InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I can has nanner nau?"

cyberghostface (cyberghostface) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-03-08 13:26:00

Current mood:	touched
Entry tags:	publisher: ec comics, title: weird fantasy

Judgement Day

This one's from Weird Fantasy #18. It's a "lost post" that I had done on the old Scans_Daily.
Anyway, this is one of the most famous EC stories ever published.

Here's the letters page that was written in response.

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dr_hermes
2009-03-08 08:44 pm UTC (link)

I find that doubtful, to be honest. Publishers were mostly businessmen who don't particularly care about the content, just profit. Dell and Archie and Harvey would not have felt EC was cutting into their market and they were each selling much better than EC ever did.

The national campaign against horror comics, though, could easily have carried over to comics as a whole, and that was a real threat.

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thekamisama.livejournal.com
2009-03-08 09:24 pm UTC (link)

It did also spill over to all publishers. There were public burnings of comics at churches and book swapping crusades at schools and libraries. These actions did not concern themselves with publishers or content.

Harvey had quite a few horror titles in the 50's. Plus, any publisher of periodicals would see an advantage to having rack spack taken away from another publisher if only to give them potential to take it.

You are certainly right about Dell though. They didn't care about EC or any of the competition because often outsold anything else on the stands (especially if it said "Walt Disney" on the cover). They damn near bragged about it during the Senate hearings by telling Congress under oath that they sold 5 million copies of Walt Disney's Peter Pan the previous year. Of course Dell and the Classics Illustrated people both refused to belong or submit books to the Code as well and had the clout to do so.

Gaines didn't invent the idea that the other publishers stacked the Code against his titles as a conspiracy theory. It is a matter of studied, reviewed, and published history in comics.

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	besamim 2009-03-08 09:40 pm UTC (link)
	Of course Dell and the Classics Illustrated people both refused to belong or submit books to the Code as well and had the clout to do so. That, and some of the literature they adapted into comics form had content that the Code might have prohibited. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	dr_hermes 2009-03-08 10:20 pm UTC (link)
	oh, sure the Code was designed to punish EC specifically. The words "terror" and "horror" were forbidden on covers, for example. That's well documented. I just don't buy Frank Miller's idea that other publishers resented EC because their art and story were just so excellent. That doesn't ring true. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	woogledesigns 2009-03-09 07:53 am UTC (link)
	How much of what Frank Miller says does, though? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-03-09 01:49 pm UTC (link)
	There's that, to be sure. The Spirit movie was going to be true to Will Eisner's vision, as I recall. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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