A Geek History of Time - A Geek History of Time Episode 01 - The Comic Code Authority

Episode Date: April 7, 2019

In our inaugural episode, Damian and Ed teach each other about the Comic Code Authority, the influence of child psychology in the 1940s on Estes Kefauver, how this all created the fertile soil for superhero comics, destroyed horror comics, and why Damian’s dad hates Adlai Stevenson.

This is a geek history of time. Where we connect nursery to the real world. I'm Ed Blalock, I'm a dad in my 40s, I'm a seventh grade world history teacher, I have a bachelor of arts in history from the University of California at Davis Go Ags, I've focused primarily on Western Europe and East Asia. I'm Damien Harmony. I'm also a father in my 40s. I'm raising my children to be nerdy and geeky and decent and all various and sundry that go with that. I'm a Latin teacher. I have a master's degree in history, a bachelor's degree in history, both of which focused on

women's history, specifically in England. Now I'm focused on ancient Rome. I have been teaching for many, many years and geeking for even longer. The very first game I ever played that is really of any note is the TSR Marvel role-playing game. And yeah, we've talked about what a pile of crap that was. It's beautiful. All percentals, baby. Yeah, oh Lord. And my experience dates back to age of nine when I first got introduced to Dungeons and Dragons. Thanks to a school enrichment program on weekends, oddly enough, in the 80s, which is kind of weird. Well, we had money for schools back then. Well, yeah, I was thinking more about the satanic panic but currently

I'm playing in a fifth edition dnd game with Damian and I'm really excited as I've mentioned before about the upcoming release of a new edition of Batatek. Yes I'm also currently playing in a game with Ed where we're finding the tail end uses of druids and all various in sundry with that. I'm also running a game for my children, my daughter who is in our cane trickster, halfling, and my son who is a human barbarian aspect of the bear. I'm looking very much forward to my big my little brother Bowie starting a game of cyan for us and via Skype because Sion was amazing. Yeah, I got to figure out how to make the time to get in on that.

Okay, hold me cow. Oh my goodness. Hey, I am currently reading actually just about to finish. Eaton Thomas or a Tantomas, the Latinist in me, screws up all the pronunciations. Mr. Thomas's book called We Matter. That's about activism amongst black athletes and in this current age of striving for social justice and what athletes can do to play their part in that. And it's really quite compelling if not heartbreaking at the same time. Another book that I plan to read afterwards is Punching Nazis and other good ideas by Keith Lowell Jensen, a local comedian and a local performer as well as a local author now. It's a fantastic book. All right. Right now I'm working my way through at home by Bill

Bryson, a history of modern domesticity and the things that we take for granted in our homes on a day-to-day basis. It's a way more interesting than it sounds. I promise you, Bryson is a really good writer. He's really funny, and he's very good at putting things in kind of common sense language, ordinary language, and make them entertaining. The other, after that, I'm going to pick up and really try to finish honor in the dust a book about the American occupation of the Philippines in the wake of the Spanish-American War. I don't off the top of my head remember the author's name, which I did, but it's a very compelling history, especially in light of the global war on terror. Oh, it's fantastic. So what we do here at Geek History of Time is we take a look at some sort

of historical context in which we plug various geeky things, or in other words, we look at something that tickled us as nerds and then combine it with things that tickled us as historians. Yeah. Or like talking about what we're going to be talking about about today something that we've dealt with as nerds that interests us a great deal I was historians. I don't think the CCA is anything particularly tickled either one of us, but it's a good point I'm picking nits there. Yeah, well nits need to be picked. Yeah without any further ado. Let's get into the episode about the comic book code authority Hey, you like comic books? Yes, you know the answer to that. That was totally a setup.

Boy, howdy. Do you like comic books that are censored by their own publishers? I'm sure that a lot of the comics that I love and enjoy have been censored by their own publishers. Boy, howdy. Yeah, today's topic is going to be about the comic book code. It also knows the CCA comic book code authority. I've also titled this or why my dad hates Adley Stevenson. I'm really looking forward to that story. You get a bounce that off of me when we were talking about developing this. I really want to hear the detail. Oh, it's

in there. It is not worth the journey. The journey will be far more worth it than the actual payoff. But what do you know about Comic Book Code Authority? Well, it's a body that has shrunk dramatically in recent years. Right now, I think Archie Comics, Bongo Comics, and I don't remember who the third one is. I wanna say DC, but that's only because my hatred for DC is so strong, I'm willing to believe they'd do anything.

They actually know, they quit the day after Marvel quit. Well, of course they quit the day after Marvel quit. Right, but I mean, they'd be, come on. And I wanna say Archie quit too. Oh, yeah. All right, yeah, the source in my research was, was, I might be wrong. Out of date. I might be wrong. Well, you know, Wikipedia, so, okay. Yeah, my the source and my research was was oh, I might be wrong out of date. I might be wrong Well, you know Wikipedia, so you know, I don't know could be could be could be meet could be cake to quote George Carlin

Yeah, no, I know that it's it's shrunk a lot in recent years and I know that it was Done it was built put together by all of the major comic book publishers at the time as a way to avoid government interference in their business practices. It's kind of like you stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about. Yeah, that's actually that's a great That's a great analogy. Yeah, which my my moral stance has always been no you go ahead and give me something to cry about them Because I want to look you in the eye when you do this. Knowing full well that I fight losing battles all the time, so I don't mind.

So I don't do this all day. Exactly. That's why we get along. That's one of the many reasons. So prior to the comic book code, actually, comic books were diverse and they had something a little bit for everyone. Yeah. Um, they actually, it depends on how far you want to go back.

I say go back to hieroglyphics. Those were comic books. In a way. I can see that actually makes sense. You know, tomb paintings. Right. And, you know, and it's telling stories of people. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's Rinton 10 chasing Trajan's column.

Yeah, I like it. I like it. I like it. Um, and they were also painted back then. I don't know if people know this, but like's column. Yeah, I like it. And they were also painted back then. I don't know if people know this, but like Roman frescoes and stuff like that, we're not just these white marble things. They were actually painted.

Painting is like, in colors that make your eyes bleed to a modern aesthetic. Like Tokyo without the neon. Yeah, really, just god-like, holy cow. There's even talk of Roman statues appearing to breathe. That's how good their paint won. Oh yeah. But you know, it's been left out in the sun for

a thousand years. A thousand years, yeah. Plus, yeah. It bleaches. I had a shirt that did that once over a summer, you know. Found it later on. I was like, I guess I'm wearing pink now. Yeah.

But I have the same thing happening on the sweatshirt. If you want to go forward into the 1840s, you can probably kind of cite the first comic book that you see. It's in the 1840s, someone in America compiled the adventures of Obadiah Old Book into a book. Okay. And Obadiah Old Book was a translation from a French comic book that was created in 1837 called, and this is all in French and I speak Latin, so I pronounce all my letters, Les Amores des Monsieur Véuques Boys,

which is... New Bois! Sure! Yeah, okay. That's a, I, Les Amores des Monsieur Véuques Boys. Okay, if anybody's listening who can explain what the word heathen is in French, I appreciate it so I can throw that out of next time. I gotta say I've read this and this is to comics what early title cards were to dialogue in silent films.

It was colorless, it was dull, it was very very linear. There were no real punchlines. There was no real drama. For instance, obadi old buck, which I love that that was the name that they came up with from the French one. From, yeah. But Mr. Old Buck, he loves a woman, he pines after her and he receives a negative response. That's it. And then, and then, and then, and then, and then I and I quote directly, Mr. Old Book, Indespaire, commits suicide. Fortunately, the sword passes below his arm. For 840 hours, he believes himself dead. He returns to life, dying of hunger. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. That's that's that's that's that's wow really it was see he didn't die so you know the star of that's the joke

Wow, I'm sorry pages sweet Christ right yeah that's hilarious. Yeah You know what what I find interesting about that is that. It's hilarious. Yeah. You know what I find interesting about that is just talking about the quality of that particular story. Which might have been compelling back then. I don't know. You know, here's the deal. I've read and listened to enough interpreters, you know, present storytelling of folk tales from back before that time period. And I got to tell you, they're hell of a lot better than that. I don't know what. So I think the thing that primarily made that novel was the fact that it had printed pictures.

And it was something you could buy in a dead tree form was distributable. And you didn't have to rely on bugging grandpa to tell you the story again, you could just pick it up and read it. And they also had to be literate and basically literate might have been what they were aiming at, you know, kind of like if you look at presidential speeches through the years, different presidents speak at different levels, and you can see they're a peel with a certain demographic voters based on that. I want you, I want everybody to note that I am not jumping in with a certain demographic voters. I want you, I want everybody to note that I am not jumping in with a comment at this time about our current administration. And neither of I.

Yeah, which Andrew Jackson, actually, with his unique spellings of I are smart. Yeah, well, you know, I am from a log cabin. And he was very, yeah, he was a very salty individual, but he was also very rich. So it's not like he couldn't afford tutors. Yeah. But he was a mean fellow, a speaker which, it's actually, right, yeah, it's good point.

It's right at this time actually, that the Obadiastone stuff comes out. It's right around the Jacksonian era. Okay. But yeah, so it's, after this this it's a series of him trying to kill himself for like many, many panels. Really good shit for kids in the 1830s and 1840s to read or anyone. Clearly, I guess. Yeah. Give me an idea as to what's going on in 1830s France. Louis Philippe, the first is King. Okay. And he survives assassination attempt after assassination attempt after assassination attempt.

He survives uprisings, revolts in various cities. And he institutes a series of clamp downs on political expression. So it could be that this was one of the only outlets for people that was still acceptable. So you get kind of a blending of what might other guys might have otherwise been a more entertaining story. All keeping in mind the idea that the overarching theme here is censorship that makes sense. Right.

So just as a question kind of attention, but Louis Philippe, I forget, do you know, was he a bonapart or was he one of the bonapartist restoration? No, 1818s, 1830s. 1830s, no, okay, no, he's a bourbon, forget it, forget it. Movin' on. In 1839, the dog erotype was invented. Okay. The first reliable camera. Yep. This is all leading up to 1848, so again, I just want to go back to the day 1837 it's in French 1840 it's in English. Okay. In 1848 which is a really fun year if you're down for revolutions. It's oh man you throw a dart and you'll hit a revolution.

My point is I guess is that you've got a comic book about a bumbleer trying to find love and also trying to kill himself kind of strangely fits into this period between the the the the 1815 clampdown on all things democratic and the 1848 explosion of all things democratic and right in between you have this really bland almost like this is part of the kindling that leads to yeah I don't think it was necessarily, hey, they didn't give us our Monsieur de Waard, or whatever it's been doing with us.

But when you see art being this bland and suffering like this, usually a revolution's right around the corner. That, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I can see that connection. I find it, yeah, no, I think the connection that you're drawing there, I see where you're going with it, and I see what you think of that. I think my own take on it is more in the direction of looking at it as what the causes of relationships are. Sure.

The two are being created essentially by the same source. Yeah, same side. That Philippe and the Bourbons and everybody involved in that particular hierarchy was desperate, desperate to maintain the social order for the sake of their own safety. Oh, absolutely. And so anything that could potentially be subversive, anything that could potentially be in any way involved in laissez-mageous stay

would be viciously tramped on. And so- Similar to modern art in the 1950s, is why we ended up getting abstract expression. Yes. Yeah. Jackson Pollock can thank censorship for this. Similar to modern art in the 1950s is why we ended up getting abstract expressionism. Yes. Yeah. Jackson Pollock can thank censorship for this.

Yes. Really. So it comes to America in 1840. In America in the 1840s some fun stuff happening. It's just ahead of the gold discovery out west. Yeah. So therefore it's just ahead of the Irish. It's also just ahead of the Mexican-American war.

Yes. It's just ahead of a huge influx of Chinese Irish. It's also just ahead of the Mexican-American War. It's just ahead of a huge influx of Chinese immigrants. There's a lot of things that are about to pop and you have this bland little comic book that just kind of, you know, a holdover from the era of good feelings, I guess, where you follow a bumbleer trying to kill himself. If you want to skip ahead a little, we get to the 1930s. Fun time, old-wide, 1933 in America, you get a book called The Famous Funnies. Now by this point, you had comics in the newspapers for which I believe Yellow German journalism was named. Well, yeah, the yellow rag paper that got used by Hearst and his ilk, because it was the cheapest stock they could get a hold of. Without going to hemp.

Yeah, which actually wouldn't have been that big a deal back then, but anyway, it's topic for another time. But, yeah, the funny is became an integral part of everybody's reading experience. And, you know, part of this, this is going to tie in, I swear, but part of what I find interesting about this whole arc is when we're talking about the newspaper funnies. Here in the United States, that was what everybody assumed any kind of graphic art was going to be. I mean, forever.

Yeah, it's at the tone. Everything was essentially a four panel or back in the old days when they had more space to run the funnies. It was eight or nine sequential, but it was strictly sequential art. And it was punchline comics. It was, you know, to take everything was contained. Everything, you know, took up space, a specific amount of space in the newspaper.

And what's interesting is all of the developments that we kind of have all the expectations that we carry into the 50s and the CCA. I think kind of come from this cultural association that we have with comics and visual art is in the kids ghetto. It's this children's medium. You know, everybody reads them, but you know, it's the part of the newspaper you hand off to your kids and it's relatively safe and relatively harmless. You know, never mind the part of the newspaper you hand off to your kids and it's it's relatively safe and relatively harmless You know never mind the amount of slapstick violence involved, you know, but yeah, but it's socially acceptable

Yeah, it's sanitized. It's it whereas and this is where I want to wind the clock back away the history of sequential art and and What we would call comics and if there's something like comics, in Asia, particularly in Japan, is very different. And from the very outset, sequential art that was being created there was being distributed to a very wide audience. So it wasn't for kids?

It was not made for children. And so the cultural assumptions that they had in Japan that they still have in Japan to word comic book art as a medium right is it's it's a completely different a completely different kind of of of outlook on it so that leads to less panic about oh my god what about the children yes and well yeah leads to less panic about oh my god what about the children? Yes, well yeah it leads to less panic about what about the children. It leads to a culture in which or a medium that is very expressly delineated. And this is a comic book magazine weekly comic book you know shown and jump. Sure. Is a weekly monthly I'm not that up on, you know, publishing, but it's serialized.

That is, you know, a collection of graphic art stories that is specifically targeted to schoolboys. And then there are other publications that are specifically targeted with stories for, you know, men in their late teens or early 20s, or, you know, romance comics. So that we're a that we know what comes in somebody comes in complaining saying oh what about the children there is like what do you stupid that's not where they get it to be like somebody saying you know what are you publishing the smut for you know my my four year old got a hold of it and and then going

dude that's a copy of playboy right why did you have that to your kid right you know yeah what you know where they could read it? Yeah, lock it up, lock it up in your own warrant the back. Right, I suppose to like, you know, guys have done since the 50s. That's what you're supposed to do. Yeah. Oh, I've already got it. Yeah, I just use a separate browser.

So if I could pull us back to the night, there's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very fun. Yeah. So you have the famous funny's which is essentially they took Comics from the newspapers and put them all in one book and it was I think it's told for about 10 cents in 1933 These were in color which is the first there's still not very funny and there are more of a collection of the funny pages It's almost like a treasury than it is any kind of monographic comic book

like what we would see today. It's still very cheap, it's very diversionary, and it's smacked out in the middle of the Great Depression. So there is a need for keeping kids busy because you're traveling because you're in the gelopy or what have you. How did you find out about my grandmother's life? Well you're in California. Yeah, that's an already good point. Also, in the 1933 I just want to give a little bit of an idea as to what else is going on. The Golden Gate Bridge starts construction. Which interestingly I found out is not a WPA. It was not a work project's administration project, but a lot of roads that led up to it literally were.

Yeah. And a lot of the infrastructure that went around it really were. Also, in 1933, Pakistan, as mentioned for the first time, as Muslims in India, start working toward having their own country. Nice. Hitler takes office in Germany, mostly to make Germany great again. There we have it folks. We made it 15 minutes.

Ding, ding ding ding But he did make those promises. I had pictures from my trip to Berlin. Oh me. Yeah, I'm just sharing I went to Berlin of him doing this. He yes He was chancellor and he delivers his proclamation to the German nation and I just want to hit you with a quote of what was coming out 1933 it begins more than 14 years have passed since the unhappy day when the German people blinded by promises from foes at home in abroad lost touch with honor and freedom thereby losing all. Well into his speech, he says that, quote, communism with its method of madness is making a powerful and insidious attack upon our dismayed and shattered nation.

He promises to end the nation's economic distress and attendant personal miseries and ends with, May God Almighty give our work his blessing, strengthen our purpose and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany. Then he said, they're like, Stagg on fire. Well, he didn't like literally. Yeah, but it gets set on fire. Yeah, and then he was the name of the special prosecutor. They put together to investigate that fire. Oh, wait, no, they didn't have one.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, geez. And then he passes the enabling acts or he gets it passed, claiming emergency powers, a la chancellor palpatine, opens up Dacau and eventually withdraws from the League of Nations, you know, because we don't need to be with this group of people that are- Germany first, right? Yeah. He locks up and later releases a portion of over 200,000 people who are considered to be bad for Germany Concerned who's cheer him thinking that they can control him

So that happened in 1933 Also, Lone Ranger started up as a radio play. Oh nice. So there's a half Also if the art took office You know you're're rated in 1933, starts his fireside chats. Oh yeah. The Dust Bowl and LA Flooding Begin, which I get a kick out of that because the climate change is obviously a hoax,

and because how can you have the Dust Bowl in one area and flooding in another? It just doesn't, it has to be uniform. Obviously. It has to be a hoax. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We're either going to wind out this tattooing hot. Yeah. There's no, there's no way you can have different results. The snowball. Right. Remember the snowball. You can hold the snowball. You can hold the snowball in the capitol. It can't be warming. Which is interesting because there's a guy who was, I forget his name, but he

was a huge agricultural expert and he was talking and giving a speech in front of Congress and one of his aides came up to him and they said we need you to stretch it for another 20 minutes because there's a storm coming through and it was a sandstorm coming through to Washington from Kansas. Yeah. Um, you know, so. Oh oh yeah, I know that the and so he had to stretch it until like the dust blacked out Washington Punctuating his speech and actually getting funding for what he wanted to do which was planning a bunch of trees Yeah, so no the the first stand accounts of that are Errowing. I don't know how much of the worst hard time is really good. Oh God

My people talking about you know actually believing no kidding this has to be the end of the world because The the sandstorms dust storms are so bad that literally like the sun effectively did not rise for days. Oh, yeah I remember whole whole Steads being buried under I I mean, just, oh. Well, million tons of dirt left Kansas and essentially silted Chicago. Yeah. And then a whole bunch of Kansas farmers

moved to Chicago, I guess, to be with their farms again. I guess. But also to get jobs. To try to get work, right? So sweeping up the dust from their farms, because it was a bizarre thing. So yeah, comic books, huh? Yeah, good times. Good topic. We're still a little ways away from comics, but we are starting to see sprinklings of them with the success of the famous flanks,

because it was successful. Now in June of 1938, we get to probably one of the most famous comic books there was. Action Comics puts out Superman's very first appearance. Yep. This is Joel Siegel. I'm sorry, Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster, and they write Superman's story. And it's actually, it's not the whole comic. A lot of people think it's only about 13 pages

out of a compilation. And the interesting thing I found there was that it was a throw-in. Like they had tried to get it across many a time and people kept saying this is ridiculous and finally they're like, well, we need to fill this much space. What do we got? Ah, try the Superman one. But it had been developed over a few years.

In my research, I found out that it's entirely possible that Superman was created as a reaction to Jerry Seaggel's father's death during a robbery when he was a kid. And basically his father dies and then he comes up with the idea of a bulletproof superhero. It does make sense. It doesn't necessarily necessarily have to be, I'm going to fix my family with this, but that was what was going through his head. Going through his mind, yeah.

But, yeah. He, Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster, tried to sell the idea from about 1933 onward, which I didn't realize it took five years, yeah. Finally they sold it for $130 to DC, with DC getting the rights, quote, forever. So, you're giving $10 a page. Jesus. Which, there's a whole story. Oh, how long.

It took for them to get in. For them and their ears to get anything. Oh, my God. But if you look at Superman, and everybody's seen him, he's got his underwear on the outside, he's wearing tights, He's got a cape. He's all the primary colors. He really sets the tone for what we come know as superhero comics.

And superhero comics are in and then they're out. They're in and then they're out. But he looks honestly like the power lifters of the 1920s. Like, you go back and find the power lifters from the 20s. They're wearing full body stockings essentially. Well, well because it would be indecent not to. Oh well yeah. Come on. Well, and unitards were for carnies. And that was an interesting thing too. But the cape made him any scenes with him running or jumping more dramatic.

Yeah, he didn't fly it first. He could jump. He jumped. Leap tall buildings and a single bounce. Which ties in with him being super strong. It's a sense. Yeah. It's a original story ran for 13 pages like I said but in many ways it was the first superhero comic. So like I said is you know is the first superhero comic. And actually from about 1938 to about 1945, you see superheroes really stepping on to the main stage. That is the thing. Everybody really digs. It's superhero comics, which kind of makes sense if you think about it,

because we need someone to save us from fascism, essentially. Yeah. And so Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, all very, very popular. From about 1938 to 1940, mostly interestingly because we weren't in the war yet. Mostly these heroes took on gangsters. Yes. And they took up corrupt officials, bad cops. I want to make that point very clear. And a few robbers. And that's going to be important later as well. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, just well just that that you know that's that's a really big element of eventually in a few weeks hopefully what I what I want to talk about about the

evolution specifically of Batman yeah because you know organized crime and and the issues that people were seeing in the news and the stuff that were people were dealing with every day when I say seeing in the news and the stuff that people were dealing with every day, when I say seeing in the news, I mean, in the newspapers, I know television wasn't widespread, don't anybody write in, complain about that? Yeah, movie real stuff. Well, yeah, this is true, yeah.

But a lot of the, you know, really sensational stuff that was going on in current events at that time was organized crime related, you know, this is the period of time, this is by this time, I think, yeah, we are a post-prohibition, but, you know, anybody who was an adult at that point had a memory of... That's a good point. ...what had gone on with Alcapone Machine Gun Kelly, all the horrible, horrible violence, all that stuff going on. Yeah, just because you stopped alcohol didn't mean they didn't find anything. Yeah, and they did find other rackets.

And so, somebody who had abilities that you didn't have to stand up to these shadowy figures of corruption, these people who had enough money and power to avoid the law, you know, to avoid consequences was a very important part of I think the common power fantasy during that time period because there was this very clear inequality between people who had access to get consequences for people who hurt them and most everybody else who didn't. That's a good point. So just throwing that one out there. Absolutely. In October 1939 the human torch and the Submariner both appear in Marvel comic number one. Now this is not Johnny Storm.

This is the Android that is called the human torch, whose name I forget, but it's not important, he's an Android. And he didn't go anywhere very far after this. Well, yeah. He got taken over the identity of the human torch taken over by Johnny Storm. About 20 plus years, 24 years, yeah. Yeah, yeah, more than 60s, but he's the one

that everybody remembers. And Captain America played him in the movie. So it's a lot better It's a sad moment in history. Well, but yeah, you're absolutely right, but so they were They weren't quite heroes neither of them were really quite heroes now. I found that interesting too They were not paragons of virtue. They were in some ways agents of chaos themselves but In some ways, agents of chaos themselves, but they put aside their enmity toward humanity and Help the allies fight the Nazis and the Japanese which makes a lot of sense if you think so marinaries

He's all about the ocean stuff. That's our fight against the Japanese. That's our fight against Germany I mean we've got you know oceans on both sides lucky us in March of 1941 But it was actually released in December of 1940, but they go by cover date was March 1941, even though it's, I've never had to cover it. Yeah, I don't neither do I. Joel Simon and Jack Kirby, they make a comic book with a gentleman dressed in star-spangled attire named Captain America and on the cover he is punching Hitler. In the face. In the face. Again, this is released in December 1940.

Hey man, get your SJW crap out of my comic books. Which I locked that off. Right. This makes Antifa cool before it was even national policy. And they did this on purpose, by the way, because they knew that Nazis were a bad idea. These guys figured it out in 1940. But that's Captain America. Most superheroes are fighting the Nazis of Japanese.

Several of them have a teenage sidekick, which I thought was interesting. It was just kind of the publisher's way of bringing kids anymore. Yeah, it was a way of trying to give younger readers somebody to identify with. Yeah. It's the old marketing ploy, the same marketing ploy

that decades later gave us the Ewoks. Mm. To get the old people to get their kids. Yeah, well, yes. It's a bull if you want get their kids. Yeah, well, yes. It's a bull if you think. Yeah, yeah, nice. I like it. No, the psychological foundation underpinning behind it is, you know, a little kid is going to,

a younger child, is going to identify either with the smallest thing in the frame or the biggest thing in the frame. That's true. And so, you know, throw something small and childlike or youthful in there, and that'll be like, I can be like Robin. I can be like, yeah, super boy. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's the last thing for a variety of reasons the less said about Bucky the better. I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe did the right thing with how they did Bucky and what happened in the midst of time should be re-obscured by the midst of time. You got to also give in my comic books in the 40s are different than movies in the 2000s. Society was very different. Yeah. They were fighting Nazis. Yeah. Most superheroes at the time were fighting Nazis or Japanese was not very kind in terms of racial politics at all.

I got to call that out. You know, if you can find a picture of a Japanese soldier or especially a Japanese officer in comic book from the 1940s, who looks like a human, who looks non-Simmian. Then I will give you money. Non-simian and and is not wearing big coat bottle lens glasses then then yeah or and and does not need significant orthodontic treatment yes and and you know and the thing is another aside because that's what I'm doing during this particular podcast. But growing up, I

had the privilege, the true privilege of being surrounded by a very diverse population of other kids. Oh, you lived in Redding. Yeah, nice. No, I, well, San Diego and Hawaii. Specifically, specifically a group. Yeah, I grew up, yeah, I grew up yeah I grew up I grew up surrounded by other Navy kids and you know the schools that I went to were full of Navy kids and not Navy kids and so the the stereotypes that we see in these media from the 40s of Asians in particular never made sense to me because that's not that's not what my friends in school looked like. None of their parents looked like that. Why, you know, to this day, as an adult, I actually have to think about, oh, well, they're

all wearing coke bottles lenses because they're squinting. Right. No, they're not. As whole, you know, and, you know, and within the context of, you know, the whole nation being mobilized for a war against, you know, a nation state that was made up primarily of, you know, this one ethnic group, I understand how that, how that how that happened. And why it was effective? And why it was very effective, but, you know, it doesn't make it right. Still, well, and it doesn't make it right still well and it doesn't and it still just doesn't make sense to me but yeah so anyway sorry my side there on

that this is what we do here yes true good point so the interesting thing was is that these comics were made both for children and adults it helped with morale overseas yeah with our soldiers and our sailors. And it also helped kids to remember why dad was gone or why mom worked in the factory or why there were scrap iron drives. It wasn't just to get the nickel. Why they were working in the backyard building and maintaining a victory goal.

Yeah, all those things. So it was really important. And so the artists and writers, I mean, they're answering on the market need, ultimately, both reflecting and helping shape the culture, and they knew what was going on. So they were mirroring what was happening, by the way, in movies.

And I really want to make this connection to movies. In the 1940s, certain kinds of comedy died away. Slapsick comedy was kind of always hovering there, but Screwball comedy was gone by in 1942. I mean, it's just, it's had its day and it's gone. And I might do an episode about Screwball comedy. Yeah, I'd be interested in that. But it was really quite something. But what you do see a lot of our war movies, you know, and not just the why we fight New Israel is by Hain Capra, but like actual war movies where superheroes

are our movie stars, and they're fighting the Japanese, and they're fighting the Nazis, and or they're, you know, they're on the margins of these fights. Oh yeah, well, it's, I don't want to say that's the peak of that genre, but it's certainly where that genre really kicked in a high gear. I'd say probably the peak of the War movie genre is the 50s and 60s. Yeah, it's a justify why we still have it in the military. Well, I do want to justify why we still do. And also, you know, for, for, you know, the, the, I don't want to say nostalgia value, but, you know, for, for, yeah, I guess that's the best one I can think of. It's, it is, you know, it's, it's the,

the war movies in the 40s were explaining why it is, why we're doing this, what's going on, and creating, and creating entertainment drama out of that. Right. And then into the 50s and into the 60s, it then turned into myth-making because if you look at Awning Murphy and his film career right as you know and the biggest thing that made him an actor was the fact that he was the most decorated soldier in US history. Yeah You know and then the movie go for broke which I don't know if you're familiar with. I'm not. Okay, growing, spending several years growing up in Hawaii with a very large Japanese American population, Go For Broke, and the 440-second regimental combat team.

Okay. We're a very, very big deal. Go For Broke was their battle cry. Oh, okay. And that the 440-second was not the only, but it is the best known of the regiments that were formed out of young men who were brought out of, yes, who were imprisoned. And one of the ways they could get out was to join the army and fight, interestingly, in Europe. But they actually used Japanese as a code method that the Germans would have a hard time breaking. Which is interesting because we also sent

Native Americans over to the Pacific. Also who were kind of in prison. Yeah, it's the guy who came up with the internment camps idea was a former BIA official. I had not known that. Yeah, and so then we sent them over there and yeah, it just, no. Imperialism, that's what empires have done throughout history. Yeah, it's really good point. So, look at, it's your main system. Yeah, well, and look at, look at how the Scots

got sent everywhere in the goddamn world as the bleeding edge for West Virginia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's awful. Yeah. So, so yeah.

Comic books. Back to. So the connection between movies and comic books really Yeah. So, so yeah. Comic books. Yeah. Back to it. So, the connection between movies and comic books really starts up there, I think, because you have serialized episodes of Captain America, of Batman, of Superman, these little shorts, and it's happening on multimedia. It's a multimedia platform. It might be one of the first that you see and that really leads into

the post-war time. So the war happens, the main focus of the war is fighting fascism. That's what could destroy us. There are Japanese version or a German version. That's what could destroy us. After the war, this thing happened twice, atomic bombs dropping. Yes, well, we'd say after the war, it was very tail-end. Well, yeah, yeah. That happened. Okay, yeah. And then after the war, there was a tremendous anxiety about atomic anything.

Huge, huge. And the anxiety was post-war, there's another country that's also trying to get that same nuclear capability and then they end up getting it. And now the fears that we're all going to be annihilated. Yes, it's now actually like a meaningful threat. A substantial threat. Yeah, it is literally an existential threat. Whereas fascism was, it's a new world order. It will wipe out a lot of people on the way, but it wouldn't end all of humanity.

I mean, I think philosophically it does depend on that. It's self-devouring. But I could see them stretching them out for a long time. But atomic war is atomic war. Like boom, we're done. Nuclear exchange. Nuclear exchange. Yeah, a nuclear exchange, the physics of a nuclear exchange are such that, you

know, certainly if it didn't wipe out all life, all human life on the planet, it would send us all back into a new stone age. I mean, it would be because of the nature of the weaponry. And you know, the thing is, the guys that were responsible for developing all of it, were in the vanguard of saying, okay, hey, look, we've got to be real careful about this. And I grew up with, well, in a military household. And, you know, with the understanding that mutually assured destruction was inevitable, not meaning not that the destruction was inevitable, but that the particular kind of Mexican standoff that we had going on with the Soviet Union was

Was was not something that that historically could have been avoided and and you know that that you know The moment because the moment you developed this technology everybody else is gonna want the technology right and the moment that happens You are in an arms race right and the only the Essentially the the only, the essentially the only way to maintain stability is in stalemate. Is in this system where it is. It's in stalemate.

Yes, AA, really. I mean, my dad was living in Miami during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wow. Well, wait, hold on. No, Cuban Missile Crisis. Wow. Well, wait, hold on. No, Cuban Missile Crisis. He was, he might have been in Florida, but, you know, he was, you know, he, his, his home town was Miami.

Okay. And so wherever he actually was, I'd actually have to ask him because by that time, but he was still connected. He was in the Navy. He was still connected to, you know, this, this town that was right on the end of the match. You know, when everything was like that, I think that went for better when I was thinking of. Yeah, you know. The Michigan is a hand.

Yeah, well, you know, um, it's a hope knows. Sure. I got in trouble with my grandma once with her. She's from Michigan. And she said, you know, when God rested, he put his hand down, and that's why we have Michigan. And I, being 11 and not having a filter yet, believe it or not, I have one now. I said, really? Then how do you explain Florida?

So no dessert for me. Yeah. So that's the tip of the arrow. Yeah, well, yeah, as it were. And at the time he was, let's see, Cuban Missile Crisis was 64. No, 61. No, no, 62, you're right.

62. Okay, so actually he was 44, 62. He was, remember what time of year, he may have actually just graduated high school. So yeah, he just graduated high school. He was attending college in Tallahassee at the time. He was still in Florida. I think the really sad part about that is that he was attending college in Tallahassee. Yeah, well, yeah, so. Having heard about Tallahassee I can't remember the, but you know, and my mother, talking about the paranoia and the fear that everybody had during that time,

my mother was, I mean, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, she would have been 17. But as it shiled growing up in the 50s, she had nightmares about the reds coming... Well, they had coming growth. Well, yeah, but specifically her nightmares were the reds, shelling up and torturing her father. And in her dreams, because everybody talked about the reds, the reds, the reds, the reds. And of course, adults understood that was shorthand for the Soviets, who are people.

Right. My mother as a six-year-old in the 50s didn't understand this was other people. She just heard the reds and you know her subconscious created these monsters that you know she says you know nowadays she says that thinking about those dreams they were oddly kind of camel shaped and not a human they were the monsters you know thes, because there was no human context attached to what she was hearing. I want to loop into that in just a second.

I want to finish your story. Well, that's basically it. There's this new military technology, this new ability to destroy everybody on the planet, either instantaneously or over the course of a couple of years with nuclear winter was all pervasive. You know, my parents grew up on opposite ends of the country. You know, my mother was bourgeois upbringing, you know, and they both carried and still carry. I mean, if you talk to them about stuff, they're well, their attitudes about communism, socialism, any of those related sorts of isms, they're all colored by that experience and you know based on the stuff that Stalin did and the way that was you know

Yeah, you know, it's it's meaningful you know It's it's something that I think we we need to keep in mind also based on the the things that we were told I mean the newsreels I have DVDs of old newsreels Mental hygiene and there's all kinds of stuff. I mean, you know, there are very few high school history teachers who don't show the duck and cover videos. It was ridiculous, sense of that. My dad was a child in the 1950s as well. And he remembers the duck and cover drills, and he remembers thinking at the time, and you know, we tend to remember ourselves

the smarter than we were. So I don't know if he actually thought this at the time, but I'll give him credit for it. He remembers at the time thinking, what's the point of ducking and covering if it's an atomic bomb? And so you've got that with the kids, and at the same time, these kids have more access to funds than any generation prior. So after World War II, everyone stops being afraid

of large groups of fascists with guns, the Nazis and Japanese, they've lost. So superheroes don't need to do their thing anymore. And superheroes dwindled in importance because the threat was a much more generalized threat. And atomic bombs made it so death wouldn't come from a particular front. It would just come from above. And atomic bombs made it so death wouldn't come from a particular front it would just come from above and a decision yeah and a decision made somewhere else that has no connection to you whatsoever so death

was highly probable and effervescent and and always with you and communism was a threat that no one could really define you Your mom was afraid of the reds. No idea what that really means. It was just really menacing and scary. Also TV was a thing that was starting to come out. People had access to money because of the GI bill. Because of a number of things, not the least to which the rest of the world is bleeding to death.

So we were selling them all kinds of stuff. The kinds of movies that got really big in the 1950 is bleeding to death. So we were selling them all kinds of stuff. The kinds of movies that got really big in the 1950s were monster movies. And you had the monster movie showcase. Yes. Oh yeah, yeah, with the giant ants. Yeah. All kinds of atomic, everything gets bigger.

But also revisiting old monsters because of that fear of going back to the Stone Age, the Wolfman. And also revisiting the idea of people who are making decisions about our lives that we have no control over, Dracula. And you start to have all of these monster genres really popping up in a big way in the 1950s. And it helps us tap into our anxieties as a culture and release them a little bit. And kids could now take a nickel down, it was probably a dime. But take a dime down to the movie house on the weekend and

I don't know by the 50s might have been a quarter that would have been a big deal but either way they could go down the half-sposible link home they have yeah and you know that way mom finally gets a rest you know dad can have a new owner with his secretary or whatever and and and Dad can have a new and over with his secretary or whatever. And. And. And. Well, you know, dad, dad would have been that time period.

Dad would have been, you know, doing what everyone wanted to do in the middle of the day anyway, because it's not like he was expected to stay home and look after the kids. That's also really good. He's probably down in the world. He was. He was down in the lodge or the VFW. Yes. Because we're talking about the 50s and everybody was in the VFW

because everybody had been drafted. That's true. But monster movies are huge. And so kids get to go away for a couple of hours, tap into that anxiety and release that tension just a little bit. And since TV and movies were somewhat limited in the sex that they could depict

and the horror that they could depict, because you watch them. They're very, very vanilla. Because of the hair standards by our standards. Yes, because of, yes, hey, which is comics were a place that were not regulated and they were cheap. But there's a problem that I'm going to get to in a minute. So I skip ahead to 1954. I know that you've got some stuff that you wanted to address through the 50s as well.

Yeah, well, going back to talking about the reds, going back to talking about this ever present kind of threat. One of the things that we see during this time period over and over again is the insecurity that people have. There's this, like we talk about, that everybody's going to die in a fusion or fission blast. But there's also, at the same time, because safety is so tenuous we're we're balancing on a knife edge and we know that if we get the advantage in the arms race if we find you know the secret bullet we're not going to use it first right but if they get the edge or they figure out how to overcome us they are going to use it first because they are

them we're us that's the way that's why we have to keep at it. That's why we have to keep at it. You know, and thus you have the the missile gap, the whole, the whole controversy about the missile gap. That's the reason you have the amount of hysteria. That's a good word for it. That that was tied in with Alger his. Yes. And the Rosenbergs. You know, and- Actual spies. It's understandable. Yeah, actually, almost a God working for a foreign power. Not unlike people in our current government today.

But, you know, the Rosenbergs, we now know, they really were actually spying Alger His, you know, in Britain it was Kim Filby who didn't get caught until a long time later. Well, and the worst thing for that hysteria is to actually find proof that you were right in hysteria. Well, yeah, because even when you're paranoid, even if you are paranoid, doesn't mean

they're not out to get you. And the moment you find even the smallest Iota of evidence that it was genuine then you have the anecdote All of it all of it is justified all of it is totally justified And it's be ramped up and needs yes and for God's sakes. We need to do more to stop it so even before McCarthy There was McCarthyism. Yeah, you know, it was it's you know, I'm a party learned. Yeah. Well, yeah from from other people But you know in in in 47

You know, it was the first reference to you know the house, you know People in the house talking about you know communist fellow travelers. Yeah within government Do you remember by the way what? Man who later became president was in on one of those committee meetings. Oh Nixon. Yeah. Oh, yeah Oh, you know, Nixon was up to his neck in it. I also want to point out that Bobby Kennedy was involved. Everybody on the other side. Everybody was talking.

Well, you're absolutely right, though. Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy. You know, Bobby Kennedy. Future attorney general of the United States. Guy in charge of the FBI. Yeah. Well, and when we start talking about McCarthy,

I want to get talking about the Kennedys, Bobby and Jack, and him momentarily because I think it's worth repeating. So there's this terrible, terrible fear of the enemy within, right? Mm-hmm. And so the enemy within is Algier Huss, it's the Rosenbergs, it's invasion of the body snatchers, you know, in popular culture. That's I mean the the metaphor there is An animal being funny. I mean, you know That's not the only thing people were afraid of in that same vein though

You talk about teenagers you talk about kids suddenly having all this free time on their hands You talk about them suddenly and access to having access to funds and being outside of the home. The parlor. Yeah, they're not they're they're out doing stuff. They have cars for the first time. They have each other for the first time. They have and popular culture. All of a sudden undergoes this seismic shift. And they're also valued for the first time. Well, yeah. I mean, they're really the amount of households that have three children, triple, the amount of households in the 50s and four children, quadrupled.

Easy to remember. Yeah. But the amount of value placed on the children, These baby boomers were raised with the idea that they were valuable, which was not true of their parents. It was not true of any generation prior to them that they were valuable members. They were future labor and their kids and their urchins and will build you a playground so you shut up. But it's all gonna be on concrete.

Hope you don't die. You know? So you have all that seismic shift is coupled with the idea that these children are actually worth valuing. Yeah, the thing is there's this weird ambivalence because on the one hand, they're worth valuing for the first time. And oh my god, there are hordes of them.

You know, I mean, the baby boomer thronged. The amount of leather, biker movies that came out of young teenagers, you're absolutely right. Okay, they're scary. Now, you and I will agree, because we work with teenagers. They're terrifying. I mean, on a one-to-one lip-punk kid,

kind of level, they're not, but as the reds, yeah. Contemplated as, you know, the reds. If they ever recognized how much power they could have, they organized it. Yeah, you know, then, man, you know, like anybody, if anybody realized, you know. And so they're spending more time out of the house.

They're spending, they have money. Interestingly, this is the first generation that has access to cars almost as a matter of course. That's true. Once they become teenagers, because everybody now, with the prosperity that, you know, the US was going through at the time, and, you know, what's going through at the time and and you know What's good for Detroit is good for America? Yeah, you know Chrysler GM Ford

I mean, you know cars became a part of being a middle class household Thank you for mentioning class because I was gonna say we say everybody and what we're talking about is the dominant culture at the time Yeah, the dominant culture at the time is white middle class America because there are so many other groups that were kept away from this. Yes. And so many ways. Grand. So good point. It's one of the things we just need to do. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's admittedly as you know a middle class white kid. Yeah. That's okay. Blind spot. Yeah. Right. But for for the majority culture, for the dominant culture at the time, this was the norm and this was a new norm. This was not the way, like the silence, that was not the way they'd grown up and they wanted, at the same time. They wanted to give their kids this experience of not having to

immediately, you know, start working in the family shop right after school all the time. They wanted their kids to have things they didn't have, but at the same time, their kids, kids don't have judgment. What are they going to do with all this time? And so there was this panic about juvenile delinquency. There was this panic about kids going out, young men, particularly. And it's interesting to note that at this time, talking about what you say about people being kept out of the dominant culture, you don't see in the depictions of juvenile delinquency, you don't see African American or Hispanic kids, you don't see Asian kids being portrayed as the leather jacket wearing, you know, toothpick in their mouth.

Greaser's, you know, Greaser culture was white kids, you know, in Great Britain, Teddy culture, Soche culture, I mean, these subgroups, these were working class, but white. Right, you're very right. And, you know, for inclusion of minority groups, you have to go into later youth movements in Europe. And, I mean, today, you don't hear about Black Preppy. So you don't hear much about, I mean, you're starting here,

thankfully, we're starting to hear more about Black nerds. Right. You know, because they're here and welcome. Just as nerds. You know, just as nerds are estimates. You know, but in the media that was being created at the time, these were all kids from the dominant culture gone bad. And there was this terrible fear that,

while you're not looking, your kid could be out, doing horrible stuff. Well, interestingly, you start to see that mixture coming in with music, with rock and roll music specifically, which itself is incredibly integrationalist and and then you see white middle class society just go ape shit about it like they come off the rails being afraid of what's gonna have black and white kids dance together yeah with with music that is blending white

country with black rhythm and blues like Like that's an enormous shot across the bow to the dominant culture. Rockabilly was terrifying. Yeah, it was just insane. All right, so we are getting toward this idea of juvenile delinquency. We're getting toward this idea of we need to be afraid of the children and we need to be afraid

of the children. Yeah. Which is interesting to me because it kind of taps into this Freudian aspect which ties back to Latin grammar. Is that fear and desire are intrinsically linked. They're two sides of the same coin. I'm afraid that the werewolf will eat me is the same thing as saying, I hope that the werewolf does not eat me.

The thing that you are afraid of is the thing that you hope doesn't happen. The thing that you hope for is The thing that you are afraid of is the thing that you hope doesn't happen. The thing that you hope for is the thing that you're afraid of won't happen. So what better way to tie in fear and desire than in these horror comics, which encapsulate both the fear of the savagery, the fear of the horror with the sexuality. The fear of the act wielding lunatic combined with the lurid sensuality of the woman being depicted as his victim.

Indeed. So to, you know, pick a very trenchant specific example. And she's always a redhead, not always bothered me. What? Very odd. The cover, the cover I'm specifically thinking of, I think was a blonde. There's a story from the hearings that I'm going to talk about. And we're going to get to that in our next episode. Okay. We've made this a two part which is fine. I'm having a lot of fun with

it, but this definitely needs to be a two-parter. So this has been the first episode dealing with the CCA. We haven't even gotten to the CCA, but we've laid all the groundwork for it, and I hope that you tune in next time for episode two. So here we are at the midway point in our discussion of the CCA and its development. Damien, what do you think is your big takeaway so far? So far, I've noticed the, even though I brought up the fear and the horror movies and stuff like that, I didn't realize how pervasive the hysteria was. And I think that what you use hysteria was a really apt term throughout the entire American culture at the time and

Honestly, like looking at how you and I were raised the shadow of the Cold War that we were raised in by people who grew up with That fear that's gonna have an impact on how we're raised and what we hope for and so just seeing those points connecting was Quite something. How about you? I think the, just the research that you did on the history of the development of the medium of comics prior to the CCA and tying into what the movements were in society with the stuff that was going on was a new window for me, because I knew a little bit about what comics were like before the CCA, but understanding the details

of that history is definitely an eye opener for me. I like it. Since I don't have anything to plug, but I do want to fix my error from earlier, honor in the dust, Theodore Roosevelt wore in the Philippines and the rise and fall of America's Imperial Dream is by Greg Jones and it is a truly compelling work of history.

I highly recommend it. It is, yeah, I could go on for a long time. But what do you got going? I look forward to reading a few more good books, including one called Star Wars and the history of transmedia storytelling Yeah, that's the look that I got on my face, too Okay, for those of you who don't have a television for this podcast I got the big bug eyes by Ed. So it was good very very akin to Janine from Ghostbusters at the one moment But other than that. Yeah, that's that's kind of all the plugables that I've got going on.

So yeah, that's about it. I hope that you all enjoyed this episode. For Ed Blalock, I'm Damien Harmony, and this has been a geek history of time.