A hefty celebration of the joys of sleaze, gore and the downright warped world of pre-Comics Code Authority comics, Jim Trombetta’s The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read, published by AbramsComicsArts, serves as an unexpected look into the mindset of post-WWII America.
Following the superhero boom of the late-1930’s and WWII era, the interest in costumed superheroes shifted to tales featuring unbridled depictions of vile criminals on the rampage, the horrors of war milked for all they were worth (and then some), and, perhaps most famously, over-the-top horror offerings (the most famous examples of which are the E.C. line, including series like Tales from the Crypt).
Kids nationwide devoured these 10¢ dreadfuls and it was only a matter of time before parents groups and other killjoys took notice and blamed those comics for all manner of perceived evils among the youth of America, a group that had leisure time on its hands for the first time since the industrial age. Fearing that “the devil finds work for idle hands,” so-called champions of decency cited the crime and horror comics as a convenient scapegoat for the perils of an alleged plague of juvenile delinquency, and at that point the U.S. government stepped in to put a size 13 steel-toed boot right up the backside of those uncouth corruptors of youth.
The movement was bolstered by respected psychiatrist Dr. Frederic Wertham’s authoritative (and later proven to be somewhat fraudulent) study of multiple disturbed juveniles, Seduction of the Innocent (1954), and a slew of print exposés and TV specials (one of which is included on DVD with Trombetta’s book and was directed by a young Irvin Kirschner, future director of The Empire Strikes Back). The anti-comics crusade made it all the way to the U.S. Senate for a series of subcommittee hearings that resulted in the Comics Code Authority, a self-governing body presiding over the American comics industry that put an almost immediate stop to all but the most sanitized and family friendly of four-color entertainments.
Trombetta digs into the horror genre’s illicit thrills and attempts to shed light on not only the sheer, unabashed fun to be had with such material, but also on some of the many subtexts that illuminated the darker recesses of the psyches of pre-rock ‘n’ roll Americans. Trombetta kindly chatted with PW Comics Week and offered insight into the garish world he so lovingly summons back from the pop culture grave.
PW Comics Week: What got you interested in chronicling this particular genre and era in comics history and what was your goal in compiling a hefty book about it?
Jim Trombetta: I was alive at the time, but I couldn't understand anything that was going on. That in itself was an uncanny feeling, the kind that gives rise to sci-fi, the art of anachronisms, as well as horror. I was sure there was something special about the pre-Code comics and I realized I was now in a position to find out what it was. When I had some ideas I wanted the world to know! Also, while many comics fans are aware of the existence of this material, others in the mainstream world were not, and I thought they should have a look.
PWCW: Popular entertainment from any era tends to reflect the fears and concerns of the society that creates it. What do the lurid comics covered in your book have to say about post-war/pre-rock'n'roll America?
JT: That it was waiting for rock 'n' roll? That it was a time of tremendous anxiety that could not speak its name. This paranoia or whatever you'd call it was turned, to the extent possible, into entertainment. What might be brushed aside as mere "anxiety" was a much bigger emotion. The society was mystified about any number of topics, including its reaction to what would become constant warfare, possible "food anxiety" during the Depression, child abuse that had no name, genocide that only recently had a name. Horror comics give the finger to "pro-social values" but they at least acknowledged that something was wrong.
PWCW: The kids interviewed in the documentary included with the book seem to have been assembled to represent assorted "ethnic" types, with one rather “developmentally questionable” Caucasian tweener thrown in for good measure, so could that selection have been a case of loading the deck in favor of the senatorial crusaders?
JT: That's an interesting observation that I can't exactly confirm, but the idea of saving more naive races from this bad stuff was certainly part of Wertham's mythology. It would make sense for Paul Coates to do the same. I will give him points for allowing the one kid to say that a story in the comic didn't really frighten him because, ahem, he was smart enough to know there weren't any vampires and the difference between fiction and fact.
PWCW: Comics historians tend to gloss over the majority of the "dangerous" comics of the era covered in your book in favor of the comics from the E.C. stable. Is that because those books have seen many reprints over the past three decades and are thus more easily obtained?
JT: E.C., which was so hard to get after the Code came in, was made readily available over the years in many different editions. As I may have said in the book, I think E.C. is part of American literature much in the way as Rod Serling; he didn't have to be great writer, but the formula he made up was of tremendous cultural impact. So the E.C. stuff is not only available in many reprint forms, but is also the stuff you can bring home to the professor (as Robert Warshow's son Paul actually did). It's crafty, it's researched, it's humorous, it's all about reading, and if it reveals anything subconscious or involuntary about the creators, it would be an accident. As I discussed, they actually have means of protecting the reader. The other comics just can't reach that level, but they are more revealing in many ways, since they are less guarded and they are looking to overwhelm EC stuff with their own skeleton motifs, et cetera. They don't want to protect the reader; they virtually want to blind him.
PWCW: It appears to me that the governmental watchdogs that spearheaded the anti-lurid comics crusade overlooked the simple fact that kids just enjoy gruesome and extreme material, dating back at least as far as the Grimm's fairy tales. Would the citing of that fact possibly have made any difference in the swaying of governmental and popular sentiment had the point been eloquently made?
JT: It would have been very worthwhile to have made that point. It would have been very worthwhile to have a prestigious literary critic or philosopher come in to talk about that, but I don't think it would have cut any mustard whatsoever. If they knew what Grimm's fairy tales were at all, let alone in their pre-censored dimension, the senators would have not been interested in hearing about that or anything else (ghost stories around the fire at camp, anyone?) They probably would have censored Grimm, which was already done anyway, I guess. Logic is not going to convince a censor, nor is he or she acting in good faith. Censorship is about power, not about a grasp of material. No one wants to read the thing they censor. An aesthetic argument just makes the artistic person look weak. The senators would have treated such a person as a "woman," i.e., displaying a sensitivity to be respected but not taken seriously. Indeed, if they knew they were wrong they would have stuck to it so as to show how macho they were.
PWCW: With the American teenager becoming the first youth leisure class following WWII, along with the freedom that affordable transportation and not having to immediately get a job, , could that drastic change in society have helped ignite the paranoia over juvenile delinquency? Previous trends in popular entertainment were railed against by so-called defenders of decency—jazz and swing music immediately spring to mind, to say nothing of the kind of films that led to the instituting of the dreaded Hays Office in Hollywood — and the very much in-your-face nature of the comics covered in the book offered a convenient scapegoat for the perceived delinquency "plague." Could there have been a willful denial and inability to deal with the necessary change in the approach to parenting in the wake of the changes wrought by the war?
JT: You are right to note that comic books were never the problem, nor did anyone really think that, deep down. It was a symptom of what seems like an inexplicable generational hostility. I think you may have put your finger on something nobody really wants to talk about: generational envy. Kids my age were often verbally abused for not having suffered in the Depression (hey, maybe they can have their chance now) or WWII, as if we had been given a better life, but had no right to enjoy it. When I was twenty I could have, say, become a hippie and enjoyed the Summer of Love in the Haight (1967), while my late father at that age was required to command seven tanks and nearly thirty troops. He was later blown out of his tank. Nonetheless, he had a very good life. But I don't think all those "Great Generation" guys (how my father used to laugh at that designation) were not as copacetic with how they had to spend their youth as they would have liked to appear. Of course, I didn't become a hippie and spoiled much of my own youth worrying about being sent to Vietnam. I think there is more to answer about your question. Probably deserves a book of its own. And, yes, the Comics Code is based on the Hays Office code. All the codes for media are based on that original one.
PWCW: Many of the covers seen in the book feature illustrations that seem to hint at possibilities of encountering tales rife with rape by fetid corpses, sadistic tortures, gore and even possible child molestation. At first glance these images seem dire indeed, but they can also be interpreted from both a child's and an adult's understanding of the world and life, so dual readings are indeed possible. Your thoughts on this aspect?
JT: There are more than two readings possible. Sometimes there are multiple plausible readings, depending on what the reader perceives and how much he or she can actually read. Sometimes the most ghoulish ones might get by kids because it's too hard to read the description of what's happening. Or they might imagine something worse than what is happening, regarding eye injuries for instance. I think the more psychosexual covers were more powerful for young adults or older teenagers. As I speculate, without too much evidence, the metaphysical type of horror, like I can't reach to the bottom of this bag, or the elevator opens on the 13th floor up in the sky, is more tantalizing to kids. This was not just uncanny, but canny too; you could sell your comic to different age groups or levels of sophistication.
