DBWI: EC comics shuts down in the 50's

[Miss Teri]

EC comics is one of the largest comic companies in the industry, along with DC, and Atlas-Archie. It produces many long-running titles, such as Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, and Vault of Horror, as well as many other publications. However, I was reading that apparently they were being attacked for their content back during the McCarthy era. Apparently, their horror content was considered lacking in taste and there were calls for EC to remove their content. They remained, of course, and would become one of the defining Comic companies of all time, but that got me thinking. What if these cries were heard, and EC was forced to destroy its famous line-up. Would the company fair well, or collapse? What would the effects be on the Comic industry in general?
(OOC: Just a note: in this world, Fredric Werthram died in a car accident before he began studying juvenile delinquents, and hence, there is no Seduction of the Innocent.)

 

[GeographyDude]

heck, we would have missed all the racy, sexy stuff ! !

 

[The Uchronian]

EC comics is one of the largest comic companies in the industry, along with DC, and Atlas-Archie. It produces many long-running titles, such as Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, and Vault of Horror, as well as many other publications. However, I was reading that apparently they were being attacked for their content back during the McCarthy era. Apparently, their horror content was considered lacking in taste and there were calls for EC to remove their content. They remained, of course, and would become one of the defining Comic companies of all time, but that got me thinking. What if these cries were heard, and EC was forced to destroy its famous line-up. Would the company fair well, or collapse? What would the effects be on the Comic industry in general?
(OOC: Just a note: in this world, Fredric Werthram died in a car accident before he began studying juvenile delinquents, and hence, there is no Seduction of the Innocent.)

Well, anyway, I doubt the McCarthyites would have succeeded in destroying the comics industry. By the time 1954 rolled around, Ed Murrow had pretty much destroyed their reputation.

My own question is, would there still be a Marvel? They were spun off from Atlas in 1956, in response to concerns over content, and ended up being the producer for a lot of grittier content(X-Force, anyone?) for it's sister company. Nothing quite like EC's horror stories, but more of the "man-on-the-street" stuff, like "Anna Marie", about a girl from Florida running away from dead family and a run-in with drug dealers, or that one story about a black guy from San Diego who ends up taking down the nation's biggest drug cartel....

 

[President Farrakhan]

Mad probably wouldn't exist.

 

[The Uchronian]

Mad probably wouldn't exist.

Maybe not, but then again, Britain's own obscenity laws didn't stop Monty Python from airing some of their naughiest skits, amirite?

 

[Sabot Cat]

You might have more 'wholesome' adventure stories in the American market, a la Tintin or Donald Duck, as opposed all of the horror, romance, pseudo-porn and superheroes we have today.

Thinking more on it, I bet Disney would definitely capitalize on the ensuing power vacuum to push the Duck comics stateside, and perhaps supplement each of their animated features with comic book tie-ins, rehabilitating the medium in the eyes of the public.

 

[The Director]

Wow, this has big implications for George A. Romero's career. I wonder if he'd go back to ghouls (or walkers, or whatever you wanna call the flesh eating undead) earlier without the EC comics to adapt? Practically all his films from the '70s and '80s were based off of EC properties. I wonder what his film career would look like without the Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror films. As for comics, I wonder if the opposite of the late '90s/early Aughts "Light Age" of comics would have happened without the proliferation of dark comics in previous decades.

 

[SactoMan101]

What's interesting now is that we have a three-tiered comics system here in the USA now. One more "safe" and also for a younger generation (for example the Archie Comics--part of the Atlas-Archie Comics Group--and Disney Comics, especially when Disney started bringing over the comics originally produced in Italy--W.i.t.c.h. became a huge hit here in the USA in the late 1990's), one for more "serious" comics readers with an emphasis on superheroes, horror, mystery and science fiction such (DC Comics, Marvel Comics--an imprint of Atlas--and EC Comics), and one definitely aimed at very adult content (various publishers).

Unfortunately, they're facing some serious competition from eastern Asia, especially Japan and increasingly South Korea. The surprising willingness of American readers to read Japanese manga and Korean manhwa printed right-to-left in the late 1990's opened the door for a huge treasure trove of works from eastern Asia, and names like Akira Toriyama, Naoko Takeuchi, Hiro Mashima and Eiichiro Oda are threatening to be as well-known as the current "big names" of American comics.

 

[Miss Teri]

Unfortunately, they're facing some serious competition from eastern Asia, especially Japan and increasingly South Korea. The surprising willingness of American readers to read Japanese manga and Korean manhwa printed right-to-left in the late 1990's opened the door for a huge treasure trove of works from eastern Asia, and names like Akira Toriyama, Naoko Takeuchi, Hiro Mashima and Eiichiro Oda are threatening to be as well-known as the current "big names" of American comics.

Funny how that works, considering Archie was the one that introduced properties like Astro Boy and Speed Racer to the American market, thus essentially helping bring Manga to the west.

 

[Montanian]

Comics were a very random target in the 1950's (like Frederic Wertham's aim and thinking, more about self-promotion than real insight into juvenile delinquency.) Your POD of his timely demise probably ends the push, or leaves it back on pulp magazines, paperback novels, movies, mainstream magazines like Esquire and Playboy (1956), etc.. Not a McCarthyite target, this is the Nanny-state bunch who rely on dubious sociological research to inspire compulsory social engineering so more of the Eugenics and Socialism thought tradition than the anti-Communists.

I think the post above about not having "MAD" Magazine is the most significant impact on the culture and it was such an unlikely outgrowth of EC Comics that it's a butterfly of it's own. It became a protest vehicle through satire of the community not by comic book writers but many of the top advertising copywriters who moonlighted for MAD (eventually even top TV show writers as well) who found an outlet for satire and parody that didn't exist elsewhere. At it's peak Mad was one of the top circulation magazines in the country with over 4 million subscribers and very influential in youth and young adult thinking (very popular with military personnel, collegians, and many more who were outgrowing comic books aimed at grade school or high school students' fantasy lives.)

Hugely popular Television Shows that questioned the status quo, the official version, the rightness of authority figures drew heavily from Mad, i.e. "Laugh-In", "Smothers Brothers Show", "Sonny & Cher Show", "The Monkees", etc. and those had a considerable impact well beyond cheezy horror films (which go back to the 1930's or before like "Nosferatu", long before EC Comics which seem to be more influenced by the movies than vice-versa.)

 

[Miss Teri]

Comics were a very random target in the 1950's (like Frederic Wertham's aim and thinking, more about self-promotion than real insight into juvenile delinquency.) Your POD of his timely demise probably ends the push, or leaves it back on pulp magazines, paperback novels, movies, mainstream magazines like Esquire and Playboy (1956), etc.. Not a McCarthyite target, this is the Nanny-state bunch who rely on dubious sociological research to inspire compulsory social engineering so more of the Eugenics and Socialism thought tradition than the anti-Communists.

I think the post above about not having "MAD" Magazine is the most significant impact on the culture and it was such an unlikely outgrowth of EC Comics that it's a butterfly of it's own. It became a protest vehicle through satire of the community not by comic book writers but many of the top advertising copywriters who moonlighted for MAD (eventually even top TV show writers as well) who found an outlet for satire and parody that didn't exist elsewhere. At it's peak Mad was one of the top circulation magazines in the country with over 4 million subscribers and very influential in youth and young adult thinking (very popular with military personnel, collegians, and many more who were outgrowing comic books aimed at grade school or high school students' fantasy lives.)

Hugely popular Television Shows that questioned the status quo, the official version, the rightness of authority figures drew heavily from Mad, i.e. "Laugh-In", "Smothers Brothers Show", "Sonny & Cher Show", "The Monkees", etc. and those had a considerable impact well beyond cheezy horror films (which go back to the 1930's or before like "Nosferatu", long before EC Comics which seem to be more influenced by the movies than vice-versa.)

OOC: Not to demean anything you say, because it is quite good, but you realize that this is a Double-Blind What If, right? Meaning that the discussion has to be told as if we were speaking in an alternate, where OTL events are considered alternate history. In this case, I'm writing as if I was in a world where there was no Seduction and hence, no moral panic over comics, and EC is still prominent force in comics, speculating on what if EC closed its horror comics line-up in 50's, as it did in OTL. Maybe you do know that, but if you want to place OTL discussion, put the OOC in front of the statement. You can keep the statement, just put OOC on top. Again, you have good points, but it doesn't quite fit the discussion.
Anyway, I put McCarthy era more as an indicator of the era. However, you did bring up a good point about how using that would imply that McCarthyists were behind the attack, which wasn't true
. Perhaps, I should have put the more generic "40's and 50's"
As for MAD, well, apparently, it's still part of EC's line-up in this world (it was around since 1952). It's just more adult and raunchy. Another poster noted it was akin to Monty Python. However, noting your point about the influence of MAD on social satire, I wonder what this MAD, which would be more adult, but also less well-known, would have.)

 

[SactoMan101]

Funny how that works, considering Archie was the one that introduced properties like Astro Boy and Speed Racer to the American market, thus essentially helping bring Manga to the west.

But the versions that Archie published had to be laboriously flipped from the original right-to-left reading orientation to the left-to-right reading orientation--a very expensive process and the experiment by Atlas-Archie didn't last long. No wonder why Japanese manga remained mostly inaccessible to American readers until the Kodansha America took a chance with Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon, Hiro Mashima's The Groove Adventure Rave, and Ken Akamatsu's Love Hina in the 1990's translated into English but keeping the original right-to-left reading orientation; all became huge hits in the USA, especially Rave and Love Hina, the first time a manga series where the collected tankoubon volumes came out in Japan and USA simultaneously.

Today, EC Comics publishes MAD magazine in two editions, one aimed for younger readers under 20 and one definitely aimed for a very adult audience. The edition for younger readers has a very wide reach (and is often quoted in other media), while the more adult edition is sold mostly in specialized comic book shops.

(By the way, it should be noted that some EC Comics influenced Japanese mangaka. Akihisa Ikeda, the creator of the Rosario + Vampire, spent his summer vacations from middle school and high school in Japan at his uncle's house in Torrance, CA (hence the reason why he's surprisingly fluent in English). He admitted publicly while staying in the USA, he read a Weird Tales comic serial from the 1980's where a college student had a girlfriend who was in reality a nasty vampire became the inspiration for the Tsukune and Moka characters in the manga series.)

 

[Miss Teri]

But the versions that Archie published had to be laboriously flipped from the original right-to-left reading orientation to the left-to-right reading orientation--a very expensive process and the experiment by Atlas-Archie didn't last long. No wonder why Japanese manga remained mostly inaccessible to American readers until the Kodansha America took a chance with Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon, Hiro Mashima's The Groove Adventure Rave, and Ken Akamatsu's Love Hina in the 1990's translated into English but keeping the original right-to-left reading orientation; all became huge hits in the USA, especially Rave and Love Hina, the first time a manga series where the collected tankoubon volumes came out in Japan and USA simultaneously.

Today, EC Comics publishes MAD magazine in two editions, one aimed for younger readers under 20 and one definitely aimed for a very adult audience. The edition for younger readers has a very wide reach (and is often quoted in other media), while the more adult edition is sold mostly in specialized comic book shops.

(By the way, it should be noted that some EC Comics influenced Japanese mangaka. Akihisa Ikeda, the creator of the Rosario + Vampire, spent his summer vacations from middle school and high school in Japan at his uncle's house in Torrance, CA (hence the reason why he's surprisingly fluent in English). He admitted publicly while staying in the USA, he read a Weird Tales comic serial from the 1980's where a college student had a girlfriend who was in reality a nasty vampire became the inspiration for the Tsukune and Moka characters in the manga series.)

Heh, I didn't know that. I just knew that Archie had the distribution rights for many of the Manga from the 50's and 60's in the United States. Even today, they re-release certain popular Manga from that era.

I'm not too familiar with Rosario + Vampire. However, I do remember the story you're referencing was adapted to the 90's Twilight Zone. Now there is something interesting. If EC Comics had shut down, where would some of the anthology shows, like the Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits (the latter of which took several Weird Science stories) get their inspiration.