I. INTRODUCTION

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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