Baiting the Censors

EC has become the martyr of comicdom in the 1950s, since the investigations into the content of comics resulted in business and editorial changes that essentially caused the company to fold, although some of the talent of its legendary comic book Mad would carry that title, in a new form, until the modern day.

We can boil in outrage at the unfairness of it all. One need not make great intellectual leaps to cast the comic-burnings of the fifties as an epic struggle of Good (innocent martyred comics producers) versus Evil (paranoid totalitarian censors out to constrain expression). This oversimplification, however, leaves out the detail necessary to get a true feeling for the era.

For instance, EC's problems with censorious individuals and committees did not always fit into a perfect Good versus Evil template. We might better describe them as conflicts of Naughty versus Evil. EC, as demonstrated in the pages of its title Mad, stepped beyond the accepted constraints of polite humor and frequently got into the various vices that help make a complete human personality. They knew that some risk attached to what they printed, and dared to do it anyway. While this bravery means that the various talents mustered under the direction of Harvey Kurtzman created something enduring and amusing even half a century later, it also helped make these works a target for public disapproval (and disapproval in public for perhaps a respectable number who nonetheless might guiltily enjoy in private).

EC Comics dared to ask for it, and they got it.

Comedy and Human Folly

Comedy works with a number of tools. The absurdist presentation of suffering provides the kernel for what we call slapstick, possibly the most ancient kind of humor and also one least at risk for becoming obsolescent. Absurdism also plays a heavy role - combining elements that simply do not belong together, such as, for instance, Graham Chapman's immortal portrayal of a British judge in panties and a garter belt.

However, comedy frequently does its best work by knocking human beings of their pedestals of high moral posturing. Done correctly, such an unseating can completely dispel the hot air contained by even the more pompous types of human beings. Furthermore, perhaps because we all share, to some degree, the basic human follies, the humor in bringing out human flaws can reach almost anyone capable of humor.

Cannibalism and/or Vampirism

Images of characters drinking blood - even through twin Dixie straws - could disturb concerned parents, even without assuming for them a background in religious traditions that equate blood transfusions or organ transplants with cannibalism.

This sequence from the Batman parody "Batboy and Rubin" plays heavily on the disgust factor and shock value attending any such portrayal, and, to boot, throws in the absurd element of punching holes in a stinking big toe with a hole punch prior to Batboy's revelation of his true status as a "vampire Batboy."

Profanity

If, today, no one sees much point in getting bent out of shape at the occasional mild profanity, such a condition did not exist in the fifties. A laissez-faire attitude towards strong language in reading matter presumably geared at children would attract the attention of the average concerned citizen who worried about the corruption of youth. Little did the parents of the 1950s realize just how far that children born around or after 1945 would eventually push the limits of acceptable speech, music, and film.

This specimen clearly suggests that Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood knew exactly where the line-too-far stood. In this sequence, they push the scene about as close to the profanity barrier as anyone could expect without going over into a territory that the undergrounds of the next decade would tread, then trample.

Drug Abuse

Even with the knowledge that the Comics Code Authority would not exist for some time yet, the occasional detail in a Mad panel surprises me sometimes. That Bill Elder could get away with this gag - where "Biddy," a parody of Betty Cooper from Archie Comics, flings herself at Starchie as reefers and a needle (cocaine? heroin? morphine?) erupt from her handbag.

Things like this had to catch someone's eye. Even today, after fifty years of letting things pass, many parents would prefer that their children not read literature where characters have bags full of (say) reefers and rigs. Amplify modern concern many times over and you may approximate the attitudes one could expect of a parent in the fifties who happened across a panel like this one.

Violence

We see here a gag about machine gunning two goons. The gag presumes an awareness of the traditional superheroic codes of behavior that forbid things like machine-gunning villains where one's fists might do the job with less destruction. The excessive nature of the behavior propels the joke forward; not only might we consider the action outside of acceptable behaviors in the context of the events of the story, but it also represents a human failing of the character involved. Woman Wonder, like the Wonder Woman she parodies, has vast physical powers that make a Thompson submachine gun superfluous. Here she just gunned down the goons out of simple laziness or impatience.

Drunkenness

This sequence would not have passed the Comics Code of the years immediately after Mad shifted from a comics format to that of a magazine.

One need use little imagination here to know what this Robinson Crusoe caricature has gotten himself into. We see here a huge rum drinking jag, accelerating as the panels proceed, delineated in such loving detail that we can almost smell the hero's breath.

Child Abuse

Child abuse does not typically evoke howls of laughter from the gallery, but human excess frequently does. In this parody of "The Katzenjammer Kids," the kids get into kinds of mayhem far more extreme than simple pranks; this story depicts the terror campaign of two very nasty kids, and as the story progresses, the punishments escalate from simple spankings to more and more severe things, perhaps finally culminating in things like tying them to railroad tracks.

This panel does not suggest that the people of the early fifties saw the activity depicted in this panel as an appropriate punishment for children. Had anyone seen things that way, the joke would have failed. The joke perhaps does not work as well today because of contemporary attitudes towards even joking about such matters which frequently view scenes like the above as some kind of tacit approval of the behavior.

Lèse Majesté

Senator McCarthy of Wisconsin might not have involved himself personally in the crusades to clean up (or get rid of) comics in America, but he served as a useful personification of the social and political forces that led to such things. Thus, Walt Kelly chose him as a target of parody in his "Pogo" daily strip; and Mad placed his likeness on a character in a piece called "What's My Shine," a game show parody in which the McCarthy doppelganger played the role of game judge precisely as the original played the political game in the Senate.

After a certain point, baiting McCarthy involved little risk, but Mad had made a reputation on crossing a number of lines. Once comics came under fire, Kurtzman perhaps reasoned that he would as well go in for a lion as a lamb. So, in the piece sampled above, a McCarthy lookalike accuses the emcee of a game show of a secret life as a "Redskin" rather than as a "red."

Lewd Depictions of the Female Form

The readers of the fifties simply had no idea to what extent Mad artists Wally Wood and Bill Elder would ultimately carry their passion for depicting the erotically enhanced female form. Elder, with Kurtzman, would produce the early painted comic "Little Annie Fanny," which for years appeared in Playboy magazine, and Wally Wood occasionally did pieces with plenty of gratuitous nudity, such as his "Malice in Wonderland" and "Sally Forth."

However, within the context of the fifties comic book, Wood, Elder, and Davis did a great deal to expose readers to lovingly depicted female forms barely contained in extremely tight and revealing garments. Today's artists seem to believe that portraying the female form with sexual appeal depends almost completely on divesting it of clothing and making the legs, hips, and breasts take on proportions that would render any human being subject to known laws of physics immobile and in great pain. The cartoonists of the fifties did not have the (predictable and overused) option of placing their females in the same old black lingerie, nor of reducing said lingerie to the width of a human hair. So, therefore, they worked with what they could do; they tightened sweaters and skirts until they seemed a bit more like paint than cloth; they occasionally hinted at transparency; and they put male characters in situations involving rooms full of adoring females draped all over them as often as possible.

The cartoonists of the forties and fifties raised cheesecake to a higher level, and did not contain this to comic books. For instance, the strip "L'il Abner" contained a considerable cheesecake quotient; not only Daisy Mae but her rivals enjoyed the same anatomical exaggerations and minimal wardrobe, serving perhaps mainly to please Al Capp rather than to advance the story that unfolded in a daily strip.

The comic-burning crowd noticed this. How could they not?

Inventing New Sins

With such a parade of human vices as the previous samples displayed, one might suspect that EC Comics, through its vehicle Mad, might have rested itself in contentment at that point, congratulating itself for covering so many forms of human vice. However, humor that works does not allow itself such a complacency. Where necessary, Mad could even invent new vices with which to invest its characters in parodies.

For instance, note in this sample the way in which EC's version of Mandrake the Magician manages to turn his magical abilities into a particularly nasty and disgusting vice. This requires some insight into the frailties of the human character and also our inventiveness in finding new ways to lead lives of dissipation.

Making It Too Hard Not to Laugh

Anything shown above fails to approach the mildest sequences of pieces like "South Park," a cartoon that seeks to mulch whatever remains of the modern ability to take offense.

In some ways, however, Mad played the role of the "South Park" of its day. It looked at taboo areas as a playground; it worked hard to keep offending in new ways when the old ones became weak; and, during a very short life of twenty three issues (as a comic book), its daring disregard for the expected conventions of the form made it funnier than anything available in the medium. For instance, just the drooling idiocy of the magician's face in the "hypnotic jag" panel above carries a humorous impact stronger than anything I can recall ever reading in a humorous publication by DC, Marvel, or Archie Comics. Occasionally an independent production might reach similar levels - moments in the Megaton Man of the eighties seemed to suggest the onset of a similar plateau.

Humor through taboo-baiting, however, has some limitations. As taboos and standards loosen, humor coarsens, but eventually shock value wears out its welcome and the lurid just becomes trite. Toilet jokes don't stay funny for long, and the foul-mouthed children on "South Park" eventually fail to amuse.

Mad, however, slapped Propriety in the face with the glove of a challenge back in a day when said concept had some real teeth to it. This earns it some credit as a courageous publication that matched audacity with excellence of delivery, something not often seen to a similar degree in modern humor.

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