-shots, capturing every impact, grimace, kick, and spray of blood. Miller’s sentence-fragment narration captures the staccato feel of the impacts while portraying a clinical, methodical Batman who has no qualms about the long-term effects of his blows. He writes, “I make him eat some garbage – then I help him swallow it. A beauty to his solar plexus – I worry he might drop too soon – Then his claws dig into my back – His filed teeth like razors in my trapezius – He’s right – He’s had all the time in the world” (F. Miller 71). This narration and framing subverts the onomatopoetic battles of ABC’s Batman television series, adding weight to the cartoon violence. These evolutions would turn out to be double-edged, as far as the film industry was concerned – with a distinction between a “comic-book mentality”, which fit well into Hollywood’s state of mind, regarding character building, and the particular representation choices, frequently deemed too violent and graphic. On the one side, as Joel Silver, who had produced several “pure action” films in the 1980s, put it Hollywood producers were getting more and more interested into turning coming books into films, a mindset he explained the following way: “We’re seeing more of a comic-book mentality in the movies today, so it’s a national progression. The audience wants larger-than-life characters” (Silver, in Gates, Kendrick 81). When, however, directors like George A. Romero did indeed move into the adaptation of comic books, with Creepshow, founded by Warner Bros, the major insisted that he kept gore “to a minimum” and sugarcoated the graphic violence of the original works (qtd in Kendrick Ibid).
29Despite Batman’s confidence, he finds himself outmatched and loses the fight, though Miller manages to turn this into an underdog story with a rematch the very same issue. As the two wrestle in the mud, the red of the mutant gang members’ visors and their leader’s blood peeking through the black and brown, Batman continues his narration of the fight. As he holds the leader’s face down in the mud, the Batman crows, “You don’t get it, boy… This isn’t a mudhole… It’s an operating table” (F. Miller 93). While psychologist Fredric Wertham viewed Batman and Robin as containing gay subtext, Miller depicted him as hyper-masculine through his use of violence. To further eschew any lingering doubts, Miller introduced a new Robin, partly so that his Batman would have someone to whom he might explain his methods, but also because Carrie Kelley, as a thirteen-year-old girl, would further disrupt the public’s image of Adam West with Burt Ward. Miller’s work also invoked fascist tropes glorifying masculinity while decrying decadence and cultural decline, mocking femininity even as it portrayed the state as feminine in need of masculine violence to protect it (Santesso 136-162).
30Miller likewise redefined Superman in The Dark Knight Returns, portraying him as the establishment conservative counter to the Batman as he works directly for the United States government. In Book Three, Miller depicts a conversation between Superman and President Ronald Reagan in which the President asks Superman to talk Batman into stepping down. Over the course of nine panels, Miller never shows Reagan or Superman directly, instead slowly moving in on the flag flapping over the White House, its billowing stripes gently transform into the curved S-logo on Superman’s costume, visually conveying Superman’s role as a figurehead for the political establishment (F. Miller 76).
31While the main story in The Dark Knight Returns focuses on Batman retaking Gotham from the gangs, a secondary plot follows developing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Miller juxtaposes Superman’s discussion with Bruce Wayne about standing down as Batman against a television broadcast from President Reagan, whom he depicts wearing a blue suit covered in large white stars, Miller’s chaotic linework making the aging President appear almost corpselike with his sunken cheeks. Miller’s Reagan speaks in buzzwords:
American tr- excuse me… heroic American troops are now engaged in direct combat with Soviet forces… now, there’s been a lot of loose talk these days about nuclear war… Well, let me tell you nobody’s running off half-cocked, no sir… But we sure as shootin’ aren’t running away, either. We’ve got to secure our – ahem – stand up for the cause of freedom… And those cute little Corto Maltese people, they want us there, just you ask them… Meanwhile, don’t you fret… we’ve got God on our side… or the next best thing, anyway… heh… (F. Miller 111)
32After this televised address, Superman departs from Bruce Wayne’s company, flying through a Soviet MiG in a ball of fire before attacking Soviet tanks (F. Miller 112, 122). In this, Miller evokes the cover art of World War II-era Superman comics, though writers artists at that time never had the Last Son of Krypton directly combat Axis forces in their stories as Superman’s ability to win the war would create a narrative that differed too much from our own reality (Deverell).
33Miller, in creating his own timeline, portrays the Soviet Union retaliating after Superman’s victory in Corto Maltese by launching a nuclear weapon “designed to cause maximum damage to the environment – all the while sparing the industrial sights” (F. Miller 160). Despite Superman’s efforts, the bomb goes off, leading to nuclear winter. In the face of impending environmental disaster, Reagan says, “Nothing we can’t handle, folks. We’re still America – and I’m still President” (F. Miller 178). Miller described 1980s America as “a very frightening, silly place and it’s often silly and frightening at the same time,” hoping that he evoked that in The Dark Knight Returns (Mann).
34Though The Dark Knight Returns did not directly impact the mainstream Batman continuity appearing in Code-approved books, it did show a way forward for comic book advocates to portray a darker, more violent Batman as the Code weakened and the direct market offered a venue for these experimental stories. A common thread in this period saw artists turning toward more dark and gritty stories, perhaps as a way of seeking greater cultural cachet through commentary on and contradiction of the New Right and Ronald Reagan’s projected optimism (Reagan). In particular, the New Right’s focus on reconstituting a narrowly-defined “traditional” morality of sexuality and gender roles in the 1970s through 1980s provided an arena for comic book advocates to rebel and show cities and societies that claimed to have attained perfection, but were undercut by rampant political corruption and leaders who betrayed the ideals they championed to the public (Strub 134-135; Vogel 52). At the same time, some comic book advocates took a more nuanced approach, celebrating some elements of the New Right such as atavistic brutal masculinity as a basis for leadership. This complex relationship both challenged and embraced aspects of the New Right.
35Beginning in 1986, writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons deconstructed the superhero genre in Watchmen. DC had acquired characters who originally appeared in Charlton comics and Moore began with the intent of writing a murder mystery tentatively titled, “Who killed the Peacemaker?” (TCJ Administrator). He also planned to revamp writer Steve Ditko’s the Question, a character Ditko used to express his objectivist philosophy, and make him more extreme for the 1980s. DC editor Dick Giordano did not want to radically alter these characters, so Moore and Gibbons created pastiche versions for their story, with the Peacemaker becoming the Comedian and the Question gaining some inkblots on his full-face mask to become Rorschach. Moore and Gibbons used the new opportunities of the direct market to publish a story featuring nihilistic characters, full-frontal male nudity, and a bleaker worldview than what typically appeared in DC’s titles.
36At times, Dave Gibbons’ clean linework evokes the artists of the Silver Age of Comics even as Moore’s story deconstructs its superheroes. Moore loosely based Doctor Manhattan on DC’s Captain Atom, but developed the character to the point that he became a living atom bomb. All-powerful and godlike, Dr. Manhattan lacks the humanity of similarly powered characters such as Superman or Captain Marvel. Gibbons only portrays him from the back or side in issue no. 1, though the blue character clearly wears no clothing. In issue no. 3, Moore and Gibbons develop his lack of awareness of human emotions, portraying him in close-up having sex with Laurie Juspeczyk. At first, his hands caress her face, but she opens her eyes when she feels a third hand, leading her to realize he created two of himself in order to please her. She puts on a robe, and discovers that he made another copy of himself to do his scientific work, though he does not understand why she feels unimportant to him as a result (Moore and Gibbons 74-75). At the end of the issue, he visits the lab where he gained his powers before departing the Earth for Mars, at which point Gibbons portrays him fully nude (Moore and Gibbons 90). While Gibbons depicts him at a distance, the following issue shows full-frontal male nudity more close-up, though he never depicts Dr. Manhattan’s penis in the exaggerated style of the underground comix; rather, it resembles the depiction of nude humans on the gold-anodized plaque on board Pioneer 10 and 11 (Pioneer Plaque). Gibbons and Moore further challenged the typically sexless portrayal of superheroes in their depiction of Nite Owl, who suffers from erectile dysfunction in his civilian identity, but can perform while on a mission as his alter ego (Moore, 2008 220, 233-234).
37As it spans the period from World War II through the 1980s, Watchmen tells an alternate version of U.S. history in which the United States won the Vietnam War. Many of the Vietcong surrendered directly to Dr. Manhattan prior to the first presidential helicopter arriving in Saigon (Moore and Gibbons 114, 49). The success of the war led President Richard Nixon to successfully repeal the Twenty-second Amendment, so that he is continually re-elected until through the fictional 1985 of the story, having evaded the Watergate investigation after the suspicious deaths of reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Moore and Gibbons 115, 294). Without “Vietnam Syndrome,” the United States military of Watchmen never focused on more small-scale, “choreographed” conflicts (Engelhardt 290). This, in turn, led to a Cold War world of 1985 that resembles the actual America in some ways, but which provides context for Moore to discuss his fears in a more dramatic manner.
38Alan Moore used the motif of the Doomsday Clock on the cover of every issue of Watchmen and throughout the stories, with other clocks – such as Dr. Manhattan’s father’s pocket watch – working as stand-ins at times. By 1984, the Doomsday Clock maintained by the editors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reached three minutes to midnight, signifying the world’s proximity to nuclear war following Reagan’s decision to cease most communication with the Soviet Union (Andelman 115). The clock remained at three minutes to midnight even through December 1987, when Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Within Moore’s story, the clock counts down from issue to issue as tensions rise. In issue no. 5, Moore and Gibbons portray police investigating a crime scene where a man killed his family over fears of nuclear war. Gibbons depicts the detectives as typical hard-boiled types, wearing trench coats over their tousled suits as one smokes. Their banter refers to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as a portent of rising tensions (Moore and Gibbons 143). In 1979, the Soviets based their movement of troops into Afghanistan on tentative support of Hafizullah Amin, who overthrew the Marxist Nur Mohammed Taraki after Taraki killed tens of thousands (Kaplan 115), claiming that the United States threatened the “revolution” (Kakar 46). Rising tensions from the King of Saudi Arabia led to the formation of a Mujahedeen coalition in 1985, drawing fighters from throughout the Muslim world (Kakar 93). Further, the story contradicts the Cold War belief that posited the family as “a critical bulwark against communism,” here questioning its effectiveness in protecting national character as it instead produced a grisly crime scene (Strub 179-180). Within the world of Watchmen, the Soviet Union successfully conquers Afghanistan and plans to move on to Pakistan, leading President Nixon’s experts to conclude, “It’s 60% certain they’ll try taking Western Europe also” while the ensuing nuclear war would likely cost him the East Coast of the United States (Moore and Gibbons 86-87).
39Facing the threat of nuclear war, Ozymandias – the smartest man in the world of Watchmen – uses his resources to fake an alien invasion. When Nite Owl and Rorschach confront Ozymandias, he summarizes his goal, “Unable to unite the world by conquest… Alexander’s method… I would trick it; frighten it towards salvation with history’s greatest practical joke” (Moore and Gibbons 248). In subverting supervillain tropes, Moore portrays Ozymandias responding to his former teammates’ question of when he will enact his plan, “I’m not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my master stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago” (Moore and Gibbons 251). Issue no. 12 begins with six full-page images of the carnage in Manhattan: damaged buildings, dead bodies, streaming blood, and bits of the fake alien Ozymandias created to fool the world into uniting against an otherworldly threat. A building on the first page features a clock with its hands pointing to midnight while posters on performance venues advertise bands named Pale Horse and Krystalnacht, a sign on a movie house advertises The Day the Earth Stood Still, and newspapers query, “War?” (Moore and Gibbons 259-264). In the face of such devastation, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Dr. Manhattan decide to keep the secret in the hope that it will promote peace. Rorschach, evoking the objectivist philosophy of the character on which Moore based him, cannot accept such a moral compromise and demands that Dr. Manhattan kill him. Moore’s superheroes broke the familiar archetype of those in Code-approved stories, accepting civilian deaths and moral compromise in the hopes of averting total nuclear war (Jenkins 26).
40When asked if Watchmen was anti-American, Moore responded that it was “anti-Reaganism” (TCJ Administrator). He continued, “My personal feelings, because I’m the writer and can do anything that I want, is that at the moment a certain part of Reagan’s America isn’t scared. They think they’re invulnerable” (TCJ Administrator). He referenced the United States’ 1986 bombing of Libya as an example of the results of that feeling of invulnerability while glossing over nuclear stockpiles. In writing Watchmen, Alan Moore explicitly sought to make American audiences aware of their own vulnerability. In this, Moore’s work evinced the pattern that Margot Henriksen noted, in which new cultural genres “illustrated the revolutionary and explosive cultural impact of the atomic bomb” (Henriksen xxii). Through the ability of DC to publish a book for the direct market without Code approval, Moore transformed the types of stories comic books could tell and led to more political awareness across various comic titles.
- 2 See: Neal Curtis, “‘America Is a Piece of Trash’: Captain America, Patriotism, Nationalism, and Fas (...)
- 3 See: Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture. Where Gruenwald complicated his discussion of the New (...)
41Comic book advocate and writer Mark Gruenwald invested Captain America with greater political complexity during the 1980s comic book renaissance, incorporating elements of New Right ideology while simultaneously critiquing its more authoritarian overtones like a Code-approved Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen. John Walker, Marvel’s new Captain America, replaced Steve Rogers in 1987 with Gruenwald using the new Cap to engage with Reagan-era conservatism and its focus on masculinity and morality (Cunningham 231-232; Simpson 29-58). This may have served as a way to appeal to readers among the New Right, though the stories rejected the more extremist elements of conservatism. Tom Morgan’s art depicting Walker and Lemar Hoskins, the new Bucky, in issue no. 335 invokes the resurgence of military manhood that characterized Reagan’s Cold War policies (Self 407). Writer Mark Gruenwald and artist Morgan portray the two characters engaging in performative masculinity, as scholar Judith Butler described, “a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler 140). Through their flexing musculature, Walker and Hoskins reaffirm military masculinity. For their first mission, Walker and Hoskins must infiltrate a right-wing group called the Watchdogs, who burn adult bookstores and bomb women’s clinics. Walker and Hoskins’s boss, Adrian Sammish, says the Watchdogs “believe themselves to be arbiters of the public good. They’re against pornography, sex education, abortion, the teaching of evolution… Anything they believe to be immoral!” (Gruenwald, 1987a 9). In this, Gruenwald invokes events such as the Parents’ Music Resource Center hearings and 1980s fears of Satanic Ritual Abuse (Chastanger 184-185; Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen 106-108). Gruenwald further invokes the New Right’s efforts to criminalize pornography, with the ninety-seventh Congress blocking a bill “to lower penalties for interstate transportation of obscenity” in 1981-1982 (Strub 179, 192). He depicts his new Captain America as also opposing these issues, though he condemns the Watchdogs’ actions, adopting a centrist perspective contra to the New Deal-era Steve Rogers while tacitly accepting New Right positions though rejecting outright violence (Curtis 48).2 The following issue focuses on Steve Rogers’s activities since losing the mantle of Captain America, which he hopes to regain, though he still trusts the system. He says to his girlfriend, Bernie Rosenthal, “The commission was hand-picked by President Reagan, one of the most popular presidents in history” (Gruenwald, 1987b 9). Rogers worries about the power of Reagan’s popularity and hopes to avoid giving “the American people yet another reason to distrust the government!” (Gruenwald, 1987b 9). In this, Gruenwald evoked lingering wariness from those who found their idealism dashed by Vietnam and Watergate and needed a narrative of victory (Engelhardt).3
42Throughout the 1980s, specialty comic shop owners built on the distribution changes that began in the 1970s under comic shop owner Phil Sueling’s aegis, developing audiences for graphic novels and creating outlets for graphic novels and comic book advocates’ more specialized work marketed toward adult readers. In addition to an outlet for sales, specialty shops offered an added bonus for comic book publishers as they could receive more accurate feedback for their print-runs. In order to limit the ability of unscrupulous dealers in returning direct market editions, which, unlike newsstand editions, were sold as unreturnable, Marvel changed its trade dress on comic book covers in the late 1970s and early 1980s to distinguish between newsstand and direct editions (Dallas and Wells 114). Furthermore, publishers targeted eager collectors as they printed miniseries, one-shot books featuring longer stories than in a standard comic, and prestige books printed on better quality paper than the typical newsstand books (Weldon 124). The collector base grew along with comic shops. In tracing the number of comic shops, scholar Dan Gearino writes that the market grew from about “two hundred shops in 1977 to five hundred in 1987” (Gearino 84). Comic shops also carried underground and alternative comics alongside more mainstream works, which helped to expand publishers’ audience by offering works both by and for women comic book readers, such as Love and Rockets (Gearino 75). Alternative publishers such as Dark Horse and Eclipse comics “entered the game” due to the direct market, with some, like Mirage with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, producing series that successfully developed into franchises similar to Marvel and DC’s later licensing deals (Gustines; Eastman and Laird, 2017; Eastman and Laird, 2012; Lobb). Further, the success of the direct market as an alternative venue enabled DC and Marvel to increase their profits. According to scholars Keith Dallas and John Wells, “As the price of the standard newsprint comic book rose to 60¢, then 75¢, and finally $1.00 over the course of the 1980s, publishers were successfully marketing select ongoing titles exclusively to comic book shops on heavy, white paper. The hypothetical $1.25 comic book on better paper that Paul Levitz described in 1977 was reality in the 1983 Direct Market” (Dallas and Wells 125).These changes led to an increase in revenue, but did not necessarily directly impact publishers’ profits. Larger publishers like Marvel were also able to leverage their share of the mainstream comic book market to negotiate deals with printers, suppliers, and distributors that helped them cement their market dominance while limiting the role of alternative publishers that relied on direct sales for non-Code approved material (First Comics Sues Marvel 11-14; First Awaits Court Verdict 8).
43There was some concern from distributors about the new graphic novels, however, especially as legal cases like Kirkpatrick in 1970 – in which New York State convicted two salespeople of promotion or possessing with intent to promote obscene materials as a result of their sale of an issue of Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix #4 – demonstrated that they faced the risk of local obscenity laws criminalizing the books they sold. In response to more adult fare like The Dark Knight Returns, Diamond Comic Distributors sent a memo to publishers about concerns over content. “Publishers must show more responsibility in what they publish. They must at least, clearly identify the contents of their publications at the time the book is being ordered!” (Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc, 1986). This memo further suggested that publisher should accept “full returns from retailers who do not wish to endanger their reputation in the community by selling such items” (Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc). Unlike newsstand sales, the terms of most direct distribution agreements prevented returns of unsold books to distributors, who received the comics from publishers and shipped them to shops around the country, so this represented an attempt for comic shops to redefine the power relationship with publishers. Lone Star Comics & Science Fiction, a shop in Arlington, Texas, similarly worried about community backlash, specifically as a result of Frank Miller’s hyper-violent and sexualized Marvel title, Elektra: Assassin, published under Marvel’s Epic Comics imprint. They described their concern about a parent’s hypothetical negative reaction to such a comic in an open letter to the comic book industry, “We could tell the parent an honest truth – that kids seldom even look at such comics, much less try to buy them. We could say that, but to most mothers it would not matter” (Lone Star Comics, 1986b 2). To forestall potential conflict, Lone Star instituted a store “age appropriate” policy requiring children to get a parent or guardians’ approval to purchase more mature work and allowing parents to return comics for store credit if they found that it was not suitable for their child, effectively creating a localized, voluntary version of the Code (Lone Star Comics, 1986a 3-4).
- 4 Dufton also chronicles the aforementioned cooperative promotion between the Department of Education (...)
44These tensions built to the point that DC president and publisher Jenette Khan felt the need to respond. In a memo to freelancers, she clarified that DC would use new language on the covers designating whether books were “suggested for mature readers” or “for universal readership” (Khan). Interestingly, the phrase “Suggested for mature readers” mirrored the “SMA” (“suggested for mature audiences” which Hollywood had briefly - and unsuccessfully - attempted to use, in the 1960s, before it shifted to its compulsory classification system. The guidelines themselves specified that DC would “attempt to reflect an accurate representation of racial, sexual, and ethnic diversity, within the context of each specific environment or locale” (DC Comics 3). While this would appear to open the possibility for gay characters in mainstream DC books, a subsequent line specified that “universally distributed books can address concerns that affect the lives of younger readers,” effectively preventing any substantive discussion of LGBTQ issues (DC Comics 3). Though these in-house guidelines never explicitly stated it, any gay or lesbian characters would remain confined to titles intended solely for mature readers as the Code contributed to maintaining heteronormative culture since the only restriction on heterosexual romance prevented depictions of sexual intercourse. Further, in creating this divide between mature and younger readers, DC affirmed the manufactured innocence that cultural crusaders and parent activists sought to protect through aggressive lobbying during the Reagan era (Dufton 143-158).4
45While the direct market provided an outlet and publishers worked to balance the demands of readers who had grown accustomed to materials available in specialty stores with the demands of traditional newsstand distributors, Hollywood similarly found itself forced to adapt to a new regime that replaced the Motion Picture Production Code. Though lacking legal power, the commercial power of the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating system effectively censors Hollywood productions and grants preferential treatment to major studios which have the economic power to negotiate for better ratings (Dick). The introduction of a PG-13 rating paralleled larger cultural changes in the American landscape during the Regan era in which the political debate shifted “away from rights toward government provision – what government ought to provide” (Self, 398). Hollywood studios, like comic book publishers, grew hesitant to appear to provide representation in mass media, leaving characters outside of those who met a white cisgender architype for supporting roles or dedicated titles with smaller distribution.
46A relatively recent trend has been the adaptation of franchises by major studios throughout the 21st Century, most notably when Disney acquired Marvel in 2009 (along with Pixar and Lucas film), while some of the X-men characters were licensed to 20th Century Fox. These adaptations guaranteed economic success, as “Disney’s Marvel releases are connected within an over-arching Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), so that while every film may not be a direct sequel to another, events in one film may have an impact on other films in the MCU” (Mason 105). Marvel “brought with it a vast back catalogue of comic characters (and existing audiences) to exploit across film franchises, tie-in comic books, theme parks, merchandise, television shows, and more” (Ibid), making franchises and sequel a crucial component of Disney’s survival. The question of the targeted audience, and the possible discrepancy between the search for “family audience” and a core audience made of adult fans, keen on maintaining the complexity of the original characters, would, however lead to several controversies. Moreover, as evidenced by several audience studies, audiences frequently made the mistake of reading more adult” fare, like Deadpool, with Disney, when it was in fact a product of 20th Century Fox. Additionally, as has been pinpointed by Bart Beaty, the very borrowing by Marvel Studios of specific “storytelling strategies developed by the Marvel Comics in the 1960s as a means of growing audiences for film franchises in a modular fashion” – namely, postcredit sequences, crossovers, and modular story developments, while participating to the “current fascination with superhero films”, eventually lead to the decreasing appeal of superhero comic books (Beaty).
47The Code authorities responded to the developments in graphic novels and distribution by revising the Comics Code for the final time in 1989. Major revisions reflected the rise of the direct market, with the administrative procedure stating, “The members of the Comics Magazine Association of America include publishers who elect to publish comics that are not intended to bear the Code Seal, and that therefore need not go through the approval process described above. Among the comics in this category may be titles intended for adult readers” (Comics Code Revision of 1989). It required that publishers inform retailers and distributors that these may contain adult content and keep them off the newsstand, but there was no penalty for publishing work through the direct market. This final revision also opened the door to more diversity in comics, stating, “Character portrayals will be carefully crafted and show sensitivity to national, ethnic, religious, sexual, political and socioeconomic orientations” (Comics Code Revision of 1989). The mention of sexual orientation made it possible for writers to portray openly gay and lesbian characters, thereby breaking down one of the main components of Fredric Wertham’s argument in which he accused Wonder Woman of lacking in femininity due to her strength and depicted Batman and Robin as a gay fantasy (Wertham 189-193). Though this would normally represent an expansion of artistic freedom in mainstream comics, the direct market and the rise of alternative presses like Dark Horse Comics meant that many publishers had been engaging with these topics for some time, though they continued to enjoy the nominal protection of the Code’s existence.
48As the 1980s neared their end, Frank Miller looked back on the decade of comic books that he helped shape as a comic book advocate. He worried about the nature of the field, saying, “Superheroes are pretty much staggering around and dying right now. I don’t think this is necessary, I don’t think it holds for all of them, but certainly for most of them” (Mann). He believed that the best stories were those that took the elements of comics that worked best and used them to engage with the present. Some, however, rejected the attempt to incorporate more adult themes into comic books. Robert Crumb, the king of the 1960s and 1970s underground comix, knew of a comic shop in Illinois that faced legal action for selling adult comics:
I’m sure that every time that happens the repercussions run through the whole comic shop business and they all go running scared. It makes them less willing to deal with adult comics at all. Somehow they’ve got to get out of those comic shops and into other kinds of stores, or sell them some other way, because those kid shops are just a losing proposition for adult comics. I don’t know what the way to go with it is – maybe mail order or something… It keeps getting reduced to narrower and narrower outlets. (Groth 104)
49These outlets would begin to feel increasing pressure from local authorities in the 1990s just as they encountered financial risk from the comic book speculative bubble. Furthermore, Crumb’s speculation about mail orders would prove dangerously prophetic for Mike Diana in 1997. For the moment, however, comic books were riding high as Time Magazine celebrated Superman’s fiftieth birthday, linking him with other “enduring legends,” “mythical heroes,” and “classical works of popular art” (Friedrich 66). Comic books were rapidly achieving mainstream acclaim and the Code continued weakening in the face of the direct market.
50For fifty-seven years, the Comics Code Authority governed the mainstream comic book industry. It began as a defense against conservative Cold War culture warriors seeking to reimpose patriarchal family structure and identifying comic books as a violent and sexually degenerate obstacle to doing so. Under its aegis, publishers first saved themselves from local-level bans on comic books before arguing for the artistic integrity and value of the medium. Initially, comic book advocates did this by reinforcing the belief that comic books were for children, finding ways to create products for educational purposes. At the same time that mainstream publishers were emerging from the market nadir of the 1950s, comic book advocates making underground comix used the formal tools of the field to present an alternative narrative marketed to the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. For comic book advocates, the Code represented something to rebel against in their struggle to achieve mainstream cultural cachet and define the artistic worth of their product. The two-tiered system of the 1970s set up the changes during the 1980s, when publishers used the direct market to offer work intended for older readers that was not subject to Code approval while new alternative presses catered to niche markets. When critics within and without the comic book industry celebrated works like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Alan Moore’s Watchmen, they made it possible for publishers to further branch out in the types of stories they printed. For a system that only changed three times in the twentieth century, the Comics Code Authority offers a relatively stable metric to evaluate one part of American popular culture from the mid-twentieth century and how it reflected and challenged the views of comic book readers and the larger cultural landscape.