Note: My research for this article has taken me to many places
on the Internet. As I submit the article for publication, all links
I’ve cited have been double-checked and are live. The Internet is,
however, in constant flux; material is archived or removed, URLs
change, etc. This may result in some of the links becoming non-functional
in the future.

I. INTRODUCTION

~MY ORIGINAL IDEA (AND HOW IT EXPANDED)

In December 2004, when
I heard that the National Institute on Media and the Family had
released the latest of its reports on video games
— the Ninth Annual Mediawise® Video Game Report Card (located
at http://www.mediafamily.org/research/report_vgrc_2004.shtml) —
in which Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas receives prominent mention
— I started seriously wondering for the first time whether violence
in computer and video games could really cause those who play such
games to become violent in the real world. I was especially curious
about the effect of virtual violence on teens and preteens.

Coincidentally, I had
just done a JAVE
page on
2002’s ultra-violent BloodRayne (Terminal
Reality/Majesco), which has an ESRB rating of “M” (Mature,
age 17 and older) and carries the content descriptors “Blood
and Gore, Strong Language, Violence” — all very well-deserved.
You’ll find more about the ESRB in the Video Games section of this
article. In fact, I ended up writing quite a bit about the ESRB and
assorted other video game industry/trade groups.

Side note: The Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association’s
[IEMA’s] Reaction Statement to the Annual Video Game Report Card
Results Held on Capital [sic] Hill is located at http://www.iema.org/news/2004/2004_IEMA_NIMF_Reaction_Statement.pdf.
The ESRB Statement on the MediaWise Video Game Report Card (November
23rd, 2004) can be found at http://www.esrb.org/about_updates.asp#11-23-04.

Incidentally, although
I’m a veteran of First-Person Shooters, I consider the violence
and carnage presented in BloodRayne to be excessive.
Further, while working on the JAVE page for the game — which, by
the way, is #4 on the Seventh Annual Mediawise Video Game Report
Card‘s top ten list of games to be avoided by children and teens
— my research took me to discussion forums in which people who were
clearly younger than 17 were raving, often in detail, about the game’s
savagery — particularly when played in “Blood Rage” mode.
I found this to be more than a little unnerving. After awhile, in
fact, it had me feeling a bit sick.

From a personal standpoint, I’ve never really paid much attention
to game ratings. The only person I buy computer games for is me (am
I not stingy?), and I generally go by word-of-mouth, positive reviews,
and/or playing a demo and liking it. For me, a game’s rating just
doesn’t factor into the equation.

Further, as I’m familiar with only a small fraction of the games
that are out there — particularly the ultra-violent ones — I decided
to do some research.

Man, did I open a can of worms. Just scratching the surface of video
game violence yielded legislation and litigation; Congressional summits;
reports by the (1) Senate Committee on the Judiciary, (2) Surgeon
General, (3) Federal Trade Commission, and (4) National Institutes
of Health (among others); hearings before assorted government subcommittees;
proposed amendments to the U.S. Code; tons of studies in both the
public and private sectors; First Amendment issues aplenty; conflicting
opinions from assorted professional and advocacy groups; and a lot
of finger-pointing. Whew.

After awhile, I found myself in a situation similar to that of The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia (the 1940 version — and
no, I wasn’t alive then. I saw it when it was re-released. So there).
Anyway, somewhere along the line I must have accidentally donned
a Wizard’s hat and dreamed of power — because those mops kept multiplying
and carting in so much research that before I knew it, I was drowning
in material. How’s that for a mixed metaphor? Those of you who have
no idea what I’m talking about might want to have a look at http://www.filmsite.org/fant.html.

Eventually, it occurred to me that I could probably work on this
article for the rest of my life and not finish it. Why? Well, not
only is a plethora of data already out there, new stuff is being
written all the time. Moreover, violence for which video games are
being blamed keeps happening, and the legal battles have become almost
perpetual. At times, it seems as though new headlines concerning
violent video games are being churned out every couple of minutes.

The issue of video game violence is also bigger than I ever realized.
It’s gargantuan. And it’s one that won’t be going away anytime soon,
if ever. To say that there are no easy answers is an understatement.

I’ll tell you something else. My feelings about this issue have
changed considerably from what they had been before I took on this
article. I’ve gotten a better understanding of positions both pro
and con, and gained a greater appreciation of the issue’s complexity.

I’ve also discovered that
unfortunately, a great deal of spin and biased rhetoric is being
generated out there on both sides of the
issue, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. For example,
I’ve seen statistics skewed, used selectively, taken out of context,
and/or fabricated. I’ve seen misrepresentation of facts, and unnamed “studies” cited
to support specific positions with the expectation that the public
will accept them, no questions asked. And I’ve come across fringe
groups that are totally off-the-wall.

Not only that, but by the time I was finished I’d taken side-roads
into such things as ratings enforcement (and the lack thereof), video
game addiction, the effects of antidepressants on children, and a
host of other sub-topics. It’s been an amazing and hair-raising journey.

Now, you may be wondering
what the topic of violence has to do with adventure games. Well,
not a whole lot — at least from a “pure” adventure
standpoint. Although there can be violence in adventure games, it’s
usually not gratuitous or terribly gory.

Action/adventure hybrids
are another story. Many games in this genre, including first-person
shooters that emphasize action over adventure,
have come under the scrutiny of Just Adventure’s intrepid reviewers
— the aforementioned BloodRayne, for one. A couple of these
games — DOOM
3 (id
Software/Activision) and Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (High
Voltage/Vivendi Universal Games) — even appear, in slots #1 and
#8 respectively, on the Ninth Annual Mediawise® Video Game Report
Card‘s top ten list of games to be avoided by children and teens.

Additionally, folks who favor adventure games have been known to
spend time with other genres. I know this because I happen to be
one of ’em. I cut my gaming teeth on FPS (First-Person Shooter),
RTS (Real-Time Strategy), and Role-Playing Games (RPGs), and I still
play them.

So my purpose here is not to engage in a vendetta against (a) the
evils of certain kinds of games, or (b) stuffy adults who just don’t
understand the joys of pulverizing virtual opponents in the most
hideous ways possible. My preference is to go exploring.

As we shall see, concerns over the effects of violence (as well
as sex, offensive language, etc.) in entertainment are nothing new.
In the interest of putting issues concerning video game violence
into historical perspective, I invite you to step into our handy
Wayback Machine and have a look.

II. MOTION PICTURES

~IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS FILM

In its early days, Hollywood was anything but tame. During the 1920s,
it was rocked by scandals involving such things as murder, drugs,
and rape.

The first of these sordid
affairs was both spectacular and tragic. It involved no less than
three criminal trials and left an actor’s
career in ruins. At issue was the death of a rather obscure starlet
by the name of Virginia Rappé after she attended a 1921 Labor
Day party held in a San Francisco hotel. Accounts tend to vary in
detail, but one thing is certain: comic actor and former Keystone
Kop Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who was also at the party,
was charged with raping and killing the woman.

This fueled great public outrage and a torrent of yellow journalism
courtesy of William Randolph Hurst, publisher of the San Francisco
Examiner. Hurst later claimed that Arbuckle’s ordeal had generated
more revenue for his publishing empire than had the sinking of the
Lusitania in 1915.

Arbuckle’s first trial ended in a hung jury. The second resulted
in deadlock. Arbuckle was acquitted in a third trial in 1922, but
by then, Hollywood had blacklisted him.

Although he eventually
did work in the motion picture industry again — often under an
assumed name — the scandal had essentially destroyed
his career. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle died of a fatal heart
attack in 1933, at the age of 46. His good friend Buster Keaton said
that Arbuckle had really died of a broken heart.

Anyone who would like further information about the scandal can
find an excellent piece at http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/fatty_arbuckle/1.html.
For whatever it’s worth, after having read many articles about the
series of events, I believe Arbuckle was innocent.

~MEANWHILE, IN ANOTHER PART OF CALIFORNIA…

As if the Arbuckle ordeal weren’t enough, prominent actor-turned-director
William Desmond Taylor, 49, was found shot to death with a .38 handgun
in his Beverly Hills bungalow on February 2, 1922. It had been rumored
that Taylor was bisexual and that his good friend and neighbor, actress
Mabel Normand, was a cocaine addict. It was theorized that these
things might have somehow been connected to the murder.

Normand, in fact, is thought to have been the last person to see
Taylor alive; she was seen leaving the scene of the crime when the
authorities arrived. Normand was one of a list of suspects that also
included actress Mary Miles Minter, whose repeated sexual advances
Taylor had rejected; and Minter’s overbearing mother, Charlotte Shelby,
who had a nasty habit of threatening directors with the .38 revolver
she often carried.

However, despite an extensive investigation and much rampant speculation
concerning what had happened, the killer was never found. The case
remains unsolved.

Another tragedy occurred in 1923. Leading man Wallace Reid, who
had made literally hundreds of silent movies, was injured in a train
crash in 1919 while making a film. The studio not only forced him
to finish the film, it insisted that he start another one immediately
thereafter. To keep him going, the studio supplied massive quantities
of morphine to Reid. Eventually, he became addicted.

By 1922, his health decimated, Wallace Reid was in and out of sanitariums.
He succumbed to the effects of morphine addiction in early 1923 at
the age of 31. Up to that point, the studio had managed to keep Reid’s
condition hidden. The details of his death jarred the moviegoing
public.

~YOUR OFF-SCREEN BEHAVIOR IS ATROCIOUS, BUT DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE
SORDID FILMS, TOO?

Many people considered Hollywood’s motion pictures to be equally
as scandalous and immoral as the lives of the people who made them.
Violence was glorified. Racism and sex were promoted. And certain
segments of society forcefully protested. All of this before movies
could even talk.

Take D.W. Griffith’s controversial 1915 Civil War epic The
Birth of a Nation, for instance. Originally titled The
Clansman (after
the 1905 play on which it was based, written by former Baptist minister
and white supremacist Thomas Dixon), it ran a whopping 190 minutes.

Such is the depiction
of blacks in the film, particularly during the Reconstruction Era,
that the NAACP (founded in 1909) engaged
in a vehement nationwide protest. Making matters worse, the roles
of all but “background” blacks were performed by white
actors in blackface.

In analyzing The Birth
of a Nation, film critic Roger Ebert has
written:

“Some of the film’s
most objectionable scenes show the Ku Klux Klan riding to the rescue
of a white family trapped in a cabin by
sexually predatory blacks and their white manipulators. These scenes
are credited with the revival of the popularity of the Klan, which
was all but extinct when the movie appeared. Watching them today,
we are appalled.”

Ironically, as blatantly racist as many feel the film is, The
Birth of a Nation is also lauded for its artistic, technical, and cinematic
innovation. Ebert continues:

“Griffith assembled
and perfected the early discoveries of film language, and his cinematic
techniques that have influenced
the visual strategies of virtually every film made since; they have
become so familiar we are not even aware of them. We, on the other
hand, are astonished by racist attitudes that were equally invisible
to most white audiences in 1915.”

As a point of interest, D.W. Griffith’s sprawling and ambitious
film Intolerance (also known as Intolerance: Love’s
Struggle Through the Ages and Intolerance: A Sun-Play of
the Ages) was released the
following year. Consisting of morality plays from four historical
eras, this movie is said to have been Griffith’s answer to those
who so vocally criticized The Birth of a Nation. Both films were
subsequently voted into the National Film Registry of the Library
of Congress National Film Preservation Board.

Brief aside: For you trivia buffs, actor Wallace Reid — who really,
really wanted to work with D.W. Griffith — played a small role (with
a corresponding cut in pay) in The Birth of a Nation, and took an
uncredited part in Intolerance.

The 1920s saw Hollywood’s
portrayal of youth as wild and reckless, depicting, according to
Three Jazz Age Films, “a generation
of short skirts, bathtub gin, jazz music, petting parties, declining
morals and flaunted authority.” For example, the 1928 silent
film Walking Back starts with “a montage of scenes including
dancing legs, pianos playing, drinks being mixed and car engines
racing. This then dissolves to two carloads of young people racing
down a country road. One car has a blowout and veers into a ditch.
The other carload of youth then get out and begin dancing around
the wreck. From there, they steal a truck to get to the nearest ‘joint’
serving bootleg booze, aptly named Ptomaine Charlie’s. While all
this is taking place, several film titles are superimposed over the
action posing questions such as ‘Vicious – or just wild?,” ‘Godless
– or just graceless?,’ ‘Shameless – or just young?,’ ‘Lawless – or
just reckless?'”

In 1922, the twin tempests of scandal and controversy along with
fear of government intervention prompted the creation of the Motion
Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA). At its helm
as president was William Harrison Hays, a politician who had been
Postmaster General under President Warren G. Harding. The intent
was to create and impose moral standards on the motion picture industry,
thereby making it self-regulating. This was ineffective, however,
as there was no adequate way to enforce these standards, and filmmakers
didn’t want to play.

Interesting side note: Charlie Chaplin, whose Little Tramp made
him one of the biggest stars of the silent era, would later gain
a different kind of notoriety for his anti-American views and for
pursuing underage girls — three of his four wives were in their
mid-teens. He was also hit with a paternity suit in 1943 and charged
with violation of the Mann Act (transporting a female across state
lines for immoral purposes).

In 1952, while traveling in England — Chaplin was a British citizen
— his reentry permit was revoked by the U.S. State Department. He
remained prohibited from entering the U.S. until 1971, when he was
permitted to return in order to accept an honorary Academy Award
for his many contributions to the motion picture industry. He received
a standing ovation at the ceremony.

~…AND THEN CAME TALKIES

Once the cinema had found its voice, a perceived need for more stringent
guidelines resulted in the Motion Picture Production Code, a/k/a
the Hayes Code, which was adopted in 1930. Essentially, the Code
prohibited production of any film that could have a negative impact
on the moral standards of its audience.

Enforcement, however, was still a problem. Conformity to the Code
remained voluntary, and nothing much changed until 1934, when penalties
for violating it were added (discussed in greater detail below).

Check out this excerpt discussing the historical value of the classic
1931 James Cagney film The Public Enemy, courtesy of Filmcritic.com
(note: the Hays Code mentioned in this excerpt is actually the 1934
Motion Picture Code):

“Cagney struts and
preens as the acerbic, hot-headed — not to mention horny — Tom
Powers…Released just before the implementation
of the Hays Code, which emasculated Hollywood for years to come —
The Public Enemy revels in no uncertain terms in Tom’s sexual machismo
and how the women in his circle are as free and as willing as he
is. When we see Tom in a bathrobe dallying with his moll (Mae Clark)
in a hotel suite (just before the notorious grapefruit-to-the-face),
or Tom flirting with a leggy new girlfriend (Jean Harlow) or Tom,
drunk and amorously handled by an older woman, we delight in the
scenes’ raw suggestiveness…when Will Hays finally reared his ugly
head, The Public Enemy couldn’t have been made in just this way.”

The Infamous Grapefruit Maneuver

Another good example is
1932’s Call Her Savage, starring Clara Bow (of “It” Girl repute), who hadn’t been without her own
share of scandals. This film has Clara’s character, Nasa Springer,
beating a “half-breed” with a riding crop, becoming a prostitute,
cavorting with a Great Dane in a way that suggests bestiality (a
quote attributed to Ms. Bow is “The more I see of men, the more
I like dogs”), engaging in a hair-pulling cat fight, and drinking
way, way too much.

The Savage Ms. Bow

I recall seeing a film from the early ’30s on TV a long time ago
in which Barbara Stanwyck (or maybe it was Joan Crawford) ran around
in her underwear and cavorted in bed with another female. I sure
wish I could remember the name of it.

During the course of my
research, I did find a Barbara Stanwyck film in the Internet Movie
Database called Baby Face. Made in 1933,
its tagline is, “She climbed the ladder of success — wrong
by wrong.” The plot summary starts out, “Lilly (Baby Face)
sleeps her way from basement speakeasy bartender, literally floor
by floor, to the top of a New York office building…”

In 1934, the Roman Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency became involved
in the issue of motion picture content. The Production Code Administration
was formed, and Catholic layman Joseph Breen was charged with enforcing
the Motion Picture Code (still commonly referred to as the Hays Code).
This time, stiff penalties were attached. For example, Breen’s approval
(along with a corresponding seal) was required before a film could
be shown to the public. Violation of this edict carried a $25,000
fine — no small amount in 1934.

This system stayed in place for the next 34 years, although it was
significantly weakened in 1952 when movies were accorded free speech
protection under the First Amendment. In 1968 it was abandoned altogether
and replaced by the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA’s)
age-based rating system, which remains in effect today.

Throughout the decades, despite all of the tumult and controversy
surrounding the motion picture industry, filmmakers have managed
to avoid something they’ve never stopped fearing: government regulation.
It’s a battle that continues…

III. COMIC BOOKS

~COMICS, BY ANY OTHER NAME…

My favorite comic book is Little
Lulu. Not exactly hard-core, is
it? As a kid, I wanted to fly around on a vacuum cleaner, just like
Witch Hazel. Come to think of it, I still do.

The very first comic book appeared in the U.S. in 1934. Entitled
Famous Funnies No. 1 (published by EC Comics, then known at Eastern
Color Printing), it was simply a compilation of comics that had already
appeared in newspapers. The following year, New Fun Comics — the
first comic book to feature original material — was published by
DC Comics (then known as Detective Comics).

Action Comics No.
1 (also published by DC) appeared in 1938, with
the Man of Steel himself — Superman — on its cover. This character
struck a chord with Depression-weary Americans who were facing World
War II. Such was Superman’s popularity that in 1939, an entire comic
book was devoted to the character. Prior to this, comic books had
featured an assortment of characters in each issue.

More superheroes soon followed. The next few years saw the emergence
of, among others, Batman, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman (DC Comics)
along with Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner
(Marvel Comics).

Another major player in
the comic-book industry was EC Publications. Founded in 1946 by
Maxwell C. Gaines, “EC” originally stood
for Educational Comics. The company published such titles as Picture
Stories from the Bible.

This all changed when
Max Gaines was killed in a boating accident in 1947, and Educational
Comics was inherited by Gaines’ son, William.
The publication hadn’t fared too well against superheroes, so Bill
Gaines changed “Educational” to “Entertaining” and
proceeded to publish gory horror and violent crime comics. These
themes were joined by war stories, science fiction, and even humor.

In the early 1950s, EC Comics flourished with such titles as Vault
of Horror, Tales from the Crypt (originally The
Crypt of Terror),
Two-Fisted Tales, and Weird Science. Crypt even featured adaptations
of stories by authors such as Ray Bradbury (in No. 34, the cover
of which may be viewed at http://www.disobey.com/horror/comics_and_magazines/ec_comics/downloads/talft34.jpg)
and Bram Stoker. These titles were so popular that they spawned hundreds
of imitators, much as today’s successful video games do.

Side note: A dandy little “Surrealistic Adventure That Will
Become Your World” called Myst, released in 1993, went on to
become the most popular video game in the world. And since nothing
succeeds like success, game developers wasted no time in jumping
on the bandwagon with their own — often inferior — Myst-like games,
commonly known as Myst clones.

Funny thing about Myst, by the way. Every time I hear/read/think/talk
about the game, I have an almost irresistible urge to drop what I’m
doing and go play it again. It? What am I saying? Make that the original
three. (Tries to drop what she’s doing, but is yanked back hard by
Industrial-Strength Superego. Well, just so that bothersome Id Monster
stays away…and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you may
want to take a gander at http://decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/2606.)

EC also featured the work of some very talented artists. Science
fiction artist Wally Wood, who worked on EC’s Weird Science and Weird
Fantasy, would later bring comic book parodies such as Superduperman and Batboy
and Rubin to EC’s Mad Magazine. You can see some of Wood’s
creations at http://www.psychosaurus.com/frames/wwgallery.html.

Fantasy artist Frank Frazetta,
considered by some to be the greatest illustrator of the 20th Century,
created stunning artwork for EC.
He was also responsible for a painting that graced the back cover
of Mad Magazine and featured Ringo Starr as a “Blecch Shampoo” girl.
For more information about Frazetta as well as a look at his artwork,
see the Official Frazetta Art Gallery at http://frazettaartgallery.com/ff/index.html.

Al Feldstein joined EC in 1947 and, with Bill Gaines, created the
crime and horror comics that were precursors of such titles as Shock
Suspenstories, Vault of Horror, and the perpetually popular Tales
from the Crypt. These are also the kinds of comics that caused such
a stink in 1954 (see the next section, below). Links to some of Feldstein’s
work for EC are located on http://www.comic-art.com/bios-1/feldstn1.htm.

The original work of Wood, Frazetta, Feldstein and other EC artists
is highly valued by collectors of comic book art today. The publications
these artists illustrated weren’t just pulp garbage thrown together
by hacks in search of a quick profit. These were talented artisans
who were serious about their craft, and it shows. Unfortunately,
their talent didn’t save them from the ax that was about to fall.

~THE DOCTOR IS IN…AND CRIME/HORROR COMICS ARE OUT

In 1954, the lid was blown off the comic book industry (and EC Comics
in particular) by Dr. Frederic Wertham, who had written a book entitled
Seduction of the Innocent. In it, he claimed that comic books were
ruining the nation’s youth by turning them into delinquents. He blamed
comic books for such things as juvenile crime, reading disorders,
sexual perversion, and racism. Dr. Wertham even claimed that comic
books were teaching kids bad science, because Superman shouldn’t
have been able to fly. (I don’t think he said anything about the
viability of airborne vacuum cleaners.)

The book caused a firestorm
among parents. It also caught the attention of the federal government.
A Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile
Delinquency in the United States was convened. Right off the bat,
the subcommittee pounced on “so-called comic books,” restricting
its investigation to depiction of crime and horror — primarily the
domain of EC. Televised public hearings were held, and Dr. Wertham
testified. So did Bill Gaines.

In commenting on superhuman
comic book heroes, Dr. Wertham “singled
out the Superman comic books as being injurious to the ethical development
of children,” saying “these books arouse phantasies of
sadistic joy in seeing other people repeatedly punished while the
hero remains immune.” To describe the condition, he coined the
term “Superman complex.”

Side note: Full results of this investigation were released in a
report entitled Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency (U.S. Senate,
84th Congress, 1st Session); see http://www.collectortimes.com/~comichistory/kefauver.html.

There were those who took great issue with Dr. Wertham’s methodology,
claiming that his studies included only delinquent juveniles. Kids
who read crime/horror comic books and suffered no ill effects allegedly
weren’t taken into account, and this led to the flawed conclusion
that since a majority of delinquent juveniles read crime/horror comics,
such comics must cause juvenile delinquency.

Whatever the case, the last thing the comic book industry wanted
was government regulation. So the Comics Magazine Association of
America developed the Standards of the Comics Code Authority
For Editorial Matter — CCA for short. Compliance with these strict standards
was indicated by a seal that appeared on comic book covers. Why,
here’s one now…

The Senate subcommittee
had made it clear that should industry self-policing efforts prove
ineffective, “other ways and means” would
be found “to prevent our Nation’s young from being harmed by
crime and horror comic books.” In other words, the government
would intervene.

~EC GOES MAD (AND OTHER CASUALTIES)

EC was hit hard by the Senate investigation. By 1956, it was publishing
only one title: Mad Magazine (originally entitled Tales
Calculated to Drive You Mad). EC had managed to salvage Mad by changing its
format from comic book to magazine, thus removing it from the CCA’s
purview. Mad Magazine became the biggest selling humor magazine in
history, and its success and popularity continue to this day.

Side note: I happen to have grown up with Mad Magazine. I loved
it. So much so, in fact, that I still carry parts of early editions
around in my head. This probably says something about me.

Unfortunately, as the ’50s wore on, the CCA brought about the complete
demise of many previously successful comic book publishers. In fact,
it almost killed the comic book industry altogether.

In a bit of irony, EC’s horror comics have since made a comeback
in reprints and other media. For instance, the last original issue
of Tales from the Crypt — #46 — appeared in Feb-March 1955. But
1972 saw a feature-length motion picture of Tales, and in 1989 it
became the basis for a television series on HBO. Tales‘ mascot, the
now 50-plus-year-old Crypt-Keeper, has led new generations to an
appreciation of Tales from the Crypt, which remains popular to this
day.

~I WANT SPIDER-MAN!

Fortunately, the 1960s saw the resurgence of the superhero. Marvel
Comics was at the forefront with such characters as Spider-Man, the
Incredible Hulk, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four. In 1966, Marvel introduced
the industry’s first black superhero, the Black Panther.

The ’60s also saw the
advent of underground counterculture comics (or more accurately,
comix) in San Francisco. These publications
featured the work of R. (Robert) Crumb (Zap Comics, Fritz
the Cat,
the album cover of Big Brother & the Holding Company’s Cheap
Thrills), who is considered to be the father of the underground comix
movement. Artists such as Rick Griffin, who designed album covers
for the Grateful Dead and concert posters for Bill Graham’s Fillmore,
and Victor Moscoso, who also designed album covers and concert posters,
were regular contributors.

The nature of underground
comix allowed them to fly low enough to jam the CCA’s radar. Some
of the issues openly derided the Code.
A series called Dr. Wirtham’s Comix & Stories appeared in the
mid-’70s, stating “We publish good art and underground stories
in the E.C. vein, the kind of stuff you know the good doctor would
love to hate.”

In 1971, the Comics Code was revised for the first time and standards
were relaxed. Horror comics roared back to life almost overnight.
And something quite interesting happened.

Also in 1971, Marvel Comics was asked by the Nixon administration
to publish an issue of Spider-Man dealing with drug abuse. Marvel
was only too happy to comply, but ran headlong into the CCA — which
still prohibited the mention of illegal drugs in any comic book.

With its federal government mandate, however, Marvel forged ahead
and published the issue without CCA approval. Considering the origins
of its story line, distributors could hardly refuse to carry it.

Subsequently, other publishers successfully shunned the CCA. This
left the Code significantly and irretrievably weakened.

Meanwhile, the underground
movement had yielded comic books reflecting more “mature” themes,
some of which were judged to be obscene. By the 1980s, purveyors
of this allegedly obscene material were being
busted. Since lawyers weren’t (and still aren’t) cheap, the Comic
Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) was formed in 1986.

The legal tug-of-war involving adult comics is still very much with
us. Comic book shops selling this kind of material continue to be
prosecuted, and the CBLDF continues to assist in their defense.

The CCA was revised yet again in 1989, and continues to exist today.
But its influence has dwindled. It has never regained the power it
had over the industry in the 1950s. As of 2002, only two publishers
still subscribed to the Code: Archie and DC Comics.

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