We've Got Relevance

Recently a Marvel executive at a big sales summit caused a stir in the fan press when he said that their declining sales was the result of the company's push to add diversity to their comics. Well, that's not exactly what he said. He noted that sales were down, and specifically that sales of some of their more “diverse” titles were down, and that according to the feedback the company has been receiving from their retailers, that diversity is to blame for it.

In the past few years, Marvel has been making some drastic changes to some of it's iconic heroes. We've seen Captain America replaced by his black former partner Falcon; Thor, Iron Man and Wolverine replaced by women; Spider-Man by a black-Hispanic teen from an alternate universe and the Hulk by a Korean-American brainiac. And some fans have complained that this is all just Politically-Correct Social Justice Affirmative Reverse-Discrimination and want to go back to the Good Ol' Days when the Avengers line-up was whiter than the Moon Knight's underwear.

Personally, I can't say any of this bothers me much. I suppose I don't have that much emotional investment in the classic Marvel heroes. I'm sure the iconic characters will come back eventually – indeed, some of them already have – because that's the nature of the Comic Book Industry. To me the important thing is if the new versions are good characters and if they will have good stories. I was somewhat annoyed when DC killed of Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle several years ago, and dubious about his replacement, a Hispanic kid in an alien battle suit. But the new Beetle proved to be a likable, engaging character and a worthy successor to Ted, so I don't begrudge him taking on the venerable Beetle legacy.

But thinking about Diversity and Super-Heroes reminded me about another time when the comics tackled Big Social Issues. I'm talking about the legendary Relevance Era in DC Comics.

The late '60s and early '70s were a turbulent time in American culture, and comic books no less. Audience tastes were changing, and DC's solid, reliable heroes like Superman and Batman were looking bland and unexciting next to the comparatively complex and more sophisticated characters coming out of Marvel. In addition, a new generation of creators was coming into the comics industry that was more willing to challenge the old formulas and gimmicks. Overall, there was a sense that instead of simply punching out super-villains, super-heroes ought to be addressing real-world social problems.

Editor Julie Schwartz was an important mover behind the push for “relevance”. He had served as the godfather of the Silver Age back in the late 1950s, re-tooling characters like the Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman into science-based heroes. In the mid-'60s he had been charged with updating Batman and was instrumental in creating the “New Look” Batman and refocusing the comic on mysteries and crime.

By 1970, the Green Lantern he had re-envisioned as an interplanetary lawman over a decade earlier was showing his age, so Schwartz brought in a new team to shake things up. Denny O'Neil was one of the new blood writers. A couple years earlier, O'Neil and Mike Sekowsky had done a controversial re-vamp of Wonder Woman, changing her iconic star-spangled costume into a more contemporary pants suit and making her a martial arts hero. The intent was to make her like Emma Peel from the TV series THE AVENGERS, although she wound up looking more like Kung Fu Mary Tyler Moore. Neal Adams was soon to become the superstar artist of the '70s.

They added Green Arrow to the title. Previously, Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, had always been kind of a Batman knock-off, only with arrows as his gimmick instead of bats. He was secretly a millionaire playboy, he had a sidekick who was also an archer; he drove around in an Arrow-car and had an Arrow-plane; and he operated out of an Arrow-cave. O'Neil saw the character as a modern day Robin Hood and made him passionate about helping the poor and needy. This set up a character dynamic of the iconoclastic hippie liberal Oliver vs. the law 'n' order space cop Hal Jordan.

In GREEN LANTERN #76 “No Evil Will Escape My Sight”, Green Lantern rescues a guy being attacked on a city street, but is shocked when the bystanders take the attacker's side. Hal's fellow Justice League member Green Arrow shows up and explains that the guy Hal saved is a slum landlord and the people attacking him were tenants whom he was evicting so he could raze their homes.

As Ollie and Hal debate Law vs. Justice, a poor, elderly black man comes up and confronts Hal. There follows a striking three-panel sequence which has been often reprinted and sometimes parodied. It can be regarded as the start of the Relevance Era.

“I been readin' about you... how you work for the BLUE SKINS... and how on a planet somewhere you helped out the ORANGE SKINS...” he says. “...and you done considerable for the PURPLE SKINS ! Only there's SKINS you never bothered with...!”

We get a close-up panel of the old man, his face creased by misfortune but his eyes brimming with rage, looking up fearlessly. “...the black skins! I want to know... HOW COME ?! Answer me THAT, Mr. GREEN LANTERN !”

In the third panel, Hal lowers his head in shame, avoiding the old man's eyes as he admits, “I... can't”.

Hal decides to try to get justice for the landlord's tenants, which isn't easy, partially because the landlord hasn't technically done anything illegal, but mostly because Hal's bosses, the Guardians of the Universe, (the 'Blue Skins”) call him on the carpet to warn him that his job is to patrol his sector of space and not concern himself with piddly little details like Urban Blight on his own backwater planet. Hal defies the Guardians and tells them that they have been locked up in their ivory planet of Oa for too long and that they've been pondering the Big Picture of the Universe so much that they've lost sight of the lives of all those people living on the myriad worlds they oversee. He challenges them to leave Oa and take a look at how things are at ground level.

One of the Guardians, a guy that Hal calls “The Old-Timer”, takes him up on his offer, and together the three of them, Hal, Oliver and the Old-Timer, set out on a road trip to Discover America and face the burning issues of the day: racism, poverty, pollution, drugs...

Ah, drugs.

Probably the most famous, (or infamous), stories from this run, and an issue which some critics have called the start of the “Relevance Era”, was the 1971 two-parter beginning in GREEN LANTERN #85, “Snowbirds Don't Fly”. While rounding up a bunch of street thugs, Green Arrow discovers that they are armed with some familiar-looking technology: weapons from his own personal arsenal. He does some digging and learns that his former sidekick, Speedy has been pilfering gadgets and weapons from the Arrow-cave and selling them on the street. At first Ollie thinks that Speedy is doing this as a ruse to infiltrate a drug gang, but ultimately he must face the truth: Speedy has become addicted to heroin and has been stealing Ollie's stuff to support his habit.

It had only been a year or two earlier when Marvel had challenged the Comics Code Authority by publishing a Spider-Man story with an anti-drug message without their blessing, which had led to changes in the Comics Code. Whereas the Spidey tale had one of Peter Parker's friends with a drug problem, Denny O'Neil reasoned that showing one of the heroes dealing with addiction would pack a greater punch.(Later still, Speedy would father a child out of wedlock – with a villain, no less – making him that era's go-to-guy for questionable life choices).

Green Arrow and Speedy have it out, and Speedy does manage to shake his addiction, but Ollie comes off rather poorly in this story. For all his crusading for social problems, he's been totally oblivious to one right under his nose.

Other comics DC published around this time also tried to tackle social issues, with varying success. Even the best stories tended to be a bit preachy, and at worst they could be ludicrous. Perhaps the most notable example was an issue of SUPERMAN'S GIRLFRIEND, LOIS LANE published in 1970 titled – and I would not make this up – “I Am Curious, Black”. It was pretty obviously inspired by a 1961 book, Black Like Me, about a white reporter who disguises himself as a black man to learn how things look from the other side of the racial divide. In the comic, Lois wants to do a story about racism, but feels stymied because she is an outsider. So Superman helps her out by using a piece of weird Kryptonian technology to make her black for a day or two. He keeps the dangdest stuff in the Fortress of Solitude.

DC's Relevance Era only lasted a few years. Comics historian Ron Goulart recalls dropping in on Julie Schwartz once around 1973 and asking him how relevance was doing. “Relevance is dead,” Julie replied unhappily. Viewed strictly as a gimmick to boost sales, Social Relevance” turned out to be a failure, and the Powers That Be at DC Comics decided to go back to the tried-and-true gimmicks like putting a gorilla on the cover.

But although the Age of Relevance officially died with the Nixon Administration, the impulse of comics creators to make something Important still recurs from time to time. We saw it again with the creation of Black Lightning, and with the EL DIABLO revival of the late '80s, and the special one-shots both Marvel and DC published in the 80s about African Famine Relief. These comics don't change the world, but at their best they give us some good stories and maybe change a little bit of the comic book universe.

The Smile of the Bat

Strangely enough, I didn’t read many comic books as a kid, with the exception of my Dad’s collection of POGO books in our basement and the comics pages of the Sunday newspaper.  I’m afraid I had a kind of snobbish attitude towards them; I read real books, like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.  But on one occasion, my parents bought my brother and I each a comic book and those books, although I can’t say exactly changed my life, stayed with me in my imaginations and my memory.

One was an issue of BRAVE AND THE BOLD featuring a team-up between Batman and the Atom in which Batman winds up in a coma and the Atom helps him solve his own murder by shrinking down to microscopic size and running around on the surface of Batman’s brain to stimulate it into moving his body.  The other was a DETECTIVE COMICS which featured the epic conclusion of Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson’s Manhunter series.  The Manhunter/Batman story in particular impressed me with Simonson’s stunning artwork and I tried lifting some of his visual techniques in some of my own cartoons.

But there was more to those comics than that. This was during the mid-’70s, when DC Comics was putting out 100-page issues, cram-packed with reprint goodness.  In addition to the featured story, those two comics also included, between the two of them, a surreal Golden Age Spectre story, Steve Ditko’s origin story for the Creeper, the Viking Prince, the Golden Age Green Lantern’s first battle with the Sportsmaster, and a fantastic story in which Dr. Fate and Hourman team-up to fight not just Solomon Grundy, but a zombie Green Lantern.  My brother and I must have read and re-read those two comics for months.

But in some ways the strangest story of them all was a reprint of an old Batman and Robin tale from the ‘40s.  To explain why, let me back up a bit.

The first thing that struck me when I read those comics was the ears.  DC had recently re-designed Batman’s costume giving him a cowl with eight-inch long bat-ears pointy enough to put someone’s eyes out.  The second, and more significant thing I noticed was how serious Batman was.  I was familiar with the TV Batman, of course, who would smile and shake hands with Robin before proceeding to beat the snot out of criminals in the animated opening; but in the ’70s DC went through a process of trying to de-silly the Darknight Detective..  This Batman wasn’t just serious, he was positively grim.  The way Walt Simonson drew him, Batman was frowning so hard it looked like his face was going to break.

But one of the comics, I forget which one now, also had a Golden Age Batman story in which he and Robin match wits with a couple villains I hadn’t heard of before named Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.  This looked more like the Batman I’d been familiar with.  His ears were a reasonable length and didn’t look like they were compensating for anything.  He could joke with Robin while punching out thugs.  He actually smiled.  This was a Batman who clearly enjoyed his work.  The cognitive dissonance between the two stories was enough to give my poor 10-year-old brain whiplash.

It was many years later that I started seriously reading comic books; about the time Frank Miller’s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS came out in fact.  If the Batman of the ‘70s was grim, Miller’s Batman was ultra-grim:  a bitter and angry, obsessive old man in a corrupt and crime-ridden city.  Miller told a powerful story and his comic was certainly ground-breaking.  DARK KNIGHT RETURNS is a good comic, but I’m not sure I’m so happy with its Batman becoming the Definitive Batman.

DARK KNIGHT RETURNS was set in a Gotham City that was dark and crime-ridden because it had deteriorated since Batman’s retirement.  Succeeding writers decided that Gotham was always a dark and corrupt city.  The DARK KNIGHT Batman was a bitter old man who’d been stewing in his obsessions for decades.  Later writers grafted this attitude onto the present-day Batman.  And then there’s the whole thing about his relationship with Superman.  There once was a time when Superman and Batman were buds, and regarded each other as peers.  DARK KNIGHT played up their differences, and it’s Bruce Wayne was contemptuous of Clark Kent. Now, granted, Miller handled this well, and gave the reader the sense that there had be a friendship between the two men at one time; and his portrayal of Superman is more sympathetic than perhaps a lot of readers have given credit.  But that hasn’t stopped other writers from seizing on this antagonism as the defining dynamic between the two characters.

Max Alan Collins, a prolific mystery author who has also written comic books, was once asked to write an introduction for the trade paperback compilation volume of DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.  The piece he wrote was rejected, and he later claimed it was because in the introduction he said that Frank Miller’s dark and psychotic Batman and the campy Adam West Batman from TV were both legitimate interpretations of the character.

A similar sentiment was expressed in an episode of the animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold in which the Bat-Mite directly addressed Batman‘s fans:

“Batman's rich history allows him to be interpreted in a multitude of ways. To be sure, this is a lighter incarnation, but it's certainly no less valid and true to the character's roots than the tortured avenger crying out for mommy and daddy.”

Don’t get me wrong; the Grim and Gritty Post-DARK KNIGHT/Post-WATCHMEN Era has produced some really good stories; but I can’t help but think something has been lost too, and that something is a sense of Joy.  Batman used take some pleasure in his work; He used to be able to relax.  He used to be able to smile.

There was a classic Batman story from the ‘70s in which Bruce Wayne takes some disadvantaged Gotham kids out on a camping trip, and he overhears them talking about the Batman.  Each one has a different , fanciful idea about what the Batman is really like.  Bruce changes into his costume and comes out to surprise the kids.  “Actually, Batman looks like this!” he says.  The kids laugh:  “You can’t fool us, Mister Wayne!”

It’s hard to imagine the current-day Bruce Wayne taking time off from his War on Crime to organize a camping trip or putting on his costume to give some kids a treat.  Nope, he’s too busy wallowing in angst and grim determination.

Which I wouldn’t mind if it gave us good stories and if this uber-grim attitude was confined to the Bat-Cave, but one of the downsides of the Grim ‘n’ Gritty Era is that it has given writers the sense that Gloom equals Realism and if Dark Angst works for Batman, it should work for other heroes too.  This is why the Man of Steel movie gave us a Superman dressed in a costume of reddish-grey and bluish-grey,   Back in the early ‘90s, the short-lived TV series based on THE FLASH tried to look as much as possible like Tim Burton’s Batman, set in a city of eternal night.  The newer TV series is a little wiser, allowing Barry Allen to run around in the daytime occasionally, and giving him some fun in his life as well as angst.

I suppose it’s too late now to avoid sounding like a Cranky Old Fan.  But I like my comics and my heroes to have a sense of Joy about them.  I don’t insist that they all be “Bwa-ha-ha” funny like the old JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL, or that Batman fight goofy space aliens as he did in the 1950s.  But I would like some sense of fun; some sense that the heroes are allowed to enjoy themselves on occasion.

I’d like to see Batman smile a little more.

A New Power Girl?

Last month, Marvel Comics stirred up a lot of comment by announcing that there was going to be a new THOR, who would be female; and almost immediately following that up with the announcement that the new CAPTAIN AMERICA would be black.

Well, DC Comics is not one to pass up a possible marketing gimmick, and this week an interview with writer Paul Levitz on the comics website Newsarama reveals that the new version of DC hero Power Girl is going to be... flat-chested.

I'm kidding, of course.  She has a perfectly normal bust-size so far as I can tell.  Smaller than the original Power Girl's Most Prominent Super-Powers, but then it would be hard to get much larger without becoming ridiculous.  Oh, and the new PG is black, which I suspect might be a reaction to the criticism DC had gotten over the past year over its "whitewashing" of black characters.

Who is Power Girl and why should you care?  I probably don't have a good answer for the latter question.  The former one will take a bit of explaining.

For starters, you can blame Roy Thomas.  Roy was a writer at Marvel and later at DC during the '70s and '80s who loved the Golden Age comics he grew up with, and loved bringing elements from them into the comics he wrote and later edited.

Years earlier, DC had established that it's Golden Age Characters, such as the original incarnations of the Flash and the Green Lantern, existed in an alternate universe which they cleverly named "Earth-2".  (Although you'd think that since the Golden Age came first, that they'd get to be "Earth-1"; but nobody asked them, I guess).  For a while there was a kind of tradition that every year the Justice League would cross over into the other dimension to have a team-up with their older counterparts in the Justice Society of America.

Since the Earth-2 heroes were a generation older than the heroes of Earth-1, Roy began playing around with creating a next generation.  His comic INFINITY, INC. was a team consisting of descendants and newer versions of the older heroes.  Huntress, the daughter of Bruce and Selina Wayne (yes, Bats and Catwoman got married in this universe) was one of these.  

Another was the Earth-2 analogue to Supergirl, who was named Power Girl.   She had shorter hair and a different costume, but the same basic powers.  She also was an outspoken feminist; (or at least what a male writer in the '70s thought of as feminist).

According to legend, Wally Wood, who was drawing the comic at the time, and who was very good at drawing sexy girls, started making Power Girl's bust a little bigger, and the decolletage of her white costume a little bit deeper, each issue, to see if his editors would notice.  The adolescent fanboys buying the comic certainly noticed, and Power Girl's bustline became her most noticeable feature.

At some point, I'm not sure when, her costume became modified so that instead of having a low scooped neckline, it sported a "boob window."  Possibly because the scoop front had already gotten silly and this was the only way to show more cleavage.

In the mid-'80s, DC decided that  it's multiverse of Infinite Earths was getting too confusing, and so they created a huge mega-series to clean it all up.  This was the infamous CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS; (it's title a reference to the old JLA/JSA team-ups which had titles like "Crisis on Earth-2" or "Crisis on Earth-X").  The end result was that all of the redundant Earths were folded into the one and there were no more alternates.  Theoretically, this was supposed to make the DC Universe less complicated; in actuality, DC spent the better part of the next decade or two trying to chase down loose ends created by their house-cleaning.

One of these loose ends was Power Girl.  She was the younger cousin of the Earth-2 Superman, (as Supergirl was the kryptonian cousin of the Earth-1 version).  Only there was no more Earth-2 Superman.  What's more, as part of the re-vamp it had been decreed that Superman would be the only survivor of Krypton, and that there would be no Supergirl at all.  (Supergirl was killed off during CRISIS and probably the iconic image from the series is the cover depicting Superman crying in anguish as he cradles her lifeless body in his arms).

So where did Power Girl come from?

Writer Paul Kupperberg came up with a convoluted backstory in which Power Girl only thoughtshe was Superman's cousin, and that actually she was the granddaughter of an Atlantean wizard named Arion (a sword & sorcery character Kupperberg created in the '80s inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric) who had been placed in suspended animation for several thousand years.  But pretty much everybody ignored this origin story.

In the late '80, she joined JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE, a spin-off title from JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL.  Her strident feminism got ramped up in the name of comedy, and she became cursed with a succession of bad costume changes, each one of which kept the boob window.

In the late '90s, she was treated with a bit more respect and began appearing in BIRDS OF PREY, a very good team book with a female cast.  She also re-joined the Justice Society, which had gone through a couple deaths and revivals of its own.

That was about when I dropped out of comics, so I'm a little fuzzy on what happens next.  But some years back, DC decided to give the Multiverse another spin.  Instead of having potentially an infinite number of Earths, though, they said there would be exactly 52.  Because 52 is DC's special number now.  Because... reasons.

So now there is once more an Earth-2 adjacent to the mainstream DC Universe, and DC publishes a couple books set in it.  One of them is WORLD'S FINEST, featuring the adventures of Power Girl and Huntress.  Remember Huntress?

Apparently in a recent storyline, Power Girl and Huntress become stranded on Earth Prime, the main DCU.  (Although back in my day "Earth Prime" was the name of our universe, not the DC Universe and... dang kids.  Sorry.)  There they meet a brilliant 17-year-old girl named Tanya Spears who helps them figure out a way to get back home.  Somehow in the process, Tanya gains super-powers of her own, (writer Paul Levitz is not yet revealing where her powers have come from), and before Power Girl returns to Earth-2, she "bequeaths" her hero name to Tanya.

Levitz says that DC has "Special plans" for Tanya.  Levitz is a good writer and I'll be interested to see what comes of this.  You can read the whole Paul Levitz interview and take a look at Tanya at the Newsarama site

I just hope they can resist giving her a boob window.

The New Lobo

(cross-posted from D-Kos)

I really shouldn't be bothered by these things. I haven't bought and read comic books in years. Once a fanboy, always a fanboy, I guess; and when I read about comics companies revamping characters I've known and loved, even if they're obscure third-stringers -- heck, especially if they're obscure third-stringers -- it bugs me.

The latest one, however, is kind of amusing. But it will require a bit of explanation, perhaps, for you to understand exactly what DC Comics has done to LOBO, THE LAST CZARNIAN.

About a year or two back, DC Comics rebooted it's whole universe. It's something that happens every other decade or so and something fans have come to accept as part of the Circle of Life. DC has used the reboot as an excuse to make changes in a lot of its characters; in some cases updating them, in some cases finding new takes for them. This isn't new either; back in the late 1950s, editor Julie Schwartz ushered in the Silver Age of Comics by revamping Golden Age characters like the Green Lantern and the Flash, bringing them up-to-date and finding new approaches for them.

Some of the changes in "The New 52", as DC calls it's new line-up, have been decent. From all reports, the new Aquaman is pretty good. Some are controversial, but make some sense from a narrative point of view, such as undoing Barbara Gordon's paralysis and having her be Batgirl again, or having Superman start dating Wonder Woman.

Some I find really annoying, such as changing the Steve Ditko character The Creeper from a wacky guy in a costume into an actual demon Yeah, the Creeper's pretty obscure, but I've always liked him and I think making him a demon is actually less interesting than what he was.

Worse than that is what they did to Amanda Waller, the tough administrator of the Suicide Squad, a government task-force that recruits super-villains for covert missions. She was originally a short, stocky middle-aged woman who looked tough enough to wrestle Granny Goodness two falls out of three. One early issue of SUICIDE SQUAD showed her facing down Batman. Yes, the Batman. Now, she's been transformed into a slim, leggy super-model.

But I was talking about Lobo.

Lobo (whose name in an obscure alien dialect means "He-who-devours-your-entrails-and-enjoys-it-thoroughly") first appeared as a villain in a space-based series called OMEGA MEN (which for some reason I always thought was connected somehow with ALPHA FLIGHT. It wasn't.) He was a space bounty-hunter on a rocket-bike; an amoral sociopath who looked like he wandered off the stage of a KISS concert. He was brought back in the late '80s by his creator Keith Giffen as a parody of Wolverine and the kind of violent anti-heroes who were becoming popular at that time.

To Giffen's surprise, the character became popular, becoming a supporting character in the comic book L.E.G.I.O.N. and the title character of a long-running series of his own. The Lobo of the '90s was a big, scruffy, muscular biker dude, dripping with chains, weapons and testosterone.

Which is why his fans -- and yes, Lobo has fans -- were shocked when DC revealed a new look for the character. Apparently, DC's editorial staff decided that the swaggering over-the-top psychopath fans have known and loved was too comedic. As his new writer put it:

"My goal for him was to make him less comically hyper-masculine and more focused. He's still vicious, still savage and still entirely immoral, but I wanted a gravity out of the character. When he showed up, I didn't want him walking away from explosions and smoking a cigar. When he shows up, I want people to feel like, 'This is it. This is the end.'"

The New Lobo is younger, sleeker, and dare I say it, prettier. what we have here is a bishonen Lobo. I can't help but wonder if he sparkles.

But although I will mock the new bishou Lobo, I can't manage to work up some good outrage over the change. He was a fun character in small doses, but I never really liked him much. Not as much as I liked the Creeper or Amanda Waller.

There were probably fans of the Golden Age Green Lantern who complained when Julie Schwartz made him a Space Cop. "You don't understand the character!" So maybe this new guy calling himself Lobo will turn out to be a decent villain.

Won't stop me from mocking him, though.

Farewell to the Comics Code

(Edited from a diary on Street Prophets)

Last week DC comics announced its decision to drop out of the Comics Code Authority. The following day, Archie Comics, the organization's sole remaining member, announced that it too would no longer be submitting its comics to the board for review.

The CCA was established back in the 1950s as a way to head off government censorship during the anti-comics hysteria generated by Frederick Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent. The idea was that the Big Comic Book Publishers promised to police themselves to ban unwholsome material from their books. That way newstands and drugstores and mom & pop grocery stores could carry them without fear that the local Guardians of Morality would come after them with torches and pitchforks. (The only major publisher who didn't sign on to the Code was Dell, who figured their reputation was already so squeaky-clean that they didn't need it).

The rules laid down by Comics Code were pretty much tailored to ban everything published by EC Comics, whose incredibly gorey crime, war and horror comics were Wertham's chief target. (According to legend, the Code shut down everything EC published except for MAD, which it re-vamped into a magazine format to bypass the Code. The truth is a little more complicated; publisher Bill Gaines had already decided on the format change for other reasons; but the Code-compliant comics he tried to publish after its institution suffered from the stigma of his earlie crime and horror books and couldn't find distributors.)

The first blow against the Comics Code came in the early '70s. Stan Lee wanted to write a Spider-Man story about drug abuse; but under the Code, no depiction of drugs were permitted -- not even to preach against them. Stan felt the issue was important enough to go with the story anyway. That issue of Amazing Spider-Man ran without the CCA seal, and the Heavens did not fall. The CCA acknowledged that Stan was right and modified the code.

With the rise of the Direct Market, comics publishers were no longer limited to newstand sales but could sell their books in specialty stores. The CCA label became less important. Both Marvel and DC began publishing seperate imprints of comics for "Mature Readers" which ran without the CCA's approval.

In 2001, Marvel went cold turkey and pulled the CCA seal off all it's books. In recent years, DC has been keeping the seal on SUPERMAN and it's line of books specifically for kids, but now they're just letting their dues in the organization expire and dropping the whole CCA approval thing, relying on an internal ratings system instead. And Archie Comics admits that they haven't even bothered submitting their books for approval for a while now, because the Board always rubber-stamped them anyway.

So it not only looks like the dreaded Comics Code, Defender of Decency and Nemesis of Artistic Freedom is at last truly dead, but that it has been dead for a while now and we're only now noticing that it has stopped twitching.

Zombie censors. I wonder what kind of a comic Bill Gaines could have made of that...

Day 7 of October Horror Month: The Spectre by Ostrander and Mandrake

DC Comics has chosen to only collect one chapter of this tale, and it is a shame. Because, however you view the afterlife, there are consequences to the existence of the God humans have called Jehovah and Allah if it actually does exist. For instance the concept of vengeance versus revenge, and various forms of the Angel of Death if the religious texts of the Abrahamic religions are accurate, are vital parts of the theological beliefs of forgiveness, sin, redemption and righteous anger. Ascribing religious and theologically sound motives and background, makes this Spectre real. In this run of issues, illustrated quite magnificently by Tom Mandrake, writer John Ostrander asks enormous questions, that have to be understood, if a being of the nature of The Spectre is to be considered relevant or interesting.

And oh my, it is interesting, but more so, it is horror, for if the religions of the Abrahamic world are correct, there will be eternal justice and wrath poured out. Even if they do not exist, making this character founded upon such doctrines makes it incredibly powerful.

If Bob Harras as DC EIC has any ability to make this series available in reprint, he should do so the first thing he is able. It is that good.

Find out more about the Spectre @
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