I’m interested in the history of comic books because it’s fascinating. If you haven’t ever bothered to look into it (which should be the majority of people reading this blog), its history closely parallel’s that of films and TV with one glorious (and infamous) break from that trek. It began with pulp of course. The first story of Batman is probably a rip-off of the Shadow, and Superman’s origin was meant to be in a comic strip that was meant to run in newspapers, but was switched at the last moment by the publisher, making the whole thing a bit disjointed, not that I’ve read it, but I’ve heard stories. Also, apparently there are some tales, early in the run where Batman uses a gun, something so anathema to the character now, that the very sight of is a little disquieting. Even if your only frame of reference to that is the Christopher Nolan films (or the Burton/Schumacher ones) you’ll probably get that.
But the real reason I’m interested in comics, beyond the insanely terrible nature of their origins, is the censorship they underwent. Up until the mid-fifties, when a psychiatrist with far too few patients decided to condemn a whole industry on the basis of children seeking an easy answer to violent behavior, the comic’s industry had grown towards more violent material. EC comics, originator of horror and terror in the industry, is perhaps the most famous of these companies, which sought to profit off the growing amount of adults interested in comics, a side effect of GI’s during the war reading them. However, after the book Corruption of Innocent, the tide turned, and before the government could censor them, the Comics industry decided to do so themselves, making it almost impossible for EC comics to have a twist ending, where the twist was that the main character was black and he was portrayed positively!...yeah I am also nonplused by this censorship, but it’s an example of how creativity was stifled.
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