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[Robb_K]

Per Neil Meikle's request, I've chosen to assess and compare 2 comic books from the Golden Age, that were singled out by a British-based Women's Committee as containing corrupting material dangerous to children and adolescents (The Exhibition).  They are Magazine Enterprises' A-1 Comics 13(Guns of Fact and Fiction), and that same publisher's Manhunt Comics 3.  The main claim is that both books glorify violence, and don't teach good values to the young readers, and may lead them astray to very negative lives.

Personally, upon reading the very Werthamlike pamphlet, which reeks heavily of propaganda, I couldn't help thinking that some not-so-well-intended agenda is behind it (as is usually the case when such propaganda is fomented by rabid, mouth-frothing zeal).

I'd like to read all of your opinions on whether the material in both books would really corrupt young readers' morals and lead their lives astray straight to The Pits of Hell, or just be a bit of entertainment, and not affect their lives in the long run.

Manhunt Comics 3 can be found here:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=22686

A-1 Comics 13 can be found here:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=65253

The British(International) Women's Group Pamphlet (The Lure of The "Comics") can be found here:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=79287


I'll reserve my analysis for last.  Enjoy the reading!

[The Australian Panther]

Well Done.
I should have touched base with you and mentioned that Neil and I have been discussing by PM how we would have posted these, for that reason, next time round. My Bad! And no harm done.
Lets hope we get a good discussion going!.       

[John Kerry]

Will read the comics later tonight when I have less to do (it is morning here on the west coast of Canada). However I will note that the English had a thing about popular culture dating back to at least the time of Queen Victoria and the penny dreadfuls. Wertham was a johnny-come-lately when it came to attacking comics.

[neil meikle]

I  would like to point out Robb that  I asked for the books to be compared  with the attack on them. Just in case anybody hasn't read it yet here's a link to it     
                 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=79287   
               I'll be back tomorrow with a lot more to say.

[SuperScrounge]

Oh, no, I've been corrupted by these comics. I've turned evil and will conquer the world as soon as I get a little more speed out of the dune buggies.



Manhunt #3

Terror in the Sky - Why is the detective encouraging Judy to come with him? He should be telling her to stay out of the way. Otherwise okay story.

The Horror in the Hearse - When is this story supposed to be set? The flashback seems to be set a few hundred years prior to the present day. Also why only use one person trailing the hearse? Why not station bobbies at key locations to look out for and track the hearse?

The Man With the Right Hand! - Eh, okay, but nothing special.

Space Ace - Overly simplistic storytelling.

The Red Fox - Eh, okay.

Undercover Girl - I should think Ming Lee would have found an easier way to write down the message than carving a formula into a jade ring. A few cheesecake scenes were the best part of this story.


A-1 Comics (Guns of Fact and Fiction) #13

Flame of the Frontier - An interesting way to tell a biography, have the guns do it. Kind of reminds me of the way Robert Kanigher would sometimes write stories.

Gunman! - Okay story.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre ? Oh, a romance story.  Not bad.

Guns West and Nuggets - I think someone illustrated the outline for a story rather than a script. It just rushes ahead without pausing to take a breath.

Jail-Fear! - Kind of an odd title for this story as I don't recall any mention of being afraid of jail. Typical biography. Maybe if it would have been longer if might have worked better, but as it is it's basically names, events and violence.

Penman ad - That Gloria is setting herself up for resentment from her classmates. 


The Lure of the Comics

Seemed odd to just read the two books singled out and not read the pamphlet that singled them out.

"They employ the strip-cartoon technique first introduced for the innocent amusement of small children who could hardly read."
No. The strip-cartoon technique grew out of newspaper comics which were developed for adults who bought newspapers.

The comparison made me want to mash-up the American and British titles Tiger Tim's Manhunt, Rainbow Girl Outlaws, Beano Guns!, Dandy Crime, and Famous Schoolgirl Crimes. 

"The first story in one issue is entitled: "Jail-Fear""
No, it's the last story in the issue.

"one short story with the same message as that of the gory strips that have gone before."
That killers get killed?

Sadistic crimes went up since comics started in the early thirties.
I'm surprised the author didn't blame the election of Adolph Hitler on comics. Of course on the next page, after essentially blaming comics, the author backpeddles and says that you can't blame comics alone to give themself an out for the obvious accusation that they let stew in people's minds for several paragraphs. Yeahhhhhhh...

I found it unintentionally amusing that after damning American comics the author praised Tom Sawyer, an American novel. Guess no British book was good enough! 

Lots of scapegoating, the age-old idea that 'our kids aren't bad, it's some outside force that makes them go bad', etc.

So how many British comic reading kids in 1952 grew up to write those violent British comics of the 1970s? ;-)

[The Australian Panther]

The comparison made me want to mash-up the American and British titles Tiger Tim's Manhunt, Rainbow Girl Outlaws, Beano Guns!, Dandy Crime, and Famous Schoolgirl Crimes. 

I'd like to see that!

So how many British comic reading kids in 1952 grew up to write those violent British comics of the 1970s? 

2000AD and Judge Dread anybody?


cheers!

[neil meikle]

Seeing as it was my idea in the first place I'd better get on with it.             
       Guns of fact and fiction   
    Flame of the Frontier    Having the guns tell the story of Bat Masterson was a different way to do it, a bit of an original start.   
     Gunman    I wonder if Joe Strange is any relation to the doctor . So a fear of cats brought about his downfall, something had to.
    St. Valentines Day Massacre  Blood and thunder galore of course. I must confess I don't care for gangster stories all that much they do seem a bit samey to me.   
       Guns West and Nuggets A rather jolly routine western, that sums it up
       Jail Fear  An early Johnny Craig, not one of his best but I suppose I've been spoiled by to much EC. On top of that it's a gangster story. 
           After all those shoot ups lets move on to a book I find a bit more interesting.
       Manhunt 03
       The Horror in the Hearse  Like the Paul Harker artwork it's quite good. Like Superscrounge I had trouble sussing out what time period it was supposed to be set in. I guess either the writer or artist imagined that's what foreign countries were like. I also don't think the real life police would have a lot of difficulty locating a bloke fitting Mendozas description who rode around in a horse drawn hearse.
       The Man With the Right hand   As far as the pamphlet is concerned it's the overlooked story but perhaps it shouldn't be. soaking a rag in carbon disulphide and carbon tetrachloride so it doesn't burn you is an antic kids might try in real life so it's probably more worrying than anything else.
       Space Ace  It didn't matter to the anti comics lobby if crimes were committed in outer space, the wild west or hundreds of years ago. They made no allowance for it.
      Red fox They say the Mounties always get their man and it looks like their dogs do too. There's clearly a point for the dog savaging the bad guy at the end, it can't be called gratuitous.
      Undercover Girl A bloke gets eaten by a shark in this. It has been known to happen and you can't really blame a shark for doing its thing. Oh well it could be worse, Undercover Girl doesn't get tied up in this issue so  they can't complain about any bondage.
        The Lure of the Comics It was very snobbish and anti American, a very staid and conservative era indeed. Was the boy on page eight being honest or giving his teachers the answers he thought they wanted to hear. That was something recognised by educationalists at an earlier date.
      It's surprising the newsagent refused to sell them as he didn't want kids to become Americanised. I should have thought that battle was already being lost due to movies and was eventually given up on with the advent of rock n roll and t v. What I'd like to know is how many newsagents were rubbing their hands with glee as things like this would help them sell a few more copies? My late uncle always said that Mary Whitehouse was advertising the things she complained about and the old boy was spot on.
      Regarding an observation by Superscrounge perhaps the writer was working from a black and white U.K. reprint where  the stories were in a different  order and the title was abbreviated to Guns.
       Finally  looking at it from the perspective  of a modern day comics fan I really must give the author (authoress) some credit for the detailed descriptions , they certainly helped me identify  the books. Compare them with Wertham saying "In one comic a man kills his wife with a poker ". That's all he says about one book, it's not much to go by, is it? 

[neil meikle]

Now that I've said my piece I've got a few related goodies to share with you.
        First of all here's an anti comics t v show, a 1955 episode of Paul Coates Confidential report.
           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI8IJA8kdkI     
     If we can't read Doctor Wertham on here, we can at least listen to him. Wertham was a guest on two surviving episodes of Author Meets the Critics. One of them was The Comics very funny which was about a magazine article of the same name he wrote. The second is The Shmoo where he debated with golden age comics artist Al Capp.
           https://archive.org/details/The-Author-Meets-the-Critics 
     Last but by no means least here's a link to lost SOTI .org. this site will appeal to any golden age comic fans. There are articles by and about Wertham and the campaign and a comprehensive list of discovered SOTI books. While you're there if you can identify any of the lost SOTI books, could you do so please? This is an appeal for your information not your money.
          http://www.lostsoti.org/   
      That's all from me  take care

[paw broon]

Neil mentions Rock 'n' Roll and Bill Haley had a hit in 1955, so kids knew about it. Haley came to Glasgow in 1957 to pollute the minds of youth. In the UK that tour saw lots of damage to theatres and "bad behaviour" in the streets.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-herald-1130/20210712/282106344642220

[neil meikle]

Hello it's me again.
       They say it's no good spoiling a ship for a ha'porth of tar.
        I've just been looking through my copy of A Haunt of Fears by Martin Barker and I've found out that the author of The Lure of the Comics was Peter Mauger. You can find information offline too.

[The Australian Panther]

I post a link to this post by Crash,
La Pantera Bionda (alias L. P. Rubia): A Brief Bio 
https://comicbookplus.com/forum/index.php?topic=21226.msg83453#msg83453

because it also has to do with censorship and the perceived moral danger of comics, this time from a European point of view. 

[gregjh]

OK so my internet is down as I type this. I will review what I read and copy and paste this over when it's back up. Just mentioning this to make clear I can't check back to the comics.

The first comic with the "follow the hearse" story started well. I love Victorian themes and this one opened with the air of a Sherlock Holmes-type story. It didn't quite live up to that but the artwork was good and the story passable. I also shared the confusion of the flashback appearing to be from centuries ago, I assumed some type of supernatural resurrection took place.

In the second comic I read the "guns" story. I see what the writer was aiming (sorry) for, but it didn't quite hit the mark (not sorry) for me. I really enjoy a good western but despite the good drawings and colour, not this one.

I also read some of the pamphlet, enough to get the gist. It's interesting that though times and trends change, human nature and certain values or worries do not. As a teacher and someone interested in politics in general, the issues of influences and advertising aimed at children,  freedom and regulation are all things I study, research, and discuss fairly often. I won't dive too deep into that rabbit hole just now. I'll just offer a few cursory thoughts:

Is there a risk and limited evidence that young people are more heavily influenced than their adult peers by certain media and behaviours? Yes. Can it cause desensitisation? To a certain extent, yes.  Is there clear evidence that any of these comics ever caused someone to hit a woman, grab guns and shoot people or view women as sex objects? Not to my knowledge, but I didn't research it.

As a modern-day comparison, the extremely violent Grand Theft Auto games have caused huge concern, there are a very small number of people who have committed terrible crimes, apparently influenced by the games, but there were clearly people who were already seriously disturbed.

Should the freedom of the majority be restricted because of these incidents or the lobbyists who point them out? It's difficult to find a balance but I feel the answer is no. Material that should be age restricted or cause offence should carry a warning. There should be a voluntary, private classification body that media companies can register with to classify their content and put consumers at ease.

[Robb_K]

Sorry for being so late on my own thread, but I've been very busy, lately. The bottom line is that I don't believe that either Manhunt 3 or Guns of Fact and Fiction should have been banned from sale, because no one was forcing children to read them, and although both books showed some excessive violence, and gore, I don't believe people do things they wouldn't do otherwise just from seeing pictures. Manhunt had a story trying to tap children's (and adult's as well) prurient interest or curiosity of horror.  And the gangster and Western stories with scenes showing blood and gore in BOTH books, tried to tap those curiosities as well.  They may be considered excessive and offensive to a reasonable number of adults.  But, I feel that even hundreds of comic book series issuing such books (as existed during the 1940s) wouldn't aid in resulting in most of the society's children behaving in a more negative (violent and destructive) way.  All 14 of the grandchildren that grew up during the 1940s and early 1950s in the "family complex" of adjacent houses in which I grew up read all the gamut of comic books available then, and NONE of them displayed anti-social, violent, selfish, or negative behaviour.  Same could be said for all my friends in school.  There WERE a few kids that displayed mischevious behaviour, and a couple who were clearly "disturbed" .  But the latter would have done nasty things to hurt people, anyway, without being reminded "I haven't done my evil deed yet today!".  There were a couple cases where some foolish comic book readers copied (to a "T") crimes that had been graphically laid out in comic books (one of them copying a Carl Barks' written and drawn foolish, slapstick, Beagle Boys' crime (which, incidentally, got them caught and sent back to prison!).  Apparently, the would-be newly-annointed criminals thought the plan was workable, and THEY, not being hapless idiots, could pull it off, without a hitch.  Those German young men had had a previous record of misdemeanor-type crimes in Germany, but not violent felony-type crimes.  So, they probably only took on the challenge for the adventure.  The whimsical look at crimes in comedy comic books is not a "school for would-be criminals.  And, I assume that the detail to which goes into a so-called serious action/crime-based comic book is too thin to allow children and teens with violent anti-social tendencies to succeed at copy-cat crimes, nor would they tempt anyone with half a brain to copy their methods.  As far as the seeing violence portrayed in the books, the only readers who would go out and commit acts of violence after reading stories would likely have committed acts of that type anyway, regardless of their reading the comics, or not.

No!  The freedom to view information liked by most, or not, shouldn't be restricted by the few, who feel they should be able to know what is "good" for others.  Potentially offensive material can be prefaced by labeling, and it is up to parents to raise their children, demonstrating by showing good values in their treatment of them and by example in their own behaviour.  Raising your children with unconditional love and support, and respecting them, but also setting a good example, and demanding respect from them for yourselves, will give them a good foundation to make wise, informed, and logical decisions, which will stand them in good stead to withstand any temptations to avoid negative behaviour that tends to hurt other people in one way or another.

[The Australian Panther]

Meditating on this subject, it dawned on me that while Comics were targeted, the same complaints could have been laid at the feet of Adult magazines of the time, not to mention Film and mass market paperbacks. And if any one imagines that children were not exposed to any of these and never read or watched them, well in an Australian phrase, ' Tell him he's dreamin'!'
The subject matter of some comics was not unique, but rather symptomatic of the times. 
Have a look at these Mens Magazines. for a start. I remember seeing and being fascinated by their equivlanent in OZ.
https://www.skillsetmag.com/a-look-at-the-original-pulp-magazines-for-men-of-the-50s-and-60s/
https://izismile.com/2011/10/01/cool_mans_life_magazine_covers_circa_the_1950s_14_pics-1.html
https://www.pinterest.com.au/GarbageMan78/detective-magazines-30s-50s/
Some of these Horror books are good books, I read many of them myself when I was an adolescent.
But just look at those covers. There was obviously something in the water back then, and a huge market for the gross and the grotesque.
https://www.retrospace.org/2013/10/vintage-reads-49-horror-novels.html
And we would go to the drive-in (children too) and watch, the Blog, the Thing, Vincent Price, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Them, Tarantula - great times. It's a fostered delusion that the 50s was a backward frozen time, those of us who lived through it know that it was a great time to be alive.
Looked at in that light, the attack on comics appears somewhat ridiculous and silly. But kids can't fight back.
Cheers!         
         

[The Australian Panther]

On Comic Censorship in general,

A wider perspective

The Anti-Comics Crusades (plural!) of the 1950s 
http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2021/08/the-anti-comics-crusades-plural-of-1950s.html

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you're probably at least passingly familiar with Dr. Fredric Wertham, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings, and the birth of the Comics Code. There are any number of books and videos out covering the subject any more, from David Hajdu's hefty book The Ten-Cent Plague to Rober A. Emmons' documentary Diagram for Delinquents. Or maybe you've attended a convention and heard Jeff Trexler talk about it in regards to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, or Carol Tilley speak specifically to her research in Wertham's papers. There's plenty of information out there covering all aspects of the anti-comics sentiment that grew through the late 1940s and early 1950s.

But here's the weird thing that I think most Americans don't know: the crusade against comics wasn't just in the U.S. 

He goes on to locate comic book censorship in  Canada, Mexico, and Britain.

But that wasn't the end of it.
1/ The arrival of Japanese Manga later was also seen as a threat.
2/ The explosion of 'Underground' comics in the 70's was seen as a new threat. More harmful Junk from the US.
Comic Book Censorship in Australia - The Letter That Changed It All
https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2013/03/comic-book-censorship-in-australia.html

I know that for decades there was a separate censorship board in Australia,concentrating on Movies and TV. 

I believe that 'outside of the US' a factor in censorship of imported US books, movies TV, music and comics, was an instinctive cultural one.
One unappreciated consequence of WWII was that wherever US soldiers went, and they went everywhere, they brought their culture with them, from Ice cream and cigarettes to cars and motorbikes. And Radio helped spread the message. It was world-changing. The US culture was young and vigorous then and change is always seen as a threat. especially when your children are embracing that change.
I can see that we are now experiencing another censorship period in comics [and TV, movies, books etc. This time internal and in a sense voluntary, [or at least , imposed from the top internally] as comic book characters [and Movie]  now must be 'anti-racist and woke'  And for mine, in many cases, unreadable and unwatchable.   

Cheers!     
 

[SuperScrounge]

1/ The arrival of Japanese Manga later was also seen as a threat.

I seem to remember hearing in the last year or two some Australian politicians tried to ban anime and manga.

[The Australian Panther]

I seem to remember hearing in the last year or two some Australian politicians tried to ban anime and manga 

Quite possible. However they would have to ban the internet to succeed, so good luck with that!