User blog:Nausiated/1953

So I have just finished reading all the stuff from 1953 I'm going to cover, while I'm still working on the last few months of issue summaries and character appearances, I am once again writing a little retrospective of the year in question.

1953 is the last year of comic books that were published without any sort of censorship or code of conduct. For those who are not familiar with the era, in late 40s and early 50s parental groups came of the mind to believe that comic books were ruining the minds of children, turning them into everything that made 1950s America scared: criminals, maniacs, homosexuals. Sounds a lot familiar doesn't it? Pretty much the same arguments people make about rap music and video games these days. Leading the pack was a psychologist by the name of Frederic Wertheim, who was basically convinced that comic books were going to destroy the youth of America. As an interesting aside, Wertheim's previous credit was doing a psychological profile for cannibal serial killer Albert Fish, who terrorized New York City during the 1920s.

Anyhow, Werheim wrote a book called "Seduction of the Innocent" where he provided "clinical proof" that comic books were warping the minds of children. It's interesting to point out that just recently the sealed records that were the basis of his book were recently made public and many professionals have since found that Werheim manipulated and falsified his data to suit his needs. So basically, like anyone who tries to have popular entertainment banned because it's apparent "danger" to children, was as usual, full of shit.

I haven't read Seduction of the Innocence, but from what I understand the biggest bug up Werheim's butt was horror, and crime comics for the obvious violence and gore. To a lesser degree he was also something he was against because he was convinced that it promoted promiscuity and homosexuality. The biggest targets he went after were Batman and Robin believing that they were kind of gay, and Wonder Woman because the comics featured women in bondage a lot and saw a homoerotic undertone.

If your looking back at this era expecting to find some juicy stuff, it's not really there. Keep in mind this was the 1950s, the age of the atomic family and a lot more conservative ideals of what was considered decent. By today's standards this stuff is really really tame by what is published these days. Especially the Timely/Atlas stuff.

At any rate, the government got involved and basically the order given down was: regulate yourself or be banned. The companies fell in line and Comic Book Code Authority was invented, an authoritative body that censored the content of comic books with strict rules that were enforced. Nothing could be published in a comic book without being approved by the code. I'll get into this further once I get into 1954...

But with the pre-code stuff of 1953, a lot of the stuff was very very tame. The majority of stuff that was out there were funnies, war comics (the Korean War was in high gear), westerns and spy tales. Another genre that was making a come back was the jungle adventure tale which had a brief popularity in the early 40s with characters like Ka-Zar, Trojak and the like.

Recurring characters from the 50s were wartime heroes Combat Kelly, Combat Casey, and Battle Brady. Most of the stories involved these various characters using unorthodox methods in fighting North Korean/Chinese forces during the war. They were usually quite mundane. There is a lot of material here that was, by today's standards, pretty racist. However, that said, it was not as malicious as some of the depictions of the Japanese during World War II. A lot of the material would be simply ignorant of the culture and language for the most part. Keeping in mind that China was considered an ally during the war, the outright nastiness that was directed at the Japanese during World War II, was more of a ignorance of the Chinese during the Korean War. A lot of the stories of course did not go into the political aspect and painted the South Koreans as helpless people who needed liberation and were just happy as clams that the United Nations (And specifically AMERICA) coming to their rescue. Combat Casey and Battle Brady briefly had their own series but they were also cancelled by the end of 1953, with the characters being pushed into titles like Battlefront, and Combat. The only character who retained an ongoing title was Combat Kelly, whose title endured throughout most of the 50s.

Kent Blake continued to be a Korean War hero as well until the last couple issues of the series which saw Kent returning to being a globe trotting counter-espionage agent, stopping communists all over the globe, however the series was shortly cancelled after it returned to it's status quo. Kent Blake would not resurface against until in 1979, where the character -- still active as a spy in the modern age and apparently not that much older than previously seen -- was killed off. His ghost helped Spider-Man prove his death was not a suicide, but a murder thereby insuring his wife was granted his life insurance policy.

Also maintaining a popularity of sorts was the western tale, however by this point most western heroes had their series cancelled, the only recurring character being Kid Colt whose series continued to run throughout 1953, as well as also appearing in Wild Western. The majority of other western stories were all stand alone tales that did not involve any recurring characters. However, Atlas brought back some of the more popular characters later on in the year, bringing back Black Rider who was on a hiatus throughout the entire year. Another return was the original Two-Gun Kid who was last seen in 1949, his series was revived in December 1952 and continued to run with Clay Harder as the main character until the 1960's when he was replaced by Matt Hawk.

As I mentioned jungle tales were becoming popular again and 1953 saw the introduction of Lorna the Jungle Queen, whose title renewed interest in jungle adventures -- which became more apparent in 1954 with the advent of more recurring characters.

1953 did not offer much in the way of change, 1954 of course shook things up. It was a year where the Apache Kid made a come back, as well as a failed attempt to revive Captain America, Bucky, the Sub-Mariner, Namora, the Human Torch and Toro; not to mention the year the CAC.