Cravenomena

A nervous buzz reverberated throughout the judicial chambers as Senator Estes Kefauver slammed his gavel down that April morning in 1954, his eyes obscured by the glare off the thick spectacles perched atop his large, beak-like nose. Kefauver had stared down gangsters and racketeers during his tenure as chairman of the Senate crime investigating committee, but today he faced some of his greatest enemies — a cartel comprised of the nefarious likes of Superman, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and the Old Cryptkeeper.

Today was Round One of Estes Kefauver vs. the Funny Book.

The 1950s brought to the United States a post-war sense of hope and optimism, but there were also dark undercurrents of suspicion and hysteria lacing the American zeitgeist during that decade. One problem plaguing the nation was the dire trend toward crime among the young, particularly in the bigger cities. Canny politicians and exploitative editors scanned the political landscape for scapegoats and straw men, eager to capitalize on this frightening new phenomenon called “juvenile delinquency.”

So when psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published his anecdotal anti-comic book screed, SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, in 1953, the muckrakers knew they had found their perfect culprit. Suddenly, the lowly comic book was recast as the Mephistophelean agent that both sparked and fanned the flames of America’s youth crime conflagration. And it wasn’t just the grisly horror or crime comics which were targeted by Kefauver and his ilk. Unpleasant aspersions were cast on the gender preferences of popular superheroes like Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman. Psychologists excoriated funny animal comics like SUPER DUCK and UNCLE SCROOGE, because they featured black ducks in villainous roles. The funny book had become funny strange instead of funny ha-ha.

Eventually, the unwanted attentions of Kefauver and his cronies — and the ensuing storm of indignant editorials and public outcry — pushed the comic book industry to establish the Comics Code Authority, an ad hoc group of parents, educators and publishers’ representatives empowered in September, 1954 to enforce the Comics Code, a stringent list of dos and don’ts for comic content — and a huge act of preemptive self-censorship. Most comic book companies submitted to the Code. Some outfits, like William Gaines’ EC Comics, were destroyed by the decision not to accept the Code.

Ironically, the one comic book company that actually unwittingly facilitated immoral activity in children completely escaped the wrath of the moralists. The Gilberton Company’s CLASSIC COMICS, or CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED as it was retitled in 1947, was the comic book for people who otherwise hated comic books. Each issue of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED, distinguished on the newsstand by its fully painted cover illustration, adapted a famous work of literature into comics form. Parents would scoop issues off the drugstore comics racks as an alternative to the more lurid superhero titles, blissfully unaware they were, in many cases, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

For, you see, CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED became the CLIFF’S NOTES of at least three generations of pre-teens. All across the United States, from the late 1940s through the early ’70s, CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED formed the sub-rosa basis for thousands of bogus book reports. Why wade for hours through the daunting text of THE THREE MUSKETEERS when the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED version could be scanned in 15 minutes? Who in the sixth grade could make sense of the original HAMLET? At least the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED version was marginally more comprehensible.

Well, it had cool pictures of a ghost, anyway.

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED published its last reprint in 1971, and although there have been sporadic attempts to revive the franchise in recent decades, it’s never caught on again. Although certain generations will always hold the memory of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED dearly, the concept is now as much a dinosaur as the behemoths pictured on issue #138, perhaps made extinct by the fact that its literary abridgements are no longer needed by today’s internet-savvy generation of young book report writers.