A Brief History of Cultural Battles Over Comic Books
Super Heroes Soar Onto the Scene
Conservative (Comic) Book Burning
Fascist ‘Anti-Fascists’ Try to Ban All Comics For Everyone
Batman & Robin Will Turn Your Son Gay - Dr. Wertham’s Campaign Against Comic Books & Freedom of the Press
‘All Comic Books Must Be Banned!’
Legislation Against Comic Books
The Comics Code is Introduced
Anti-Constitution Conservatism
The Left & Right Switch Positions Over Time
‘Comic Books are Racist & Fascist!’
‘Comic Books Glorify Guns So Ban Them!’
‘Comic Books Promote Violence’
‘Comic Books are Sinful & Sexual!’
‘Comic Books Promote Non-Traditional Gender Roles & Yet Make Men Too Masculine!’
‘Comic Books Rape Children’s Minds!’
‘Comic Books Will Turn Your Kids Gay & Make Them Have Sex With Pederasts!’
The Comics Code Authority
The Conservative Comics Code
The Rhyming Pendulum of History
Culture Battle Won - Exit Catwoman
Batwoman & Batgirl Invented to Rescue Batman & Robin From Accusations of Gayness
Further Reading
The following should be considered along with a number of other entries in the Encyclopedia regarding attacks on comic books and super heroes from the left.
Intro
Historical perspective is important. Without it, one may, for example, think that it’s always been the left that has been against freedom of speech and freedom of the press and that conservatives have always tried to conserve these rights. Looking across enough decades, one sees the pendulum swinging left to right and back again.
Comic books and super heroes have always been the subject of cultural battles. Looking back at he path of history, one can perceive the footprints left behind by liberals and conservatives as they change their positions on issues that involve comic books and super heroes. Like 2 parallel trails of footprints spanning across time, one on the left, the other on the right. One wants censorship and the other upholds human rights. Every few decades, the footprints cross over each other as they switch sides.
Cultural battles have been fought over such things as Wonder Woman’s cleavage, the nature of Batman’s relationship with Robin, “a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs” who “often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident”,1 Catwoman’s criminality and the ethical nature of the romance she shares with Batman, Wonder Woman’s sexual orientation and the nature of her relationship with Black Cat who is a younger woman, Batwoman’s sexual orientation and skin color, Mary Jane’s hair and skin color, the charge that Superman, the sort of racially pure Übermensch (super man) that Hitler wanted to engineer, is himself a fascist and battles over sex and violence in general when it comes to comic books and super heroes. As we’ll see, there was even an argument that comic books should be effectively banned because people should be reading the Bible instead.2
These characters have been featured in comic books, radio shows, TV shows, films, video games and more for many decades. Their popularity shrinks and swells in waves. They are seemingly immortal and survive by changing incarnations. They come and go in various forms and mediums.
Though it may not repeat itself, history rhymes, as the saying goes.
Having been around for so long, comic books and super heroes serve as an interesting case study wherein we can see the swings of the pendulum between conservatism and liberalism over the decades and wherein we can see that conservatism and liberalism change over time, even swapping positions with each other on certain issues.
Indeed, history rhymes.
A Brief History of Cultural Battles Over Comic Books
How far back do comics go? Pictorial art meant to tell stories goes back at least as far as prehistoric cave paintings such as those found in the Lascaux cave in Montignac, France. These are thought to be roughly 18,000 years old.3 One scene seems to involve action with a bison and a therianthrope, that is, a human-animal hybrid.4
By the way, a character with a human body and bird head sounds a lot like something from a comic book, doesn’t it? If he had wings he’d look a bit more like Birdman.
This figure also seems to be sporting an erection and so it also seems to be an early case of a sexually graphic comic if we can consider it to be so. It may be that even back when art was first made, it was argued that it was a corrupting influence on society.
The first cave painting and the first art critic pissing on it in the comedy film History Of The World, Part One (1981).
People speak of the Golden Age of Comic Books, the Silver Age and so on. Let’s dub this the Stone Age of Comics. This name would reference not only art on cave walls but art on stone temple walls, on ancient tapestries, scrolls and so on. Stories were told with sequences of pictures in ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Mayan, Vedic and other cultures of the distant past.
Images such as the two above, icons, were subject to the culture war between iconoclasts who wanted to eradicate all visual representations of the divine and more conservative people. See section on iconoclasmfor more on that.
images of caricatures with related wording have existed since the Middle Ages, comics gained popularity through publication in the British humor magazine, Punch . . .
Comics were included in newspapers and a comic called
The Yellow Kid became so popular that in 1896 it was drawn in two different newspapers by two different artists at the same time.
Then,
published in 1897, The Yellow Kid in McFadden’s Flats is considered to be the first comic book, insomuch that it bore the phrase “comic book” on its back cover.
Furthermore,
the use of sequential panels and word balloons in the comic strip had a tremendous influence on the future of cartoons and the comic book industry. Far from the full-color glossy comic books of today, The Yellow Kid in McFadden’s Flats featured black and white reprints of popular newspaper comic strips. Subsequent comic strip compilation books included reprints of The Katzenjammer Kids, Happy Hooligan, Buster Brown, and Mutt & Jeff . . .
The first monthly comic book, aptly titled Comics Monthly, began publication in 1922, though it also featured reprints of daily newspaper comic strips. In 1933, Funnies On Parade became the first color comic book printed in the now standard size of 6 5/8 x 10 1/4 inches.
This was the beginning of what would later be called the Platinum Age of comic books.6
Superheroes Soar Onto the Scene
Heralding the so-called Golden Age of comic books, Superman flew into fame, first appearing in 1938 in Action Comics #1.7 Batman had his start in 1939 (as “the Batman”) in Detective Comics #27.8 Batman got his own comic in 1940 and it was in the first issue of Batman (Spring, 1940) that “the Cat” first appeared. Later renamed Catwoman, she was both a criminal and a love interest for Batman.9 Batman’s sidekick Robin also first appeared in 1940.10 Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman first took flight in 1941.11 Many more super heroes followed in the Golden Age, the Silver Age (beginning in 1956) and beyond.
Reportedly,12 on October 26, 1948, in Spencer, West Virginia,
children — overseen by priests, teachers, and parents — publicly burned several hundred comic books. For nearly a month, students gathered books. Then, they piled the books up into six foot high stack in the yard of the school. Then, six hundred children surrounded the comics and a student lit the cover of a Superman comic and threw it on top of the pile.
Then, not long after, in Binghamton, New York, residents
conducted a house to house collection of comic books and had a mass public comic book burning.
So, rather than, “Vehr are your paperz?!?” it was “Vehr are your comic books?!?” The CBLDF wrote,13
The following picture of the Binghamton Burning was featured in the December 20th issue of Time.
The caption under the picture read,
Manners and Morals
In Binghamton, N.Y., Students of St. Patrick’s parochial school collected 2,000 objectionable comic books in a house-to-house canvass, burned them in the school yard.
As a result of this coverage, similar events followed in many other cities. In Rumson, New Jersey, a group of young Cub Scouts conducted a two-day drive to collect objectionable comic books, which would be burned in Rumson’s Victory Park. The Scout that collected the most books won the right to light the blaze. At the last minute a decision was made to recycle and not burn the books. In Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a troop of Girl Scouts collected objectionable books and brought them to students at St. Mary’s, a Catholic high school, where a mock trial was held and, after finding the books guilty of “leading young people astray and building up false conceptions in the minds of youth,” the books were burned. In Chicago, a burning was organized by a Catholic Diocese. In Vancouver, Canada, nearly 8,000 comics were set ablaze by the JayCee Youth Leadership.
In a strange bit of irony, a large majority of the comics burned were produced by EC comics, who would later print adaptations of stories by Ray Bradbury, starting in 1952. A year later, in 1953, Bradbury would release Farenheight 451, a dystopian future in which books are burned and outlawed. But, what some people don’t know is that Farenheight 451 is based on a story called “The Fireman,” which in turn was based on a story named “Bright Phoenix.” “Bright Phoenix” was actually written in 1947, aligning the timing of the story with the early comic book burnings (and the now infamous Nazi book burnings in World War II). And while it is a known fact that the title of the book refers to the temperature at which paper burns, I’ll bet it took a considerably lower ignition point to destroy the low quality paper used in comics in the forties. . .
These book burners were probably not indicative of Americans in general, just the more conservative Americans. At any rate, there was a movement swelling and on that wave rode politicians and people like Fredric Wertham.
Fascist ‘Anti-Fascists’ Try to Ban All Comics For Everyone
According to the CBLDF,14in 1948, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, M.D.
began his public attack on comics with an interview in Collier’s Magazine called “Horror in the Nursery.” A short time later, he presented at a symposium entitled “The Psychopathy of Comic Books.” In May 1948, those same views were released, with the same name, in the American Journal of Psychotherapy and in the Saturday Review of Literature in an article entitled “The Comics . . . Very Funny” (excerpts would later be included in the August issue of Reader’s Digest). Wertham considered comic book readers to be “abnormally sexually aggressive” and thought that reading comics led to crime. Now, Wertham wasn’t the first person to have this opinion. But the problem was that Wertham was a highly distinguished psychologist who thought comic books were bad for kids and eloquently voiced his concerns. In fact, Wertham would later say to the 1954 U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Juvenile Delinquency, “I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry.” With Wertham pointing the finger and leading the charge, America had found a new enemy.
Batman & Robin Will Turn Your Son Gay - Dr. Wertham’s Campaign Against Comic Books & Freedom of the Press
Speculations about the nature of Batman and Robin’s relationship have been a continuing topic of debate15at least since the early 1950s when Dr. Wertham argued that Batman and Robin promote homosexuality.16He made waves with his arguments against comic books in the press, persuading lawmakers to take action.17Then his book Seduction of the Innocent - The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth was published in 195418 bringing more heat on comic books.
Wertham and his book told parents and other agents of conformity that, yes, comic books were indeed rotting adolescents’ moral, emotional, spiritual and sexual well-being. His dubious claims were later shown as coming from falsified research, but at the time they landed forcefully, especially when it came to superheroes. Superman, the most popular comic book hero of the time, was fascist. And in the dynamic between Batman and Robin, Wertham saw “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together.”
For the industry generally, Seduction of the Innocent led to the self-censoring Comics Code Authority, to keep the government from touching books. And when it came specifically to making Batman “safe,” National Comics (the predecessor to DC Comics) decided he needed a love interest—and Batwoman was born.
Bob Kane, who created the comic strip character Batman, posing with some of his original drawings of Batman, Robin and Batwoman, in 1979. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
Bob Kane named Batwoman’s alter ego Kathy Kane, by the way. They also write,
After her 1956 debut, Batwoman became a Bat-family regular through the ‘50s and early ‘60s; her niece, Betty Kane, even became the original Bat-Girl—introduced in 1961, replaced by Barbara Gordon in 1967—giving Robin his own heterosexual love interest.
We’ll return to the whole subject of Batman, Robin, Catwoman, Batwoman and Catgirl as well as their sexual orientations later on.
‘All Comic Books Must Be Banned!’
Dr. Wertham, the seemingly conservative Christian author of Seduction of the Innocent accused comic books of promoting such things as fascism, racism, hate, antisemitism, misogyny and rape; the sort of accusations one would expect would come from the liberal/progressive/woke left in our era. These days, arguments in favor of censorship to protect people from being exposed to hate or racism are not usually made by the sort of people who would argue that Wonder Woman’s suit is too revealing or that Batman and Robin’s sinful relationship will turn boys gay.
You can read the book here. With such chapter titles as Design for Delinquency - The Contribution of Crime Comic Books to Juvenile Delinquency, I Want to Be a Sex Maniac - Comic Books and the Psychosexual Development of Children, Bumps and Bulges - Advertising in Comic Books and The Devil’s Allies - The Struggle Against the Comic Book Industry, and with the author’s argument that reading comic books prevents children from reading the Bible,20 one might think the book was written from what we would call a conservative, right-wing position. It was, for it’s time. However, what it means to be conservative or liberal changes over time.
Dr. Wertham, argued for censoring comic books because they trigger black children with racial microaggressions (as they would be called today), because they normalize gun ownership and because they make people hateful, sexist, racist, antisemitic rapists. Sound familiar? With what other mediums have people tried to clean up what they claim is racist, sexist, hateful and so on?
Sometimes the right wants censorship while the left resists.
Other times the left wants censorship and the right resists.
The pendulum swings.
The author argued that Canada, England21 and Australia22 were "progressive" enough to protect their public from comic books, so why shouldn’t America?
This author who accused others of being fascist (including Superman) argued in favor of censorship but tried to convince the reader that he was not in favor of censorship by incorrectly defining the word. Who does that sound like in out era? Yes, history may not repeat itself but it does indeed rhyme. He wrote23
Surely the minds of children deserve as much protection. I do not advocate censorship, which is imposing the will of the few on the many, but just the opposite, a step to real democracy: the protection of the many against the few. That can only be done by law. Just as we have ordinances against the pollution of water, so now we need ordinances against the pollution of children’s minds.” I suggested a law that would forbid the display and sale of crime comic books to children under fifteen.
Note that forbidding the display of those comic books to children under 15 would mean that there would be almost no places where they could be displayed for sale. But then again, Wertham argued against all comic books anyway.24
On page 355, he argued that censorship of comics would pose no danger of censorship of other media. In fact, he argued,
It is not censorship of childrens crime comics, but its complete absence that threatens other media with unwanted controls. Quite apart from the fear of censorship, the defense of comic books stems from the inverted snobbishness of some who defend the right of what they consider the lower orders to read any trash sold to them.
What do you think of that last sentence? It’s somehow snobbish to defend people’s right to have the freedom to read comic books? Wertham’s arguments for censorship remind me of arguments for censorship from the Critical Theory school of thought.25
The response to my proposal was widespread. Dozens of towns and cities—eventually over a hundred—passed ordinances against the very comic books whose harmfulness I had indicated. In a number of states anti-comic-book laws were introduced in legislatures, but the comics conquered the committees, and the laws did not come off.
The most serious and efficient attempt to pass a county law was made in Los Angeles County in California. The County Counsel, Harold W. Kennedy, read about the proposal I had made in Boston about a law and framed one according to which the sale of comic books in which crime and violence were prominently featured could not be sold to anyone under eighteen. The Board of Supervisors passed this law. . .
The subsequent legal history of this law was most involved, with the real issue of its clinical justification not taken up at all. The newspapers reported briefly that the law had been declared unconstitutional. The spokesmen for the comic-book industry have repeated this so often that many people, including lawyers and legislators, really believe that such a law was declared unconstitutional in California and would be unconstitutional anywhere else. But that is not how it was.
What followed was long and complex, involving legal maneuvres and precedents. What matters is that the Comics Code and Comics Code Authority were introduced in reaction to all this.
Despite the fact of these adverse court decisions and despite the fact that twenty-seven comic-book bills all over the country were killed in committee, the public—or rather, mothers—continued sporadic protests. The comic-book industry answered with a magic word, a “code.”
About a month after my views were summarized in a national magazine a new code was announced. . .
. . . Everybody thought something had been achieved.
He went on to complain that the sex and violence continued despite the code.28
Anti-Constitution Conservatism
He went on to complain about Constitutional rights.29 Yet he accused others of being fascist! He implied (pages 325-326) that
freedom in the case of comic books
is
is as much a tyranny as any other on the face of the earth.
radio, books, movies, stage plays, translations, do function under a censorship. So do newspaper comic strips, which all have to pass the censorship of the editor
and implied that therefore censorship from the government should be accepted! He wrote31
It is a widely held fallacy that civil liberties are endangered or could be curtailed via children's books. But freedom to publish crime comics has nothing to do with civil liberties. It is a perversion of the very idea of civil liberties.
This would later be rhymed by people who argue (in our own era) that allowing people to say “hateful things”, such as referring to a man as a man even if he wants to be referred to as a woman or a tri-gendered rainbowed space unicorn, is a perversion of the very idea of free speech and that “hate speech is not free speech!”.
There seems to be a widely held belief that democracy demands leaving the regulation of children's reading to the individual. Leaving everything to the individual is actually not democracy; it is anarchy. And it is a pity that children should suffer from the anarchistic trends in our society.
Neutrality—especially when hidden under the cloak of scientific objectivity—that is the devil’s ally.
This may remind one of how, in our own era, leftists accuse anyone to the right of them of being far-right, even if they are actually leftist.
The Left & Right Switch Positions Over Time
The author complained that comic books slut-shame and fat-shame women and are misogynistic;34
Where in any other childhood literature except children’s comics do you find a woman called (and treated as) a “fat slut”? The activities which women share with men are mostly related to force and violence.
Then again, the author warned that Batman and Robin promote homosexuality and that Wonder Woman promotes lesbianism. These sentiments that would not be made by moderate conservatives today but which would certainly not be expressed by someone who is liberal, progressive, woke or left-wing. He wrote that,35
Comic books direct children’s interest not toward the right, but toward the wrong.
Regarding the methodology of his research, Dr. Wertham writes36
a most important part of our research consisted in the reading and analysis of hundreds of comic books.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with that research method, I find it interesting enough to note here that this method would be called “content analysis” by critical theorists andothers on the left in our era. For example, Anita Sarkeesian claimed to engage in content analysis of video games looking for sexism and misogyny. It would later turn out that she did not honestlyy conduct or present this research (she stole gameplay video from videos uploaded by other players without acknowledgement) and made false claims.37 Dr. Wertham also did not properly conduct his research, reportedly.38
Ah, how the pendulum swings!
And how it encounters lies and cancel culture on both sides!
Dr. Wertham quoted an other author, with whom he apparently agreed with, as saying,39
. . . The liberal-minded citizen dislikes coercive action, tries to escape from corruption privately, and discovers that his neighbor, his community, are affected. . . .
He is arguing against what we today would by definition say is the libertarian position; allow people to handle such things privately. But here in 1954, in this book, this is characterized as the liberal position, a position the author is arguing against.
Dr. Wertham likened the task of reading all those comic books to the great “Hurculean” labor of cleaning the vast “Augean stables” of the manure that had built up for too long.40 This may remind one of Anita Sarkeesian’s claims that she was disgusted by the video games she claims she spent all that time playing for “content analysis” to prove that video games are corrupting.
‘Comic Books are Racist & Fascist!’
In his own way, he complained how some comics might trigger a person of color with racist microaggressions. For example, he wrote on page 102,
Some children take for granted these comics standards about races, with more or less awareness of their implications. For others they constitute a serious traumatic experience.
As our work went on we established the basic ingredients of the most numerous and widely read comic books: violence; sadism and cruelty; the superman philosophy, an offshoot of Nietzsche’s superman who said, “When you go to women, don’t forget the whip.”…How did Nietzsche get into the nursery?
This was written in the 1950s when the Fascist/Nazi/Stalinist version of the philosopher Nietzsche’s concept of a superman was something America’s enemies embraced much to the loss of their souls; a Faustian overreach. The Nazis, of course, thought of the superman in racial terms. Their attempts to achieve racial purity through genocide and genetic engineering was horrifying. With this in the mind of the average reader, Wertham wrote the following42
While the white people in jungle books are blonde and athletic and shapely, the idea conveyed about the natives is that there are fleeting transitions between apes and humans. I have repeatedly found in my studies that this characterization of colored peoples as subhuman, in conjunction with depiction of forceful heroes as blond Nordic supermen, has made a deep —and I believe lasting—impression on young children. . .
. . . The supermen are either half-undressed like their jungle brothers or dressed in fancy raiment that is a mixture of the costumes of S.S. men, divers and robots.
The Superman type of comic books tends to force and superforce. Dr. Paul A. Witty, professor of education at Northwestern University, has well described these comics when he said that they “present our world in a kind of Fascist setting…
This reminds one of accusations of “fascism” in our era. He carries on to say that superhero comics present things in a setting…
…of violence and hate…
This is not unlike accusations of “hate speech” in our era.
…and destruction. I think it is bad for children,” he goes on, “to get that kind of recurring diet . . . [they] place too much emphasis on a Fascist society. Therefore the democratic ideals that we should seek are likely to be overlooked.”
Actually, Superman (with the big S on his uniform—we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of ever new submen, criminals and “foreign- looking” people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible. It is this feature that engenders in children either one or the other of two attitudes: either they fantasy themselves as supermen, with the attendant prejudices against the submen, or it makes them submissive and receptive to the blandishments of strong men who will solve all their social problems for them—by force.
when a child is shown a comic book that he has not read and is asked to pick out the bad man, he will unhesitatingly pick out types according to the stereotyped conceptions of race prejudice, and tell you the reason for his choice. “Is he an American?” “No!”
Attacks by older children on younger ones, inspired or fortified by the race prejudice shown in comic books, are getting more frequent.
I note that he did not even attempt to support that last claim. Just believe him or you’re racist.
I have seen such cases (which do not always come to the attention of the authorities) with victims belonging to various minorities. For the victims, this is frequently a serious traumatic emotional episode. Some juvenile gangs make it a practice to beat dark-skinned children, and they do it with comic-book brutality. So comic books provide both the methods and the vilification of the victims.
They wouldn’t be that way or know how to be that violent if it were not for comic books. Sure.
Comic books read with glee by many children, including very young ones, teach the props of anti-Semitism. There is the book with the story of the “itch-ray projector,” with illustrations which might be taken directly from Nazi magazines like Streicher’s Stuermer.
Yep. The idea of making people itchy with a ray-gun is right out of the Nazi play-book. Yep. The author wrote,45
The depiction of racial stereotypes in sadistic actions makes a great impression on children. It is not difficult to find out why that is so if one bothers to analyze children’s psychological processes in this sphere. One effect of this fomenting of race hatred is the fact that in many children’s minds mankind is divided into two groups: regular men who have the right to live, and submen who deserve to be killed. But the deeper psychological effects are more subtle. A comic book has a picture of a white girl held with her arms seized from behind by a dark-skinned man. A picture like this stands out in a child’s mind quite independent of the story. The picture alone becomes the starting point for fantasy. Its sexual effect has been built up by previous pictures showing her, front and back. There is another story showing a subhuman caveman grabbing a blonde heroine.
On pages 104-105 he wrote,
In many comic books dark-skinned people are depicted in rapelike situations with white girls . . . In another specimen the editorial viciousness is carried to the extreme of showing a white girl being overpowered by dark-skinned people who have tails. In another comic book the hero throws bombs and a Negro from his airplane. A picture shows the bombs and the Negro in mid-air while the hero calls out: “bombs and bums away!”
One of the most significant and deeply resented manifestations of race prejudice in the mores of the United States is the fact that in books, movies and magazines photographs of white women with bared breasts are taboo, while the same pictures of colored girls are permitted. Comic books for children make this same distinction . . .
When the girls are white, there is always some covering of the breasts. Only colored girls have their breasts fully exposed.
This is a demonstration of race prejudice for children, driven home by the appeal to sexual instincts. It is probably one of the most sinister methods of suggesting that races are fundamentally different with regard to moral values, and that one is inferior to the other. . .
Against the background of regular-featured blonde Americans, the people of Asia are depicted in comic books as cruelly grimacing and toothy creatures, often of an unnatural yellow color.
False stereotypes of race prejudice exist also in the “love comics.” Children can usually pick the unsatisfactory lover just by his looks.
On page 309 he wrote
The same theme of race ridicule is played up in the good animal comic book Bugs Bunny. Colored people are described as “superstitious natives”…
On page 358 he wrote about
The race ridicule and nationality stereotypes of comic books
and
the race prejudice in comic books
‘Comic Books Glorify Guns So Ban Them!’
The author complained about the promotion of guns and other weapons in both the stories in the comic books and in their advertisements. For example, he wrote46 that along with a story in which Superman used violence to solve a problem,
a gun advertisement with four pictures of guns completes the impression that even if you can’t become Superman, at least you can rise above the average by using force
while on an other page,47 he wrote that in one comic book, there was
a full-page advertisement for guns, “throwing knives” and whips, and a two-page advertisement for “Official Marine Corps knives, used by the most rugged branch of the armed forces, leathernecks swear by them.”
In millions of comic books, ads make all kinds of weapons attractive to children. There are premiums for boys and girls “consisting of genuine .22 cal. rifles” (of course, with an illustration of the rifle). This is a deadly weapon and only the other day a fourteen-year-old boy killed an eighteen-year-old with one of them.
All kinds of “toy” guns and pistols are advertised in comic books. A typical advertisement has a big picture of a gun;
Amazing new gun. Shoots like a real gun.
An accompanying sequence teaches how the gun might be used to threaten people:
You fooled us, kid, I thought that gun was a real one!
Other guns can be transformed into dangerous weapons. An eleven-year-old boy who knew his way around told me about one of them: “They can make it snap faster with an elastic. They shoot little round pebbles. You get the pebbles from puzzles they sell in stores. They fall in little holes when the puzzles are jiggled around.”
A great role in the advertising is played by B.B. and air guns. Some shoot B.B.’s, some, steel darts. They are considered harmless by some people—but not by children who have been injured or by those who have lost an eye when shot by them.
Medical journals and public agencies have drawn attention to the many serious eye accidents from B.B. and air guns.
I inquired of one public agency, which knew of a number of cases blinded by these weapons, what they were going to do about it. They answered that they were “planning a campaign to reach all children in school about the horrors of B.B. guns.” Dr. James B. Bain, of Washington, D.C., reports twenty-nine eye injuries, in five of which an eye had to be removed—all caused by B.B. guns in one single year in Washington alone. As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Society for the Prevention of Blindness of the District of Columbia reports nine B.B. eye injuries in three months and asks for laws prohibiting the sale of B.B. guns to children under eighteen: “The only effective way of preventing these injuries is to ban the sale, use and possession of air guns.”
According to statistics from 421 hospitals all over the country, reported by Pathfinder, there were from Christmas, 1949, through January, 1950, 275 air gun injuries; 164 of them were eye injuries, with permanent impairment of vision in sixty-four and eye removal in twenty-five. Philadelphia pioneered with a humane ordinance banning air guns. The results were spectacular, a lesson to those who do not realize that progress in preventive medicine is helped by laws. Where there had been seventeen air rifle eye injuries treated at Wills Hospital in Philadelphia in the short survey period, in the twenty-five months following enactment of the ordinance there was only one. A similar observation was made in Pittsburgh, where in 1951 an eye injury from B.B. guns occurred once every twelve days; when the use of these guns was restricted there was only one such injury in 1952. No wonder that the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness suggested in 1953 an ordinance, which among other things would prevent the sale of air guns to minors.
All this is a good illustration of the social problems of comic books. On the one hand adults and children are warned against these guns; at the same time glamorous advertisements in comics seduce more and more children into wanting, buying and using them. Children’s real interests seem to count for little. While the experts in ophthalmology know the danger of these guns and have advocated the only real method of prevention, there are experts in child psychiatry and education who do not draw the line at endorsing comic books which have ads with big pictures of these guns:
Strap this sweet-shootin’ - on your bike . . . Only
$6.95
Shoot regular steel BBs . . . ($6.95)
You have a good idea by now, no doubt. Just know that he argued against toy gun ads and illustrations of guns in comic books all through his book.
‘Comic Books Promote Violence’
Also, all throughout his book, the author preached against the violence he said was to be commonly found in comic books. The Dr. expressed a distaste for the way Super heroes use violence to save the day. This is a general theme of the book, expressing a conservative Christian view that leans more towards the lamb than to the lion. Jesus wouldn’t be racist as we are all God’s children and Jesus would turn the other cheek rather than knock the bad guy out. That indeed is a valid interpretation of the Bible.
But for his whining about the use of violence by superheroes he might have been stereotyped as a “bleeding heart liberal” by the average conservative or neo-conservative in the 1980’s and 1990’s. He worried that these comic books taught children that problems are to be solved through violence. He wrote,49
If I were asked to express in a single sentence what has happened mentally to many American children during the last decade I would know no better formula than to say that they were conquered by Superman.
Then he wrote that the formula for Superman stories is violence with the implication that it is bad that50
“When a gangster rams Superman on the skull with a crowbar, the crowbar rebounds and shatters his own noggin.”
A child psychiatrist declared that Superman “provides an inexpensive form of therapy for unhappy children.”
Dr. Werthan also argued against other, more insidious forms of violence he argued comic books encouraged. For example, he wrote that he interviewed a young man who was in jail because he had been accused of attempted rape. He left a young woman bruised with torn clothing. He had been violent with her, Dr. Wertham argued, because since childhood, he had been aroused by images in comics of bound women. Assuming that the young man told him the truth, Dr. Wertham wrote,52
He had no intention of raping the girl, an act of which he would have been less ashamed. What he wanted was just to tie her up. The struggle to do it had given him full sexual satisfaction. This was one of the cases that made me resolve to study the comic book question systematically.
We seem to have made a fetich of violence.
He even writes about comic books leading to damage of furniture,53
A pamphlet distributed by the Child Study Association of America contains this outlandish statement: “Actually, hitting is one of the ways in which children learn to get along together.” At a meeting of the National Conference of Social Work, the statement was made: “Brutality has always been a part of children’s literature and life. ... If your child destroys your furniture while imitating Superman or Captain Marvel, he’s being motivated by impulses we shall need more of, if the world is to survive—the impulse to annihilate an evil.” The speaker did not explain what was so evil about the furniture
The closest critics of the poison tree should be the parents. Gilbert Seldes has correctly seen as a key problem of comic books “the paralysis of the parents.” In his recent book The Great Audience he says: “. . . unlike the other mass media, comics have almost no esthetic interest.” (I would question his “almost.”) After quoting testimony that connects comic books with delinquency and evidence of their brutality and unwholesomeness he goes on: “Most of these outcries represent the attitudes of parents searching for a way to cope with a powerful business enterprise which they consider positively evil. . . . The liberal-minded citizen dislikes coercive action, tries to escape from corruption privately, and discovers that his neighbor, his community, are affected. . . . Year after year Dr. Fredric Wertham brings forth panels showing new ugliness and sadistic atrocities; year after year his testimony is brushed aside as extravagant and out-of-date. The paralysis of the parent is almost complete.”
What causes this paralysis of parents? I do not think it is a real paralysis; it is helplessness. The vast majority of mothers have been outraged when they read the crime comic books their children read. But the moment they raise their voices they are knocked out by the experts for the defense and by an avalanche of pseudo-Freudian lore. Freud.
Comic-book stories teach violence, the advertisements provide the weapons. The stories instill a wish to be a superman, the advertisements promise to supply the means for becoming one. Comic-book heroines have super-figures; the comic-book advertisements promise to develop them. The stories display the wounds; the advertisements supply the knives. The stories feature scantily clad girls; the advertisements outfit peeping Toms.
Furthermore, he devotes chapter XIII to the subject of violence in comic books and discusses violence in much of chapter XIV.
Images from Dr. Wertham's book.
‘Comic Books are Sinful & Sexual!’
In our own time, such complaints about racism, fascism and guns are not likely to come from the same author who argues for conventional Christian sexual morality as on, for example, on pages 177-178, where he warned that comics lead children into temptation and masturbation or as on page 217 where he wrote that advertisements for binoculars in comic books are meant to supply kids with the means by which to peer through windows and see people in their bedrooms.
The author not only argued that there is too much sex in comics but also that much of the sex is weird, sadomasochistic or otherwise kinky. See, for some examples of this, pages 174-175, 181-184 and the entire book in general.
‘Comic Books Promote Non-Traditional Gender Roles & Yet Make Men Too Masculine!’
Beginning on page 233, Dr. Wertham complains,
Another statement by a comic-book expert that has gained wide currency is that comic books contain “a strikingly advanced concept of femininity and masculinity.” In further explanation of this statement it is said: “Women in the stories are placed on an equal footing with men and indulge in the same type of activities. They are generally aggressive and have positions which carry responsibility. Male heroes predominate but to a large extent even these are essentially unsexed creatures. The men and women have secondary sexual mannerisms, but in their relationship to each other they are de-sexed.”
If a normal person looks at comic books in the light of this statement he soon realizes that the “advanced concept of femininity and masculinity” is really a regressive formula of perversity. Let’s compare this statement with the facts. One of the many comics endorsed by this child psychiatrist has the typical Batman story, the muscular superman who lives blissfully with an adolescent. Is it so advanced to suggest, stimulate or reinforce such fantasies? The normal concept for a boy is to wish to become a man, not a superman, and to live with a girl rather than with a superheroic he-man. One team-expert has himself admitted that among the three comic-book characters “most widely disapproved” by adults are Superman and Batman—the prototypes of this “advanced concept of masculinity.” Evidently the healthy normal adult rejects them.
As to the “advanced femininity,” what are the activities in comic books which women “indulge in on an equal footing with men”? They do not work. They are not homemakers. They do not bring up a family. Mother-love is entirely absent. Even when Wonder Woman adopts a girl there are Lesbian overtones. They are either superwomen flying through the air, scantily dressed or uniformed, outsmarting hostile natives, animals or wicked men, functioning like Wonder Woman in a fascistic-futurist setting, or they are molls or prizes to be pushed around and sadistically abused. In no other literature for children has the image of womanhood been so degraded. Where in any other childhood literature except children’s comics do you find a woman called (and treated as) a “fat slut”? The activities which women share with men are mostly related to force and violence.
Also,
The prototype of the super-she with “advanced femininity” is Wonder Woman, also endorsed by this same expert. Wonder Woman is not the natural daughter of a natural mother, nor was she born like Athena from the head of Zeus. She was concocted on a sales formula. Her originator, a psychologist retained by the industry, has described it: “Who wants to be a girl? And that’s the point. Not even girls want to be girls. . . . The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman. . . . Give (men) an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they’ll be proud to become her willing slaves.” Neither folklore nor normal sexuality, nor books for children, come about this way. If it were possible to translate a cardboard figure like Wonder Woman into life, every normal-minded young man would know there is something wrong with her.
On page 236, he wrote,
In vain does one look in comic books for seeds of constructive work or of ordinary home life. I have never seen in any of the crime, superman, adventure, space, horror, etc., comic books a normal family sitting down at a meal. I have seen an elaborate, charming breakfast scene, but it was between Batman and his boy, complete with checkered tablecloth, milk, cereal, fruit juice, dressing-gown and newspaper. And I have seen a parallel scene with the same implications when Wonder Woman had breakfast with an admiring young girl, with checkered tablecloth, cereal, milk, toast and the kitchen sink filled with dishes draining in the background.
‘Comic Books Rape Children’s Minds!’
On pages 271-272, he wrote,
Suppose for a moment that a girl of nine is physically violated by an adult. Democratic justice demands the most rigorous determination: Did this violation occur? Is it established beyond a reasonable doubt that it was this adult who did it? But do we give this man the right to address the parents of the victim, expounding his view that from his investigations he has found that the girl liked it; that it satisfied a “real innermost need” of her own; that struggling against him helped her to get rid of her own “aggressions”; that in her “humdrum” home and school life this was a way of psychological “escape for her; and that after all, in this modem world of ours girls may get raped and he was helping her to become acquainted with and adjust to “reality”; that she will laugh it off and grow out of it; that the basic character is formed in the first few years, anyhow, so that rape when she’s a little older than that can have no real effect?
This simile is not far-fetched. This is precisely what we permit the comic-book industry to do when they violate children’s minds.
‘Comic Books Will Turn Your Kids Gay & Make Them Have Sex With Pederasts!’
On pages 188-189 he wrote,
A homoerotic attitude is also suggested by the presentation of masculine, bad, witchlike or violent women. In such comics women are depicted in a definitely anti-erotic light, while the young male heroes have pronounced erotic overtones. The muscular male supertype, whose primary sex characteristics are usually well emphasized, is in the setting of certain stories the object of homoerotic sexual curiosity and stimulation. This, incidentally, is increased by the male “art nudes” featured in advertisements in millions of children’s comics, which correspond to the athletic male art nudes appearing in certain magazines for adults so often collected by homosexuals.
Ok, well, male “art nudes” marketed to males does sound a bit gay. So what? Besides, if there were anything wrong with being gay, it would still be silly to argue that comic books can determine one’s sexual orientation. He continued,56
In an issue of a popular comic there is on the back over a full-page colored picture. It shows a stalwart youth, nude except for a well-filled loin cloth. No young man or adolescent in the upper-age groups whom I asked to describe this picture in one word used any expression except “fairy.” The boy has long blonde hair falling over his shoulders and bound with a red ribbon over his forehead. On both wrists are green bracelets, and graceful ribands twist around his ankles above his bare feet. He wears a bare dagger coquettishly fixed in front of one hip. He has big blue eyes and a beautiful suntan.
Was the author salivating (or worse) when writing this description? He continued,57
His expression, to quote one of the boys who commented on it, is “sissy and sappy.”
Many adolescents go through periods of vague fears that they might be homosexual. Such fears may become a source of great mental anguish and these boys usually have no one in whom they feel they can confide. In a number of cases I have found this sequence of events: At an early age these boys become addicted to the homoerotically tinged type of comie book. During and after comic-book reading they indulged in fantasies which became severely repressed. Life experiences, either those drawing their attention to the great taboo on homosexuality or just the opposite—experiences providing any kind of temptation—raise feelings of doubt, guilt, shame and sexual malorientation.
The term pederasty does not mean—as is often erroneously believed—a crude physical relationship between men. It comes from the Greek word pais meaning a youth or boy, which is also the root of such words as pedagogy. Pederasty means the erotic relationship between a mature man and a young boy.
Several years ago a California psychiatrist pointed out that the Batman stories are psychologically homosexual. Our researches confirm this entirely. Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoerotism which pervades the adventures of the mature “Batman” and his young friend “Robin.” Male and female homoerotic overtones are present also in some science-fiction, jungle and other comic books.
Just as ordinary crime comic books contribute to the fixation of violent and hostile patterns by suggesting definite forms for their expression, so the Batman type of story helps to fixate homoerotic tendencies by suggesting the form of an adolescent- with-adult or Ganymede-Zeus type of love-relationship.
In the Batman type of comic book such a relationship is depicted to children before they can even read. Batman and Robin, the “dynamic duo,” also known as the “daring duo,” go into action in their special uniforms. They constantly rescue each other from violent attacks by an unending number of enemies. The feeling is conveyed that we men must stick together because there are so many villainous creatures who have to be exterminated. They lurk not only under every bed but also behind every star in the sky. Either Batman or his young boy friend or both are captured, threatened with every imaginable weapon, almost blown to bits, almost crushed to death, almost annihilated. Sometimes Batman ends up in bed injured and young Robin is shown sitting next to him. At home they lead an idyllic life. They are Bruce Wayne and “Dick” Grayson. Bruce Wayne is described as a “socialite” and the official relationship is that Dick is Bruce’s ward. They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit by the fireplace the young boy sometimes worries about his partner: “Something’s wrong with Bruce. He hasn’t been himself these past few days.” It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals having together. Sometimes they are shown on a couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and his hand on his friend’s arm. Like the girls in other stories, Robin is sometimes held captive by the villains and Batman has to give in or “Robin gets killed.”
Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident.
In these stories there are practically no decent, attractive, successful women. A typical female character is the Catwoman, who is vicious and uses a whip. The atmosphere is homosexual and anti-feminine. If the girl is good-looking she is undoubtedly the villainess. If she is after Bruce Wayne, she will have no chance against Dick. For instance, Bruce and Dick go out one evening in dinner clothes, dressed exactly alike. The attractive girl makes up to Bruce while in successive pictures young Dick looks on smiling, sure of Bruce. . .
Maybe he looks on smiling because he has no reason to be upset.
In a study of over a thousand homosexual cases at the Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center we found that the arousal of homosexual fantasies, the translation of fantasies into fact and the transition from episodic homosexual experiences to a confirmed fixation of the pattern may be due to all sorts of accidental factors. The Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies, of the nature of which they may be unconscious. In adolescents who realize it they may give added stimulation and reinforcement.
In many adolescents the homoerotic, anti-feminist trend unconsciously aroused or fostered by these stories is demonstrable. We have inquired about Batman from overt homosexuals treated at the Readjustment Center, to find out what they thought the influence of these Batman stories was on children and adolescents. A number of them knew these stories very well and spoke of them as their favorite reading. The reply of one intelligent, educated young homosexual was typical: “I don’t think that they would do any harm sexually. But they probably would ruin their morals.”
One young homosexual during psychotherapy brought us a copy of Detective Comics, with a Batman story. He pointed out a picture of “The Home of Bruce and Dick” a house beautifully landscaped, warmly lighted and showing the devoted pair side by side, looking out a picture window. When he was eight this boy had realized from fantasies about comic-book pictures that he was aroused by men. At the age of ten or eleven, “I found my liking, my sexual desires, in comic books. I think I put myself in the position of Robin. I did want to have relations with Batman. The only suggestion of homosexuality may be that they seem to be so close to each other. I remember the first time I came across the page mentioning the ‘secret bat cave,’ The thought of Batman and Robin living together and possibly having sex relations came to my mind. You can almost connect yourself with the people. I was put in the position of the rescued rather than the rescuer. I felt I’d like to be loved by someone like Batman or Superman.”
A boy of thirteen was treated by me in the Clinic while he was on several years’ probation. He and a companion had forced a boy of eight, threatening him with a knife, to undress and carry out sexual practices with them. Like many other homo- erotically inclined children, he was a special devotee of Batman: “Sometimes I read them over and over again. They show off a lot. I don’t remember Batman’s name, but the boy’s name is Robin. They live together. It could be that Batman did something with Robin like I did with the younger boy, . . . Batman could have saved this boy’s life. Robin looks something like a girl. He has only trunks on.”
The Lesbian counterpart of Batman may be found in the stories of Wonder Woman and Black Cat.The homosexual connotation of the Wonder Woman type of story is psychologically unmistakable. The Psychiatric Quarterly deplored in an editorial the “appearance of an eminent child therapist as the implied endorser of a series . . . which portrays extremely sadistic hatred of all males in a framework which is plainly Lesbian.”
For boys, Wonder Woman is a frightening image. For girls she is a morbid ideal. Where Batman is anti-feminine, the attractive Wonder Woman and her counterparts are definitely anti-masculine. Wonder Woman has her own female following. They are all continuously being threatened, captured, almost put to death. There is a great deal of mutual rescuing, the same type of rescue fantasies as in Batman. Her followers are the “Holliday girls,” i.e. the holiday girls, the gay party girls, the gay girls. Wonder Woman refers to them as “my girls.” Their attitude about death and murder is a mixture of the callousness of crime comics with the coyness of sweet little girls. When one of the Holiday girls is thought to have drowned through the machinations of male enemies, one of them says: “Honest, I’d give the last piece of candy in the world to bring her back!” In a typical story, Wonder Woman is involved in adventures with another girl, a princess, who talks repeatedly about “those wicked men.”
About a month after my views were summarized in a national magazine a new code was announced.
This was a familiar sight on all mainstream comics for us old folks.
In October of 1954, a few months after Wertham’s book was published, the Comics Magazine Association of America was formed, they created a regulatory code and59
censors funded by the comic book industry enforced rules about acceptable content. Only comics that passed a pre-publication review carried the seal.
Designed to resemble a stamp, the seal bore the words “Approved by the Comics Code Authority,” which was the regulatory arm of the Comics Magazine Association of America. The trade association’s Comics Code Authority and its Seal of Approval were the publishers’ answer to their critics.
he was not single-handedly responsible for the creation of the Comics Code Authority. He is, however, an important factor and apparently indicative of conservative cancel culture in the 1950s. This whole shameful affair is an example of how conservatism earned itself a reputation of being authoritarian and thus against liberty, however untrue that is of people who call themselves conservative in our time.
The Conservative Comics Code
Implemented soon after Wertham’s book, the Comics Code was conservative and authoritarian in nature. The code included,
Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
…
Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
…
Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
…
The letter of the word "crime" on a comics magazine shall never be appreciably greater than the other words contained in the title. The word "crime" shall never appear alone on a cover.
…
No comic magazine shall use the word "horror" or "terror" in its title.
Also, no vampires or werewolves, no scenes of gory crimes, horror, excessive bloodshed, no gruesome, unsavory, or lurid images and no lust.
All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society.
…
Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor shall be represented as desirable.
…
Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at or portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.
…
Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered.
…
The treatment of love-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage.
…
Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.
…
clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.
Only the last half of the following carries any tinge of what would today be considered liberal,
Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible.
The following may seem to amount to “no ableism” at first.
Special precautions to avoid references to physical afflictions or deformities shall be taken.
But it’s more like erasure of “differently abled” people. I can hear eugenicists giggling.
Conservatives today are against this sort of censorship. They may be disgusted by some of the content and they may shield their children from such content but these days they generally do not think the government should have the power to censor because the government will abuse that power. But their past embrace of censorship has besmudged the reputation of conservatism for many decades now. For many, the terms “right-wing”, “conservative” and “republican” immediately evoke heavy-handed conservative authoritarianism; the exact opposite of what the term “liberal” means to them. This impression that many people have is largely unchanged by the fact that people who think of themselves as liberals tend to lean authoritarian and people who think of themselves conservatives tend to lean libertarian.
We should not be in the least bit surprised when people who call themselves right wing and/or conservative begin to demand censorship while the left takes the opposite position. It will happen fairly soon.
Things swing side to side but it never repeat themselves exactly. History rhymes.
The Comics Code Authority (CCA) was structured much like Hollywood’s Production Code and ensured that American comics would be safe and bland for decades to come. It went through three major versions: its introduction in 1954, a relaxation in 1971, and a further softening in 1989 before it was phased out over the following years.
By 2011, only two publishers printed the Seal of Approval on the cover of their comics, Archie and DC. DC comics announced in January 2011 it was dropping the Seal of Approval, and Archie soon followed.
and
The Seal of Approval, once prominently displayed on comic book covers, quietly disappeared in 2011.
Furthermore, the CBLDF states,
Today, publishers regulate the content of their own comics. The demise of the Comics Code Authority and its symbol, the Seal of Approval, marks elimination of industry-wide self-regulation, against which there is little legal recourse. Now, the comic book community can answer its critics by invoking its First Amendment rights, assisted by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, whose mission is to protect those rights through legal referrals, representation, advice, assistance, and education.
The Rhyming Pendulum of History
In furtherance of his argument in favor of censorship of comic books for adults and children alike, the author took an opposing stance to liberalism as in this passage;63
the liberal-minded citizen dislikes coercive action, tries to escape from corruption privately, and discovers that his neighbor, his community, are affected. . .
In our own era, this is reversed; it is the (so-called) liberals who want the government and social media monopolies to decide for private citizens what they can see, hear, read and so on.
Indeed, this book is an indication that the left and right have switched over time.
the comics industry adopted the Comics Code Authority and began almost 60 years of self-censorship. As most people know, the Code was created in response to a public backlash against the comics industry in general, and it was implemented specifically as a result of publishers’ concerns about government regulation. The industry formed a self-regulatory body, which would impose and self-police a “code of ethics and standards” for comics. This was done by requiring that each comic book published have a seal of approval.
Because of rules such as
“Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.”
it is unsurprising that
Catwoman completely vanishes after Detective Comics #211 in 1954 and does not reappear until 1966 (in Lois Lane: Superman’s Girlfriend #70). Once again, theorists believe that Catwoman ran afoul of the Code, especially since (like Sherlock Holmes’ “Woman,” Irene Adler) Catwoman usually escaped (or was let go by) Batman at the end as part of their flirtation. This would appear to violate General Standards Part A:
“4. If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
5. Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates the desire for emulation.
6. In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.”
Batwoman & Batgirl Invented to Rescue Batman & Robin From Accusations of Gayness
The original Batwoman, Kathy Kane, made her debut in Detective Comics no. 233 (July 1956). She was to serve as a female romantic interest for Batman, thereby countering the charge made by Frederic Wertham in his book Seduction of the Innocent (1954) that Batman and his teen sidekick Robin were promoting a gay lifestyle. According to the first version of her origin, Kathy Kane is a rich heiress with an unusual background as a former circus performer. She decides to use her athletic skills to become a costumed crime fighter in imitation of Batman, and she eventually becomes a frequent ally of Batman and Robin.In1961Kathy’s niece, Betty Kane, became Batwoman’s sidekick, Bat-Girl. Thus Robin was given a romantic interest as well.
“The Bat-Woman”, source: E-Bay, “DETECTIVE COMICS #233 TEC CGC 4.0 OW/W (1956) 1ST APPEARANCE OF BATWOMAN!”
One could argue that Batwoman’s suit was just as revealing as Catwoman’s. Somehow it’s okay for Batgirl’s skirt to be about as revealing as Robin’s shorts! At any rate, Catwoman’s visual style, personality and her use of a whip arguably makes her a lot more kinky than Batwoman, but whereas Catwoman was a criminal, a glamorous one at that, Batwoman fought criminals. Batman’s relationship with Catwoman was taboo but his relationship with Batwoman was not. There was even a suggestion in a 1959 issue of Batman that Batwoman could make an honest man out of Batman. This was issue 122 wherein Batman and Batwoman announce their engagement to Robin in what ends up being Robin’s dream.
Later that evening, Batman (Bruce Wayne) says that he’ll probably marry her one day because she’s a nice girl.66 That’s just the sort of neutered lack of lust the Comics Code called for.
Kathy Kane, the original Batwoman. Source: Batwoman, DC Database.
Because Batman, Robin and Batwoman seemed to be heterosexual and not ethically or sexually taboo and with the potential for Batman and Batwoman to become married, Batwoman clearly did not run afoul of the Comics Code whereas it appears that Catwoman and/or her relationship with Batman did. So, Batwoman was67
Introduced as a Catwoman replacement and as a love interest for Batman
…and…
The irony of Batwoman’s introduction in 1956 was that she was there to refute ideas that Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson were a gay couple. She was also there to be a female love interest of sorts, since Catwoman was banished from the Batman comic in 1954.
Elsewhere in the Culture War Encyclopedia it is (or will be) furthermore shown how there was a time when the right wanted less freedom for Americans.
Also, elsewhere in the Culture War Encyclopedia it is (or will be) shown how the pendulum has swung far in the other direction. Mary Jane, for example, was race-swapped which would be fine if Mary Jane were not so iconic. Being an iconic young attractive ginger for decades, to make her blonde, brunet, old or whatever amounts to an act of iconoclasm in a cultural sense. In my upcoming entry in the Encyclopedia for Batwoman, we will see how she was turned from a hetero love interest for Batman into a lesbian replacement for Batman and later turned from a Jewish to black which would be fine were these changes not made deliberately political and wokegressive.
The Critique of Domination - The Origins and Development of Critical Theory by Trent Schroyer (1973), print, Standard Book Number 0-8076-0684-7, Library of Congress Number 72-94954
Critical Race Theory - The Key Writings That Formed the Movement by multiple authors (1995), print, ISBN 978-1-56584-271-7
Critical Theory - The Key Concepts by Dino Franco Felluga (2015), print, ISBN 978-0-415-69565-7
Critical Race Theory - An Introduction by Delgado and Stefancic (2017), print, ISBN 978-1-4798-0276-0
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (2019), print, ISBN 978-0-525-50928-8
The 1619 Project - A New Origin Story by multiple authors (2021), print, ISBN 978-0-593-23057-2
