The Comic Code’s hangover was a long one.
From the beginning of the 20th century educators,
scholars, and many self-proclaimed “protectors of the youth” denigrated comics
(books and newspaper strips) as being, at
best, a waste of time and at worse, the cause of juvenile delinquency, bad grades and, I think,
vampirism. The congressional hearings and threats of banning comic books in the
mid-1950s didn’t help. So many people grew up in this era with bad feelings towards
comics because that is what they were taught. And while comic books were not just
for young readers before 1955, after the Comics Code was established in that
year, they mostly were. Julius Swartz and Carmine Infantino both told me that “comics
were for 12 year olds.” Well, in the
1960s, their comics were.
The Superman TV show as on the air before all this happened in
the 1950s, but no new show, based on a comic book super-hero, was to follow
until Batman, almost a decade and a half later. Even Hollywood was scared off. Movies and serials based on comic book characters had been very popular in the 1940s.
Stan Lee obviously enjoyed the fact that Marvel comics were
becoming popular on college campuses and he made personal appearances at many of them. Slowly, comics were being welcomed back
into the world of popular culture, if not popular fiction.
At first it wasn't the big city newspapers and TV shows that
presented favorable and colorful stories about comics, it was the sophisticated,
young adult publications that included the Village Voice (1965) and Esquire (Sept.
1966) that helped bring Marvel Comics to the attention of young adult readers.
I posted the Village Voice article at:
Here is the Esquire feature, with art by Jack Kirby and Marie Severin:
The copy reads: Early this year, the
author of Marvel Comics received a letter from William David Sherman, an
English teacher at State University of New York at Buffalo. "Enclosed you
will find a money order for three dollars," he wrote. "Please send me
twenty-five copies of issue number 46 (`Those Who Would Destroy Us'); I wish to
use them in my course on contemporary American Literature....I know the class
will dig them, and I hope that in them they will see various archetypal and
mythological patterns at work which would give them better insight to where
things are today." There is evidence that college students are already
digging them.
And the cover from that issue:
The Princeton
Debating Society invited Stan Lee, author of Marvel's ten super-hero comics, to
speak in a lecture series that also included Hubert Humphrey, William Scranton
and Wayne Morse. Other talks were given at Bard (where he drew a bigger audience
than President Eisenhower), N.Y.U. and Columbia. Some fifty thousand American
college students, paying a dollar a head, belong to Merry Marvel Marching
Societies and wear "I Belong" buttons on more than a hundred
campuses. Bundles of mail pour into Marvel's offices every day from more than
225 colleges. Twenty-four disc jockeys are loyal M.M.M.S. members and never let
their listeners forget it. And in the fall, at least twenty-five television
stations will carry animated Marvel cartoons. Should anybody still suspect that
children are the only Marvel readers, it might be pointed out that the company
has sold 50,000 printed T-shirts and 30,000 sweat shirts, and it has run out of
adult sizes of both. Why all the furious enthusiasm?
As one Ivy Leaguer told Stan Lee. "We
think of Marvel Comics as the twentieth-century mythology and you as this
generation's Homer." At this stage of the game it is not yet clear whether
the profound impact of Marvel Comics on the campus reveals more about the
comics or the campus. Perhaps a clue can be found on the following page; you
figure it out.
The Gimmick: Marvel's super-heroes, in spite of
their super-powers, all have human problems. And that's why your college
buddies are flipping over them. Spider-Man, in real life a college student
named Peter Parker, is guilt-ridden, money-conscious, socially insecure, and
gets blamed for things he didn't do.
The Fantastic Four are always quarreling among
themselves. Thor's father won't let him marry the girl he loves, and the Hulk
is totally alienated. This, plus a tongue-in-cheek approach, which takes more
than a third-grade education to appreciate, is Marvel's appeal. For example: in
one issue, Spider-Man is desperately fighting the Looter as they both float
high above the city suspended from a helium balloon. As the Looter fries to
kick him in the face, Spidey asks, "Have you ever considered medical help
because of your antisocial tendencies?" And then, "Why is it that
everyone I fight is overflowing with neurotic hostility?" The Looter, hip
to the absurdity of Spidey's chatter, counters with, "You must be
mad—talking that way while you battle for your life!" Now, where else
could you find stuff like that? Certainly not in your Brand Ecchs comic books.
Nosiree.
