There was a time in this country when there was a very real possibility that various state and local governments — and maybe even the Feds — would outlaw (or even worse, regulate the contents of) comic books. The main outcry was against the ones that were about crime, horror or sex but some of the proposals would have done real damage, perhaps even fatal, to the publishers of Donald Duck and Archie.
As we all know, it never came to that, in part because calmer heads prevailed and in part because the major publishers sufficiently defused the issue by what they called “self-regulation.” They set up this thing called the Comics Code to launder the content of their comics and — as perhaps a semi-intended side effect — drive a lot of smaller publishers (i.e., competitors) out of the marketplace.
But let’s not get too deep into those weeds that right now. What I wanted to call your attention to is this website which a gent named Brian Puaca has set up. His goal is to document the public protests against comic books between 1945 and 1955 that included tossing comic books into a big pile and setting that pile aflame. So far, he’s confirmed more than fifty such demonstrations…and we can only wonder how much money most of those books would go for today. I mean, there had to be a couple of first issues of Superman and Batman in there, right?
Go take a look at what Brian’s doing and if you can help him with his research, please do. There are some very important lessons to be learned from that mania. (Come to think of it, there are very important lessons to be learned from most manias.)
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