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Speaker 1: So this week's classic episode dives into comic books, and

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Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but comic books did

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Speaker 1: something amazing for me and for a lot of other people.

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Speaker 1: I would imagine they taught me vocabulary and language that

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Speaker 1: I would ordinarily not have had access to. Words like excelsior, right,

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Speaker 1: or uncanny. People don't say uncanny unless they're talking about

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Speaker 1: the X Men when they're you know, six. I always

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Speaker 1: thought Excelsior is the same thing as Alka Selser. That's

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Speaker 1: not the case at all. Right, I like that idea,

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Speaker 1: Like I like the idea of Stanley just screaming for

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Speaker 1: some off brand Alka Seltzer. Well it could be his

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Speaker 1: own brand, that could be Excelsi or Selser. But yeah, Ben,

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Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about this episode, and I also

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Speaker 1: I don't think I'm on this episode. So I'm going

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Speaker 1: to re listen to this and learn again from here

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Speaker 1: and and your conversation. I believe this episode features somebody

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Speaker 1: that we worked with for a long time. Yes, Christian Sager,

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Speaker 1: who who wrote a lot of brain Stuff episodes for

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Speaker 1: Anybody remembers that YouTube show and also was a longtime

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Speaker 1: co host of Stuff to Blow your mind, Christian. A

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Speaker 1: lot of people may or may not know this. You'll

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Speaker 1: find out in this interview. Christian is well established comic

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Speaker 1: book writer and he's a horror writer in general. He's fantastic.

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Speaker 1: Do check out some of his work if you get

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Speaker 1: a chance. In this interview, Christian, I dive into concepts

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Speaker 1: of censorship, art and violence, how it translates to the

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Speaker 1: quote unquote real world. The conversation here occurs in twenty fifteen,

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Speaker 1: so this is just a few years after the very

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Speaker 1: first Avengers movie. And with that mind, you can see

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Speaker 1: how the early censorship of various comic book authorities in

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Speaker 1: a way molded the films and the fiction that we

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Speaker 1: encountered today. From UFOs, two ghosts and government cover ups.

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Speaker 1: History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back

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Speaker 1: now or learn the stuff they don't want you to now.

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Speaker 1: You gotta love paranoia. It's what made this country great.

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Speaker 1: Fear of the reds, fear of getting old, fear of failure,

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Speaker 1: fear of each other. Deep down, we all just want

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Speaker 1: to be the same. Homogeneity is luot. We must destroy

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Speaker 1: diversity and welcome to the show. As you know that

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Speaker 1: music means that you're in the right place, hopefully here

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Speaker 1: with me Ben, our producer Null the Invisible Brown, and

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Speaker 1: our co host Matt Frederick, who is here in Spirits

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Speaker 1: but right now he's working on a fantastic video episode

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Speaker 1: that we can't wait for you to see, Never Feared

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Speaker 1: the show soldiers on. We're here today with a very

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Speaker 1: special guest. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, it's Christian Sager, fellow

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Speaker 1: comic book lover co writer man about town of how

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Speaker 1: stuff works. Hey, Ben, I'm happy to be here, and

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Speaker 1: I wish Matt was here. But he's a busy gentleman.

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Speaker 1: He is he is, He is a busy guy. On

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Speaker 1: testament to how much quality goes into your series. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's all him. It's him. I I sometimes

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Speaker 1: I get as sandwiches. Uh. So we're here today to

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Speaker 1: talk about something that fascinates both of us. I think

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Speaker 1: Matt will probably really want to hear this episode two.

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Speaker 1: It's a little bum that he couldn't make it. We're

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Speaker 1: talking about a very strange episode in American history, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about the beginning of the comics Code

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Speaker 1: of America. That, or at least that was used in

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Speaker 1: American publishing, also known as the Comics Code Authority, started

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Speaker 1: after legislative hearings in nineteen fifty four. And of course

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Speaker 1: we opened up with a quote some of you may recognize, Well,

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Speaker 1: what do you think we should tell people or let

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Speaker 1: them guess? Well, that quote is actually from a favorite

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Speaker 1: comic book of ours, of Ben Matt and myself, which

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Speaker 1: is The Invisibles. Is what we kind of brought us

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Speaker 1: in common together on this topic. Uh. It's by Grant Morrison,

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Speaker 1: and it's a great series from Vertigo from the late nineties. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it's about all kinds of things. I imagine a

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Speaker 1: lot of your audience are familiar with it or or

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Speaker 1: would be fans of it, because most of all it's

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Speaker 1: about conspiracies, conspiracy theories. Yeah, the idea of what if

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Speaker 1: every conspiracy you have ever heard is true and they

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Speaker 1: squeeze it into this one story arc in a way

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Speaker 1: that reminded me of the Illuminatous Trilogy, which is another

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Speaker 1: another fantastic book. Big influence I think on great Morrison

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Speaker 1: for that. Oh yeah, definitely. So what so that's one

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Speaker 1: of the comics we all have in common and listeners

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Speaker 1: I know it might sound strange at first to say, hey,

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Speaker 1: you were looking for conspiracies. You guys are talking about

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Speaker 1: comic books. But do we have a story for you. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The comics of today right that you would find in

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Speaker 1: your local local store. Uh, are radically different in many

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Speaker 1: ways to the comics of yesteryear. Yeah. Absolutely, especially from

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Speaker 1: the fifties. Basically if you go by decade fifties, sixties, seventies,

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Speaker 1: then in the eighties when the direct market really took

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Speaker 1: over up until today. But by and large, the reason

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Speaker 1: why they're mainly different is because none of the comics

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Speaker 1: publishers today use the comics code anymore. It's slowly, over

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Speaker 1: the last fifteen years was take and out of use

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Speaker 1: by Marvel, d C, dark Horse, Image, all of the

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Speaker 1: big name players. I think the last two were in

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Speaker 1: and I want to say it was Archie Comics and

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Speaker 1: d C Comics that finally just decided to use their

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Speaker 1: own in house systems. Do you remember do you remember

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Speaker 1: the gold Key comics and e C and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I loved those as a kid because there there was

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Speaker 1: such graphic depravity, you know, Yeah, yeah, I mean that,

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Speaker 1: And those are not necessarily the gold Key ones maybe

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Speaker 1: some of them, but the EC stuff is really what

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Speaker 1: got the code started, uh, and how graphic it was.

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Speaker 1: There were depictions of graphic violence, monsters, sexuality, uh, criminal

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Speaker 1: activity and we'll get into this, but there was an

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Speaker 1: idea that by reading these comics, uh, young kids were

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Speaker 1: learning how to be juvenile delinquents. They were learning how

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Speaker 1: to become criminals, right, how to how to skip school

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Speaker 1: or lie to your teachers. And one thing, and you're

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Speaker 1: absolutely right, Christian gold Key, is if anything more, um,

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Speaker 1: there's scary. Stories were more suspenseful, I think than horrific.

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Speaker 1: But the thing that I loved about e C as

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Speaker 1: well is that, you know, these comics for people who

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Speaker 1: haven't read them yet, do check them out if you,

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Speaker 1: especially if you enjoy horror. For a lot of e

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Speaker 1: C stories, each comic was like an anthology which had

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Speaker 1: you know what, three to four shorter pieces in there,

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Speaker 1: and the only thing they had in common is that

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Speaker 1: everybody in the stories went from zero to a hundred

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Speaker 1: so quickly. They were like, Hey, I'm I'm tired of

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Speaker 1: you being a bully, so clearly the best thing to

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Speaker 1: do is to dissolve you in this line, or like, uh,

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Speaker 1: there's a classic one. I don't remember the exact details,

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Speaker 1: but we're like a baseball team like cuts a guy

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Speaker 1: up into pieces and uses his head as a baseball

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Speaker 1: to play like a game. And then like you, I think,

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Speaker 1: like other body parts are like bassis or something like that. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty morbid, and uh, you know, all in good fun,

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Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, all in good fun. But but the

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Speaker 1: idea which you mentioned there, that that this would be

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Speaker 1: teaching kids to be juvenile delinquents, or or teaching them

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Speaker 1: how to cut someone apart and use their head as

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Speaker 1: part of a game. Uh. Yeah, it was a little

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Speaker 1: deeper than that, but there were and we'll get into that,

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Speaker 1: but that, Yeah, generally, there's the idea that the moral

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Speaker 1: depravity of these books with somehow uh infect the agency

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Speaker 1: of America's youth and make them darker, may turn them

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Speaker 1: into murderers or criminals, or uh you know, even affects,

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Speaker 1: for instance, their sexuality. Okay, so what we're looking at

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Speaker 1: here is a full blown moral panic in some ways

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Speaker 1: similar in some way similar to the idea of uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, heavy metal music being a terrible influence or

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Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons being a terrible influenced. Yeah, or even

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Speaker 1: like uh, more recent the National baseball was a bad

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Speaker 1: influence because of the steroid use among the players and

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Speaker 1: that they weren't necessarily good role models. Very similar kinds

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Speaker 1: of things went on between the government and the baseball industry,

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Speaker 1: as went on between the government and the comics industry

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. So okay, yes, let's get right

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Speaker 1: to it. What what the heck is this comic code?

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Speaker 1: Where does it come from? How did it happen? Sure? Okay, so, uh,

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Speaker 1: the code came out of some legislative hearings that we're

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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four, and we'll talk about those more

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Speaker 1: in detail down the down the road in the podcast.

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Speaker 1: But basically, there were hearings that were placing comics on

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Speaker 1: trial for what we just suggested that they were a

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Speaker 1: bad influence on America's youth. Coming out of the hearings,

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Speaker 1: the major publishers that were involved in comics decided that

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Speaker 1: to preemptively st like against the government and to keep

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Speaker 1: the government from creating any kind of censorship program, they

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Speaker 1: would create their own in house program that was the

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Speaker 1: Comics Code Authority. Uh. And basically this was forty one

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Speaker 1: provisions that they wrote up that purged sex and violent

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Speaker 1: and all other kinds of critical standards that people were

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Speaker 1: up in arms about out of comics. UM. For instance,

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Speaker 1: respect for government and parental authority was stressed a lot.

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Speaker 1: And there was even like grammar police type stuff going

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Speaker 1: in there, and you weren't allowed to use certain kinds

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Speaker 1: of slang or colloquialisms, um. And you could only receive

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Speaker 1: this seal of approval on the front of your comic

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Speaker 1: if it passed this group this uh. Basically, what they

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Speaker 1: did is all of the companies paid into this Comics

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Speaker 1: Code Authority to keep it running as an operation, and

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Speaker 1: it had I don't know what the the manager of

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Speaker 1: the Comics Code Authority or we can call it the

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Speaker 1: sea A I guess for the rest of the Yeah, yeah, sorry,

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Speaker 1: the c c A. Uh, but he was sort of

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Speaker 1: a czar of comics basically, and he had an office

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Speaker 1: of of you know, mostly admins who read all the

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Speaker 1: comics that these publishers were going to put out a

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Speaker 1: month or two before they happened, decided whether or not

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Speaker 1: they were morally objectionable, objectionable or not, and then uh

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Speaker 1: subsequently signed off on them or sent them back to

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Speaker 1: the publisher and said, you need to take this out

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Speaker 1: or you need to fix this before we'll put the

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Speaker 1: seal on it. No smoking, no heroin. Well, although drug

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Speaker 1: use was probably a big red flag. I'm sure at

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Speaker 1: that point smoking cigarettes was fine. Uh, yes, I think

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Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes was fine, But you're right, narcotics was a

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Speaker 1: big deal. And uh, we'll talk about it again a

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Speaker 1: little bit later, but it was narcotics used in comic

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Speaker 1: books was actually the turning point in ninety one that

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Speaker 1: caused the c c A to change the code. Huh. So, okay,

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Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, Christian, right now, it sounds like

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Speaker 1: a dream job to work with this czar and just

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Speaker 1: read comics. I don't know necessarily that it would have

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Speaker 1: been because that the people who were reading them were

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Speaker 1: largely uh, middle aged women who the comics weren't designed

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Speaker 1: for and who were um, how do I put this like.

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Speaker 1: They had a very administrative role, and they treated it

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Speaker 1: very seriously, and there were struggles between them and the publishers,

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Speaker 1: but for the most part, um they had a sort

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Speaker 1: of matronly role. They took on a mother like role

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Speaker 1: looking at these comics and deciding whether or not. They

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Speaker 1: deemed that it would be appropriate for their children moral

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Speaker 1: authorities exactly. And so these these women and the czar

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Speaker 1: who they worked for. Uh, that guy's role changed over time,

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Speaker 1: and there were multiple people held the position. Uh. They

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Speaker 1: you know, by and large, we're making the decisions of

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Speaker 1: how comic books would enter the market. Uh. If they

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Speaker 1: didn't have the seal, they couldn't be carried by major distributors. Therefore,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to buy them, for instance, like

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Speaker 1: on a spinner rack and a grocery store or convenience store.

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Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I first started buying

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Speaker 1: comics at my local Delhi when I was a little kid. Um,

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Speaker 1: and that was back when the code was being enforced.

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Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, yeah, they were They were the gatekeepers

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Speaker 1: who decided what we could and could not read. Which

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Speaker 1: is interesting because the there there's inherent misogyny in comics already,

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Speaker 1: and it's kind of strange that at that time the

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Speaker 1: people in charge of giving the final call were themselves

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Speaker 1: women and probably probably saw a lot of condescending portrayals

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Speaker 1: of women that weren't objectionable under the code. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: what's really interesting about that is that It starts because

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Speaker 1: of their role and how women were portrayed in comics,

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Speaker 1: especially from the fifties until let's say, like the late eighties. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there were really two different images of women that you saw.

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Speaker 1: There were the femme fatales that were all familiar with that.

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Speaker 1: These were the women who were portrayed as being sexier

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Speaker 1: using their charms or or or were drawn in a

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Speaker 1: way that maybe wasn't anatomically correct, which is common in

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Speaker 1: comic books for sure. Uh. And as long as those

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Speaker 1: women were treated as ultimately villainous is then the Comics

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Speaker 1: Code authority was okay with that. But the rest of

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Speaker 1: the time, women were largely portrayed as being you know, naive,

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Speaker 1: nice girl friends, the kind of girl that you'd want

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Speaker 1: your son to bring home and marry, you know. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so that's where we get like a lot of

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Speaker 1: the superhero girlfriends of the of the sixties, right like, uh,

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Speaker 1: Mary Jane Went, Stacy, Karen Page, We we've all been

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Speaker 1: watching Daredevil lately, Page h. Who else Lois Lane? Although

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Speaker 1: Lois had been around long before that, sure, but certainly

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Speaker 1: started to fit that role more and the during that

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Speaker 1: period of time. So we see what we're seeing here

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Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, is uh art as a

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Speaker 1: reflection of society and social efforts to idealize this reflection

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Speaker 1: um if we could, if I could be a bit

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Speaker 1: pretentious about it, Yeah, I mean I think that that's

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Speaker 1: definitely a valid point, ben uh And there are such

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Speaker 1: interesting things that were written into the original nineteen code

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Speaker 1: that were prevented from being published in comics that when

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Speaker 1: you think back on it and you realize how it

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Speaker 1: was influencing our culture, sort of influencing what the limits

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Speaker 1: were of what we could think, you know, or what

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Speaker 1: what we were what we considered to be sort of

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Speaker 1: a moral authority. I mean, like, for instance, here's just

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Speaker 1: one line policeman, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall

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Speaker 1: never be presented in such a way as to create

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Speaker 1: disrespect for established authority. So that is like an immediate

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Speaker 1: moral line in the sand about following authority. No crooked cops,

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Speaker 1: no bad senators, nothing like that. Absolutely, And I think

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Speaker 1: in some ways that extends to ideology as well, right,

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Speaker 1: like no great communist. Oh yeah, that was a huge

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Speaker 1: no note, especially in the fifties when a lot of

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Speaker 1: superhero comics, especially we're using communists as their villains. You know,

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Speaker 1: in fact, like a um, those who are familiar with

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Speaker 1: Captain America and his villain the Red Skull with the

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Speaker 1: Red Skull started off as a Nazi. Actually the Red

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Speaker 1: Skull started off as a as a sleazy businessman. Then

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Speaker 1: he became a Nazi. Then the fifties he became a communist. Somehow,

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Speaker 1: his his ideology is just shifted to whatever it was

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Speaker 1: that we as a as a nation didn't like. There's

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Speaker 1: one thing an evil businessman will of. It's communism, right, yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: he had he if anything else, you know, he had

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Speaker 1: a variety of thoughts about how the world should operate, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he is a man of many opinions. So so what else?

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Speaker 1: Like this code, which which you showed me and which

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Speaker 1: is also available online for anyone interested. Uh this, at

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Speaker 1: least this first iteration of this code had a lot

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Speaker 1: of pretty specific stuff about what could be portrayed. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it did, and it's long, so you know, I won't

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Speaker 1: go through all of it here, but I did highlight

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Speaker 1: some of my favorite bits, and um, if you do

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Speaker 1: want to read the code, all three instances of it

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Speaker 1: are replicated in full on the comic book Legal Defense

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Speaker 1: Funds site. Highly recommend checking that out, and there's also

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Speaker 1: a great summary piece on there by a woman named

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Speaker 1: Amy kissed Neiberg. I believe it's how you pronounce her name,

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Speaker 1: and she has actually written the definitive book on this,

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Speaker 1: on the history of the code. It's called Seal of Authority.

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Speaker 1: So if you really want to dive deep into this

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Speaker 1: topic and learn about all the you know, behind the

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Speaker 1: scenes secrets of the comics industry, that's a great place

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Speaker 1: to start. Fantastic, But so here's here's some of my favorites. Okay,

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Speaker 1: you weren't allowed to use the word crime or the

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Speaker 1: word horror on the cover of a comic book. Those

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Speaker 1: words were not allowed to be written no true, no true, horror, no,

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Speaker 1: nothing like that. Um and it wasn't allowed to especially

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Speaker 1: appear alone on the cover. Here's another one that's kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting, specifically dealing with horror comics scenes dealing with

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Speaker 1: or instruments associated with the Walking Dead. Ironic that that's

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Speaker 1: the terminology they used the Walking Dead. Torture, vampires and vampireism, ghouls, cannibalism,

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Speaker 1: and were wolf ism are prohibitive, not like antherpy. No,

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Speaker 1: they didn't really have their terminology down. Wear Wolf is

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Speaker 1: m right right away. I mean that's borderline racist against

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Speaker 1: like and throw ups. I think it's a very different time.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, so, I mean there's very clearly like a

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Speaker 1: line being drawn of like these kind of comics are acceptable,

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Speaker 1: these kinds aren't. And by and large the ones that

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Speaker 1: weren't were crime and horror comics, and those were the

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Speaker 1: ones that were published mainly by EC Comics but also

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Speaker 1: by you know a number of other smaller publishers at

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Speaker 1: the time, and the code pretty much got rid of them. Well, um,

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Speaker 1: here's some other interesting stuff. They weren't allowed to treat

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Speaker 1: divorce humorously or represented as being desirable. WHOA, Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: an interesting one. Really kind of throws you back, you know,

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Speaker 1: it makes me, it makes me wonder if somebody was like,

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Speaker 1: had a bad relationship maybe at the time, maybe they did. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And then there's this one respect for parents the Moral

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Speaker 1: Code and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. Respect for

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Speaker 1: parents Moral Code. So basically all child characters had to

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Speaker 1: be portrayed as having respect for their parents. If they didn't,

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Speaker 1: book didn't make it onto the stands. Yeah, and it's

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Speaker 1: strange to when we think about this moral backlash that occurs.

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Speaker 1: You were telling me that a lot of this originated,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the public outcry or uproar originated because

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Speaker 1: of a trial they got nationwide attention, um, and that

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Speaker 1: there were some uh fairly like, what's the best way

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Speaker 1: to say it, crucial moments where you know, there's a

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Speaker 1: guy holding up the magazine or holding up the comic.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sorry, when you use the term trial, I

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Speaker 1: got confused for a second. Yes, that's the that that

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Speaker 1: was the committee. That was the subcommittee that led to

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Speaker 1: the code being created. Yeah, it was led by a

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Speaker 1: guy named St. S. Kief ofver Um. I've got notes

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Speaker 1: on it for later on. I can we review the

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Speaker 1: rest of the but there is um. Yeah, that is

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Speaker 1: basically what it led to, although there were some minor

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Speaker 1: hiccups before that too that caused uh, basically the public

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Speaker 1: to be concerned about comics in general, whether it was

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Speaker 1: for religious reasons or literary reasons or even um, you know,

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Speaker 1: psychiatric reasons, which Dr Frederick Wortham brought it to the table. Yes,

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Speaker 1: So okay, so well that's kind of a teaser, I

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Speaker 1: guess then for later on the show. But what what iterations.

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Speaker 1: Has the code gone through? Okay, so we just talked

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Speaker 1: about the nineteen fifty four version. Then there are two

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Speaker 1: others after that. There were basically revisions of the code.

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Speaker 1: The first of these came about in nineteen seventy one.

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Speaker 1: And here's how it came about. Have you ever heard

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Speaker 1: of a guy named stan Lee before? Uh? The name

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Speaker 1: rings a distant bell. So he wrote a little comic

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Speaker 1: called spider Man. And actually, uh, listeners, Ben already knows this,

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Speaker 1: but I I went through airport security with Stanley couple

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Speaker 1: of days ago, which was really interesting. I got to

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Speaker 1: watch t s A pat him down. Uh. But anyways,

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Speaker 1: so in nineteen seventy one, Stanley wanted to do a

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Speaker 1: comic book and spider Man about drug abuse. And it

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Speaker 1: was going to be about, you know, a character who

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Speaker 1: was having trouble with narcotics and Spider Man was going

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Speaker 1: to help them out. It was basically supposed to be

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Speaker 1: kind of a cautionary tale type thing. It wasn't glorifying

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Speaker 1: drug no, not at all. Uh. And Uh. The idea

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Speaker 1: was that Marvel asked permission of the comics authority people

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Speaker 1: to publish this special issue. They said, can we please

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Speaker 1: for this. You know, this one instance work around the code.

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Speaker 1: We know it says that we can't you know, portray

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Speaker 1: drug use, but we're trying to portray it badly as

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Speaker 1: a sort of you know, public service announcement. Yeah. Um.

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Speaker 1: And they did not get permission. The Comics Code Authority

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Speaker 1: said no, absolutely not, We're not going to do this.

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Speaker 1: So Marvel went ahead and published it without the permission

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Speaker 1: of the Comics Code Authority, got out on the news stands.

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Speaker 1: Actually had support from the US government to put it

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Speaker 1: out there that the the U. S Government wanted Spider

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Speaker 1: Man to be this sort of um, moral figure that

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Speaker 1: would help you know, children learn that drugs were bad. Right,

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Speaker 1: that makes sense. And uh. As a result, it was

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Speaker 1: hugely popular. It's a classic issue of Spider Man, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of people you know, look back on and

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Speaker 1: the this was this caused the publishers and the c

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Speaker 1: c A to say, Okay, maybe we need to relax

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Speaker 1: these restrictions a little bit, maybe we're being a little

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Speaker 1: too strict here, and maybe things have changed in the

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Speaker 1: last you know, almost twenty years. Um. So there were

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Speaker 1: a lot of shifts. Um. So, for instance, like they

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Speaker 1: still prohibited the use of horror or terror on the cover,

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Speaker 1: but they were a little bit more liberal in terms

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Speaker 1: of how sex was reflected in society. Um. Obviously drug

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Speaker 1: use based on the spider Man thing. Um, there's some

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Speaker 1: really interesting stuff that changes with regards to remember we

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Speaker 1: were talking about werewolf is um. Yes, okay, so this

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Speaker 1: is they changed that line, uh, so that that stuff

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Speaker 1: shall be permitted to be used when handled in the

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Speaker 1: classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high caliber

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Speaker 1: literary works whose works are read in school or around

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Speaker 1: the world. So as long as you know, um, your

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Speaker 1: monster had some literary grounding in it, it could be

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Speaker 1: portrayed in comics. But werewolf is um. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Was there a classic literature werewolf? I mean not from

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Speaker 1: that time. There's ancient literally, there are ancient texts which

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Speaker 1: depict the power different near human or near god, things

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Speaker 1: change in shape. It's if anything, it's it's an older

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Speaker 1: tradition than vampires, and they would probably see that as

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Speaker 1: being like pagan though yeah, it might be not be

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Speaker 1: Western enough. Well, we really need is just like the

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Speaker 1: closest thing is like maybe Dr Jackel and Mr Hyde

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Speaker 1: is sort of werewolf ee. Yeah, that similar. But what

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Speaker 1: we really need is something that's like a um a

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Speaker 1: general werewolf or a soldier, a soldier being a werewolf

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Speaker 1: fighting whomever the threat was at the time, the British,

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Speaker 1: the Communist. I think we got a pitch on her hand. Actually,

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Speaker 1: one of the show that I was at this weekend,

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Speaker 1: I saw Stanley at somebody was trying to sell a

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Speaker 1: comic book called uh nam Wolf, which was about werewolf

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Speaker 1: and I would read that. I would totally read that.

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Speaker 1: I think I would too. So so, I mean, we

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Speaker 1: have pretty predictable taste in that regard. But so they're

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Speaker 1: allowing now, um, they're they're learning that these broad brush

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Speaker 1: strokes that had originally been used are not going to

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Speaker 1: be going to be effective over time, right, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: And but at the same time, a lot of the

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Speaker 1: things that we were talking about earlier, you know, that

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Speaker 1: I specifically cited, are still in there. The stuff about

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Speaker 1: government officials being respected and good always triumphing over evil,

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Speaker 1: and specifically the word crime being a bad thing. All

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Speaker 1: situations within the family unit should have as their ultimate

425
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 1: goal the protection of the child and the lifestyle of

426
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: the family. That was another one that the that was

427
00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:13,240
Speaker 1: the line they added in for the seventy one version,

428
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: which is, you know, similar to what we were talking

429
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:18,880
Speaker 1: about earlier in terms of children having respect for authority,

430
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:24,760
Speaker 1: but it's a very very strict idea of what family means. UM.

431
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:30,360
Speaker 1: Divorce was still a problem. Uh. Drugs had a like

432
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:32,840
Speaker 1: based because of the whole spider Man thing. Drugs had

433
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: this whole set of sub bullets basically like Okay, here's

434
00:26:37,359 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: what you can and can't do. Uh. You know that

435
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 1: would that would make it work or not? UM. There

436
00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:46,640
Speaker 1: were also restrictions for advertising matter like, for instance, UM,

437
00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 1: you weren't allowed to have ads that had realistic gun

438
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:53,920
Speaker 1: facts similes and so like, if you wanted to sell

439
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 1: a water gun, it had to look like a water gun.

440
00:26:56,119 --> 00:27:00,160
Speaker 1: It couldn't look like a real gun. UM or been

441
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 1: advertising for fireworks. They didn't allow that at the time,

442
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: which is strange because they led a lot of weird

443
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:11,479
Speaker 1: advertisements into comics, especially around that around that time, like

444
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:14,159
Speaker 1: just leading up to the seventies and during the seventies.

445
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:16,960
Speaker 1: You know, listeners, if you re comics back then, you'll

446
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: probably remember that there would be these two page splash

447
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: ads with a bunch of tiny, tiny ads advertising just

448
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:27,400
Speaker 1: ridiculous stuff. Build your own submarine. There were all kinds

449
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: of weird things, yeah, sea monkeys like um. The one

450
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:35,760
Speaker 1: thing that was really popular in the sixties was like

451
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 1: physical exercise programs to like make you turn you into

452
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: a strong man, like a kind of Charles Atlas type

453
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:48,479
Speaker 1: weightlifting body type guy. Um, there were like martial arts lessons. Yeah,

454
00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 1: I was those. Did you ever order anything from uh?

455
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 1: I never did. I never did. I ordered comics. I

456
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:58,720
Speaker 1: never fired like any of the that stuff. And at

457
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 1: our our age Wrench, we probably those those kind of

458
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 1: ads had their heyday before we came on the scene. Yeah,

459
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 1: they were starting to fade away. I'd say probably by

460
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 1: the end of the eighties. I started reading comics, I'd say,

461
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:19,199
Speaker 1: like eighty three, eighty two, Um, so yeah, maybe by

462
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:21,320
Speaker 1: the time I actually had pocket money to spend on

463
00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:24,639
Speaker 1: stuff like that, they were really around anymore. The slowly

464
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:29,720
Speaker 1: became video games. Yeah right. There is one big aspect

465
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: so far that is missing from the comic code as

466
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 1: we know it, and that is depiction of race. Yeah.

467
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 1: So that's actually a really interesting factor in the nine

468
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: revision addresses that specifically. Essentially, they again they came to

469
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: a point in time in which d C Comics had

470
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 1: decided that they were going to eliminate the seal from

471
00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: their book, and UH, they were arguing with the Comics

472
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,239
Speaker 1: Code Authority about, you know, what should or should not

473
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 1: be reflected in the in the code around this period

474
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 1: of time, and as a result they drafted up a

475
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:09,440
Speaker 1: document that basically revised the entire code. UH. And there

476
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: was a task force that was put together of you know,

477
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 1: different different publishers, people from various publishers at the time

478
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: eighty nine. Of course it would have included Marvel in

479
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:22,479
Speaker 1: d C. Probably it's hard to say what other comics were,

480
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 1: including what other comics companies were included at the time, Archie,

481
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: because a lot of them were being absorbed into d

482
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 1: C throughout the eighties. You know, Charlton Fawcett. I think

483
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 1: Fawcett was even earlier than that. But anyway, what ended

484
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:42,440
Speaker 1: up happening was they did have this new nine version

485
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:46,800
Speaker 1: of the code was very specific about how you could

486
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: portray national, social, political, cultural, ethnic and racial groups, including

487
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: religious institutions. So there was a lot of um sensitivity

488
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:01,719
Speaker 1: to how different groups would be being portrayed, to the

489
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:04,960
Speaker 1: point that there is actually a line in the eighty

490
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: nine Code. If for dramatic purposes it is necessary to

491
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:12,360
Speaker 1: portray such a group of individuals in a negative manner,

492
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 1: the name of the group and its individual members will

493
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: be fictitious, and its activities will be clearly identifiable within

494
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 1: the routine activities of any real group, or rather won't

495
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: be Okay, so they can't even have a coincidental commonality. Yeah. So,

496
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: like a really interesting example of this, uh was in

497
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 1: Captain America in the eighties. I've I've done a lot

498
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 1: of research in Captain America. Uh and uh in Captain

499
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: America in the eighties, he would often come up against

500
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: these examples of societal conflicts that were happening at the time. So,

501
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: uh So, the National Organization for Women was very you know,

502
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 1: it was growing at the time, and to address that,

503
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: Captain America came up against a group of super villain

504
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: feminists that were called the Femison's Kristen and Caroline over

505
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:08,680
Speaker 1: at stuff I've never told you get to love the Yeah,

506
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 1: I really want to show them those issues because they're fascinating.

507
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: I think, like, if I remember correctly, the Femisons even

508
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: like try to start their own society on a cruise

509
00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 1: ship they like, uh, like Commondeer cruise ship and take

510
00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 1: it around the world as their own like floating country.

511
00:31:24,600 --> 00:31:27,640
Speaker 1: Do they have superpowers? Oh yeah, because some of them do.

512
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 1: But I think they were like, you know, there were

513
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 1: the femisons, and then they were like the women that

514
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:34,960
Speaker 1: they were liberating from the various in the world. Um.

515
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: So you know, he couldn't address now, but he addressed

516
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 1: the femisons and it was, you know, obviously incredibly conservative

517
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 1: take on feminism in the eighties. And then you know,

518
00:31:47,320 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: when you had Tipper Gore and the Parent Music Resource Center,

519
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: you know, getting into the whole heavy metal thing you're

520
00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 1: talking about earlier. To address that, he came up against

521
00:31:57,280 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: a group called the Watchdogs and it was like the

522
00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: fictional group of terrorists who wanted to advocate for advocate

523
00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 1: for censorship. Uh. And they were so into censorship that

524
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 1: they would like blow people up if they didn't have

525
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: their way. So yeah, And this it's interesting because while

526
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: Captain America is not the by far not the only

527
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: um story or fiction work of fiction to deal with

528
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: these real life stand ins, uh, it's one that a

529
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: lot of people see and some of it is so

530
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 1: on the nose, you know. Yeah. One of my favorite

531
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: Captain America stories, and this is actually from the early seventies,

532
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 1: is uh, Captain America becomes disillusioned with the American government

533
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,000
Speaker 1: because this is under writer Steve Engelhardt, who wrote some

534
00:32:43,040 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 1: of the best Captain America stories of all time. Uh,

535
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 1: and he becomes disillusioned with the American government when he

536
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 1: learns that the President of the United States is actually

537
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 1: in charge of a conspiracy organization called like the Secret Empire.

538
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 1: And this Secret Empire is basically like Hydra from the

539
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 1: movie US right, or or like the Illuminati, like controlling

540
00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 1: everything behind the scenes. And when Captain America finally confronts

541
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:09,360
Speaker 1: him on the last page of this comic, Captain America

542
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:12,280
Speaker 1: runs into the Oval Office, confronts the President, and the

543
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: President blows his brains out commits suicide after admitting that

544
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 1: he's the leader of this evil organization. Yeah. Yeah, it's

545
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 1: fascinating that they could get away with that. And they

546
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,800
Speaker 1: didn't show Richard Nixon's face, but it was pretty obvious

547
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be Richard Nixon did. Like the

548
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:31,520
Speaker 1: draw of the over the shoulders shot they were using

549
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 1: like Silhouette or something. Yeah. Yeah, And it's it's funny

550
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:37,680
Speaker 1: you bring up Secret Empire because I remember reading that,

551
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: and recently with the with the rise of Marvel Movies

552
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:46,600
Speaker 1: Own Empire, I've been thinking a lot about the faceless

553
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 1: semi corporate conspiracy villains or antagonists, because there's so many.

554
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:57,120
Speaker 1: There's Leviathan, Hydra, Secret Empire, um, and they're like five

555
00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:58,920
Speaker 1: more that I'm not even thinking about. There are a lot,

556
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 1: especially in Marvel uh. And and a big reason for

557
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 1: that actually is that, you know, the writers at the

558
00:34:05,280 --> 00:34:10,280
Speaker 1: time were critiquing their employers. Uh. It was the only

559
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:13,880
Speaker 1: way that they had to sort of creatively, right. They

560
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:16,439
Speaker 1: were writing about political issues at the time. Of course,

561
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 1: there was a lot of distrust for the American government

562
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:22,759
Speaker 1: during since presidency, but there was also issues that they

563
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: had with their corporate masters. Yeah, and so they would

564
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: depict them in these kind of you know overlord rock

565
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 1: Song Corporation that was rows. Whenever there was a problems

566
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:41,479
Speaker 1: with corporations or corporate integrity or especially the oil industry, Yeah,

567
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:45,279
Speaker 1: they would always bring in this corporation called Rock Song Corporation,

568
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,880
Speaker 1: and they they they were responsible for everything, right, and

569
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 1: they make I think they make uh, they make appearance

570
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:57,280
Speaker 1: in Daredevil. I feel like either in Daredevil or Captain America,

571
00:34:57,320 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 1: there was a little easter egg with rocks on, and yeah,

572
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:01,640
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if they show up later on

573
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: in them in the Marble like Phase three movies or

574
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 1: whatever we're running up on now. Yeah, somewhere in Wakondah.

575
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 1: So yeah, and there's advanced idea mechanics Zodiac. Also, you know,

576
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:18,759
Speaker 1: one of my favorites of course is the Serpent Society. Oh,

577
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:22,399
Speaker 1: the Serpent Society is the best secret society of people

578
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: who dress up like different kinds of snakes and they

579
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 1: all like have code names based on the kind of

580
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 1: snake that they dressed like, Yeah, and they're that's loosely

581
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 1: related to that snake. Yeah, right, Like there's a like

582
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 1: a sidewinder, but he's just like, you know, a guy

583
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 1: with a kate that allows him to teleport or something

584
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:42,799
Speaker 1: like that. I don't know. I don't think sidewinderings can

585
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: teleport in real life. No, and not all of them

586
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:47,960
Speaker 1: had I know, such as tangent, but not all of

587
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 1: them actually had powers, which is so weird to me.

588
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 1: There was one guy I can't remember who his name was.

589
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 1: He just threw like these snake shaped silhouette There weren't

590
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:01,160
Speaker 1: even boomerangs. I totally remember what you're talking just through.

591
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:06,839
Speaker 1: But but anyway, so to to get back to that, UM,

592
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 1: I guess what we're saying is, although ostensibly a lot

593
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 1: of this would just be the same, um, bang up

594
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 1: the bad guy kind of comic book, there's a deeper

595
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:19,600
Speaker 1: story that was being told, especially in Captain America. It's

596
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:23,919
Speaker 1: a story about the society in which we live. Yeah,

597
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 1: I would argue that, and you know, I've argued that

598
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: in academic articles that I wrote when I was in school.

599
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: But but also that you know, just that the ideology

600
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:37,480
Speaker 1: of the time was reflected in that medium, especially because

601
00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 1: of this code. That the code restricted in such a

602
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:43,040
Speaker 1: way what you could portray so that you could get

603
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 1: broader distribution. Uh. In a similar way, I guess to

604
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 1: the m p A A with movies. Um. But what's

605
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 1: interesting is as the distribution model changes, the code becomes

606
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:58,240
Speaker 1: less relevant. So, UM, those of you who are familiar

607
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 1: with comic book stores, their rise was really the late

608
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:05,280
Speaker 1: seventies early eighties, and they came out of a network

609
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:09,319
Speaker 1: of head shops actually from the from the sixties, so

610
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: a lot of those store owners kind of converted over

611
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:14,560
Speaker 1: to comic bookstores or like a mixture of the two.

612
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:18,799
Speaker 1: Uh and this broad network across the United States of

613
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 1: direct distribution comic book stores or what people call their

614
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: local comic bookstore, even LCS if you're that you're that

615
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 1: into comics line, uh r LCS for instance, or my

616
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: LCS is Criminal Records here in Atlanta, you know, or

617
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 1: or I think there's also Oxford. You know, there's there's Tighten,

618
00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 1: there are a few around, yeah, uh and uh So

619
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: the idea is that these direct distribution platforms didn't have

620
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: to have the seal on them. So you started seeing

621
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: a few comics here and their experiment with doing gritty,

622
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,640
Speaker 1: more realistic issues that they didn't have the code on.

623
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: And then you had the rise of sort of like

624
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 1: what most people refer to as the black and white

625
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:08,040
Speaker 1: independent comics of the eighties Teenage Mutan, Ninja Turtles or

626
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:14,080
Speaker 1: um uh Concrete, Um Love and Rockets, books like that

627
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:18,200
Speaker 1: that were very different from the superhero genre. Uh well,

628
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 1: I mean, Teenaging Ninja Turtles was a parody and a

629
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: sort of homage to superheroes. But but Ultimately it was

630
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,240
Speaker 1: a lot more violent and gritty than what we see

631
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:31,280
Speaker 1: now in the cartoons and movies of that property. Those

632
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 1: started to get distributed and they were just bypassing the

633
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 1: code entirely. Uh, they didn't even bother with it. So

634
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: by the time you get to eighty nine and they

635
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:41,799
Speaker 1: make this final change to the code, it's really on.

636
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:48,960
Speaker 1: It's it's a deathbed. It's last like because because there's

637
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: something not quite ethical about the formation of the code anyway,

638
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 1: which we're going to get too shortly. Yeah, I think

639
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 1: it's important that we just kind of cover what it is,

640
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:58,799
Speaker 1: how it worked first, and then we can get back

641
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: to the sort of collusion assect right, Right, So this

642
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,959
Speaker 1: the thing here is that this code, as as you're saying,

643
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:10,880
Speaker 1: is becoming less and less relevant. The only reason it worked,

644
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 1: the only power it really had, uh, hinged upon relatively

645
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:24,240
Speaker 1: monopolistic distribution practices. Absolutely. Yeah, And in fact, uh that's true.

646
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: But in comparison to the way that comic books are

647
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 1: distributed in print now, it was far less monopolistic. So

648
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 1: the direct market had some very interesting stuff go on

649
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:36,520
Speaker 1: with it in the late nineties. I'm not gonna get

650
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:38,920
Speaker 1: into it here. It's probably a whole different podcast, but

651
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 1: uh it has basically one major distributor for all of

652
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 1: the stores in the United States, and now they decide

653
00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: whether your book makes it into a store or doesn't.

654
00:39:50,040 --> 00:39:53,160
Speaker 1: And it's not based on any kind of moral authority.

655
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:56,319
Speaker 1: It's more on sort of, you know, will this sell

656
00:39:56,440 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 1: or not? Uh, do we think it will? Say? Exactly,

657
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: it's their opinion. Hunt So so that kind of that

658
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:09,040
Speaker 1: practice still exist, but the comic code itself no longer exists,

659
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:14,479
Speaker 1: right right, So in two thousand one, Marvel, uh had

660
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: been going through a huge corporate shake up, they had

661
00:40:17,520 --> 00:40:20,799
Speaker 1: a bankruptcy. They finally kind of we're starting to get

662
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: their business back in order, and they dropped the code

663
00:40:24,560 --> 00:40:26,800
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one. They said, we're going to

664
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 1: use our own in house rating system now. So like

665
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:31,200
Speaker 1: if you look at the back of Marvel Comics on

666
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:33,840
Speaker 1: the INDI SHA, there's like a little like M or

667
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 1: I don't know what they're They might use an A

668
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:38,800
Speaker 1: I think for adult or something like that, or T

669
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:41,799
Speaker 1: for teenager or something, I don't know what they all

670
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 1: these different companies have their own rating systems now, so

671
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:48,160
Speaker 1: it's kind of oblique, but um, yeah, after fifty six

672
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: years of dominating comics, when Marvel backed out, that was

673
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,760
Speaker 1: basically the end. A lot of the independent publishers stopped

674
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 1: using it. And then, yeah, like I said earlier in eleven,

675
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:00,799
Speaker 1: it was January eleven when d C Comics was like, yeah,

676
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 1: we're done with it too, We're gonna use our own

677
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 1: in house rating system. Then Archie soon followed after, and

678
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: that was the last gas. Yeah, and without any of

679
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,799
Speaker 1: those publishers around to pay for, you know, these gatekeepers

680
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 1: to keep reviewing comics anymore, the Comics Code Authority closed

681
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 1: its doors. And what was my question is, was at

682
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:24,960
Speaker 1: the same hundred something ladies reading the comics for that.

683
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that would be a fascinating

684
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:29,719
Speaker 1: story to kind of, you know, interview one of the

685
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 1: employees who had been there for a really long time,

686
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:35,879
Speaker 1: or if there was a lot of turnover, I'm not sure. So.

687
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:39,280
Speaker 1: One thing that I noticed early on when we were

688
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:42,759
Speaker 1: initially talking about this, the whole Comics Code, the rise

689
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: and fall of this strange moral authority, was that this group,

690
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 1: when it was formed in the fifties, did something that

691
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 1: so many other private industries did, which you can trace

692
00:41:55,480 --> 00:42:00,839
Speaker 1: back to Bernis and propaganda. Uh they picked a name

693
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 1: that sounded like it was a government thing. Oh yeah, yeah.

694
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:08,279
Speaker 1: For I mean, I don't know about you, but when

695
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: I was a kid growing up, I always assumed the

696
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:14,439
Speaker 1: Comics Code Authority was a governmental unit. Yeah. It wasn't

697
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: until I was an adult and started researching this stuff

698
00:42:17,160 --> 00:42:19,280
Speaker 1: that I realized that it had you know, the government

699
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:22,359
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it except for the legislative hearings. Yeah,

700
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 1: and it happened so often. This This is an interesting

701
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:28,919
Speaker 1: thing because these sorts of name tricks were just very

702
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:33,799
Speaker 1: widespread in the fifties. But lest we think that day

703
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:37,799
Speaker 1: and age of disingenuous marketing is over all you have

704
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:41,279
Speaker 1: to do is look up some various trade associations, all

705
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:44,799
Speaker 1: of which have some very Uncle samish names, and none

706
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: of which our government related. Yeah. Yeah, that's true, And

707
00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 1: that's an interesting I never thought about that aspect. I

708
00:42:50,640 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: think that's an interesting thing about coming on this podcast

709
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:55,480
Speaker 1: because you and Matt have such expertise at looking all

710
00:42:55,520 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: these various kind of machinations over the years, your two

711
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 1: kind man. Uh, you know, honestly, we we do, we

712
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: do try, but we've got uh got a great team

713
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 1: of listeners who lets us know when we get stuff wrong. Yeah. Cool. Well,

714
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:10,960
Speaker 1: I hope that the listeners respond to this episode two

715
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: because I'd love to hear if you know, there's always

716
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: little tidbit stories out there that add to this unique

717
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:21,560
Speaker 1: kind of untold story of comics. So so, okay, this

718
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 1: came about like we we've got what it is, and

719
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:28,000
Speaker 1: we know, uh, we know how it changed and how

720
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:33,800
Speaker 1: it rose and it fell. But what made these people

721
00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: so concerned? These teachers, these parents? Yeah? Sure, So it

722
00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:41,959
Speaker 1: started off as a thing in probably like the late

723
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:48,799
Speaker 1: forties where there were groups of librarians and teachers and

724
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:52,879
Speaker 1: conservative religious groups that were accusing comics of being inappropriate,

725
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: specifically for juveniles. Uh. And it wasn't because of their

726
00:43:57,160 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 1: effects on children. They didn't come to that argument until later.

727
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 1: What their problem was with it was that they thought

728
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 1: that comics had a low literary quality, that they were

729
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: too lowbrow for children, and that by reading these it

730
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: was basically the equivalent of like junk food. It was

731
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:15,439
Speaker 1: like reading junk food, and they didn't want their kids

732
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 1: reading it, so they considered it to be immoral, especially

733
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: because of this, you know, scantily clad women that you

734
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:24,720
Speaker 1: would find in jungle books or the glorification of villains

735
00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: in in crime comics or horror comics. Um. And there

736
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:33,240
Speaker 1: was this study in nineteen nine that concluded that children

737
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:36,759
Speaker 1: who read superhero comics in particular did so to deal

738
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: with self esteem issues. Now, this study was by today's standards,

739
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: I think we would we would judge it as not

740
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 1: being very empirical. Uh, but that basically the idea was

741
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:53,080
Speaker 1: that kids who read comics had self esteem problems because

742
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 1: they were looked up to these hero figures and looked

743
00:44:56,080 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 1: to them for a sense of security. Yeah. And uh,

744
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:03,200
Speaker 1: you know it was interpreted as being, you know, an

745
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: unwanted behavior in your children. Uh. What ended up happening

746
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:11,799
Speaker 1: after that was that the publishers adopted their own code.

747
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:14,600
Speaker 1: This is before the code that we've been talking about

748
00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:17,360
Speaker 1: for the episode so far. They had this code. It

749
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:20,800
Speaker 1: lasted like maybe a year, and it just failed completely.

750
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:25,919
Speaker 1: The publishers didn't take it seriously. Uh and again ironically,

751
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:29,520
Speaker 1: what was then Marvel Comics, Timely Comics just said, you

752
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:31,000
Speaker 1: know what, we're going to just use our own in

753
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:33,239
Speaker 1: house code. Thanks, but no thanks, we don't need to

754
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 1: pay into this thing. Uh. But what shifted the tide

755
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:42,480
Speaker 1: was Dr Frederick Wortham. Ah, the psychologist you mentioned earlier, right,

756
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 1: So Dr Frederick Wortham, who was a New York City psychiatrist,

757
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 1: and his campaign was basically that comics shouldn't be sold

758
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:53,800
Speaker 1: to children. His argument was that children imitated the actions

759
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:57,000
Speaker 1: of comic book characters and that the content within them

760
00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:01,880
Speaker 1: desensitized these children to violence, and and he built up

761
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 1: a following over this idea. Um. He started off with

762
00:46:05,040 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 1: articles and presentations and conference hearings, and ultimately he wrote

763
00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:11,000
Speaker 1: a book that you can still get today. It's this

764
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:15,200
Speaker 1: fascinating read called Seduction of the Innocent. Like the title, yeah,

765
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: it sounds very saucy. Uh, it's it's it's nowhere near

766
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:21,319
Speaker 1: as interesting as Fifty Shades of Grey, but probably a

767
00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 1: more apt title. Uh. Anyways, So Wortham's, you know, broad

768
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: argument was essentially that the kids that were reading these

769
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 1: comics were enamored with gangsters that were in them, or

770
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:35,839
Speaker 1: monsters or murderers. It would subsequently use these comics as

771
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: a like how to manual to perform these actions themselves.

772
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: And he saw this as sort of leading up to

773
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:46,440
Speaker 1: the crime problems that inner cities were facing all across America,

774
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:48,960
Speaker 1: especially you know, in New York City where he lived.

775
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:53,800
Speaker 1: So what he advocated for was legislation by the government

776
00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 1: on comic books, regulating comic books. And what this led

777
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: to was the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. This is

778
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:04,480
Speaker 1: the big hearing you know, what you refer to as

779
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:08,319
Speaker 1: a trial earlier, um that the Senate staged in New

780
00:47:08,400 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 1: York City, and it happened in April one and twenty

781
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,239
Speaker 1: two and then again on June four in ninety four.

782
00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:16,239
Speaker 1: And what they did was they called up a bunch

783
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:20,400
Speaker 1: of different witnesses to testify about comics. They had comic

784
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:25,319
Speaker 1: book publishers, comic book creators, comic book readers, and Frederick Wortham.

785
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: They're kind of expert witness right. And just to be clear,

786
00:47:28,960 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: the reason I referred to it as the trials because

787
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: earlier we said that comics were on trial. Yeah, I mean,

788
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 1: that's that's essentially what was going on here. Yeah, definitely.

789
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:41,920
Speaker 1: And what was really fascinating about the whole thing is

790
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:48,040
Speaker 1: that it led to a really interesting conversation between the

791
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:51,839
Speaker 1: committee and a guy named William Gaines, who was the

792
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: publisher of EAC Comics, who we've been talking about earlier. Yes,

793
00:47:55,239 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 1: now he in in in the mind of the committee

794
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:00,399
Speaker 1: and in the mind of Wortham is sort of he's

795
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:03,359
Speaker 1: the super villain. Yeah, yeah, he is, in fact, Uh

796
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:05,879
Speaker 1: a little plug for myself here. I wrote a little

797
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:07,600
Speaker 1: comic book a couple of years ago called Think of

798
00:48:07,600 --> 00:48:10,360
Speaker 1: the Children, in which it is about this period of

799
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:14,280
Speaker 1: time and these The villain in the story is William Gaines,

800
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:19,880
Speaker 1: and he's an evil like a sorcerer who's bewitching the

801
00:48:19,920 --> 00:48:22,440
Speaker 1: minds of children and turning them into little monsters that

802
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:26,479
Speaker 1: attack the members of the subcommittee. Oh that's great, that's fun.

803
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 1: It's a fun story. Anyway, what actually happened was William Gaines,

804
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:38,760
Speaker 1: uh when he came up to testify uh Senator St. S. Kifaber,

805
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:42,080
Speaker 1: who was this like very publicity minded politician at the time.

806
00:48:42,080 --> 00:48:44,800
Speaker 1: He was from Tennessee. He really wanted to be president,

807
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 1: and he was kind of famous for going after organized

808
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 1: crime at this point, so he wanted to use this

809
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: as sort of his new platform for catapulting himself to

810
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 1: the next level in political stardom. Yeah, so he goes

811
00:48:57,040 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: after Gains in the middle of this hearing, and he

812
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:02,360
Speaker 1: whole holds up a cover to one of the ECS books.

813
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:03,920
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it was the Tales from

814
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:07,200
Speaker 1: the Crypt. It might have been a Crime Suspense Stories issue.

815
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one, but it's it's famous cover

816
00:49:10,200 --> 00:49:13,880
Speaker 1: now of a person holding a severed head of a

817
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 1: woman with a bloody axe next to it. And he

818
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: asked William Gaines, do you think this is in good taste?

819
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: And Gaines just kind of stammered and he said, well, uh,

820
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:27,120
Speaker 1: I think it's in good taste for for a horror

821
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: comic um and then he just, you know, I just

822
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:34,319
Speaker 1: had this stream of excuses and they were really, you know,

823
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:37,920
Speaker 1: rhetorically lame, and it made him look really bad. It

824
00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:39,800
Speaker 1: made comics look really bad. It was on the front

825
00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 1: page of all the papers the next day, and that

826
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:47,799
Speaker 1: was essentially the killing blow to horror comics, which is

827
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:52,440
Speaker 1: a shame because I don't know about any other horror

828
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:56,560
Speaker 1: comic fan. But now, just for some context, now, people

829
00:49:57,080 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 1: go out of their way to collect and find these

830
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 1: uh well, you know, they're comic books, so they're kind

831
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:06,080
Speaker 1: of fragile after a certain amount of time, right, So

832
00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:10,839
Speaker 1: people are going back in a way, this ruling ultimately

833
00:50:11,239 --> 00:50:16,879
Speaker 1: heightens the value these things, so especially because so many

834
00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:19,600
Speaker 1: of the other horror comics publishers at the time went

835
00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:21,920
Speaker 1: out of business, and you know, they didn't think that

836
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:24,319
Speaker 1: those comics we're gonna be worth anything fifty years down

837
00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:29,720
Speaker 1: the road, so they, you know, we're pulping these books. Basically, Um, yeah,

838
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:33,000
Speaker 1: it's it's a really fascinating, you know, economical model when

839
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:35,239
Speaker 1: you think about, you know, what came out of this,

840
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:38,960
Speaker 1: especially in terms of how it changed the comics industry too,

841
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:42,640
Speaker 1: and what was being published afterward. So basically, this hearing

842
00:50:42,680 --> 00:50:43,960
Speaker 1: goes on, and I do want to say one thing

843
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 1: about Frederick worth And before we go too far. He's

844
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:53,319
Speaker 1: often vilified by comics fans like myself as being this big,

845
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:55,800
Speaker 1: bad guy who said all these terrible things about comics

846
00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 1: that weren't true. However, I will say that I think

847
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:02,000
Speaker 1: there's a bit of a debate here. If you really

848
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:08,120
Speaker 1: look closely at Wortham's work, he had good intentions. Um.

849
00:51:08,239 --> 00:51:11,400
Speaker 1: He was largely concerned. He had he had moved to

850
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:13,759
Speaker 1: the United States from Germany after World War Two, he

851
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:17,640
Speaker 1: had seen horrible atrocities, and he was concerned about inner

852
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 1: city kids in New York City and the violence that

853
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 1: was going on in his community, and by and large,

854
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:27,479
Speaker 1: he blamed comics for this. And that's the problem here,

855
00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: is that, you know, he had this very single minded

856
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:34,560
Speaker 1: solution to to what he thought was society's greatest problem,

857
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: and he blamed violence and racism and even fascism on comics.

858
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 1: And he was homophobic, and he thought that comic books were,

859
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:48,359
Speaker 1: in their own way, advocating for homosexuality. In fact, there's

860
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:51,240
Speaker 1: kind of like infamous quote of him talking about Batman

861
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:54,359
Speaker 1: and Robin as being a sort of you know, he

862
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:57,200
Speaker 1: was one of the first people to insinuate that they

863
00:51:57,239 --> 00:52:01,120
Speaker 1: had a homosexual relationship. Certainly not the last, No, certainly

864
00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:03,960
Speaker 1: not the last. But it's interesting you say this. So

865
00:52:04,160 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: what we're seeing here is that his intentions are good

866
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:14,360
Speaker 1: at base. Yeah, he was just wrong basically. Yeah. I

867
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:18,000
Speaker 1: mean I think he meant well. I think he genuinely

868
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:22,799
Speaker 1: just wanted society to be better and safer, but his

869
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:28,440
Speaker 1: methodology was was really pretty awful. So this led to

870
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:32,440
Speaker 1: the self regulation that began in October of nineteen fifty four,

871
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:35,120
Speaker 1: a couple of months after these hearings, where publishers all

872
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:38,239
Speaker 1: got together and adopted this regulatory code. And you know,

873
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:41,400
Speaker 1: through their their fees in every month, so that the

874
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:44,000
Speaker 1: the team over at the Comics Code Authority would you know,

875
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:48,880
Speaker 1: uh censor their books. How did Gaines feel about it? Well,

876
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:51,239
Speaker 1: this is the interesting part is that Gains was not

877
00:52:51,400 --> 00:52:54,200
Speaker 1: into it at all. In fact, he initially refused to

878
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:56,880
Speaker 1: join the group at all. He wasn't going to submit

879
00:52:56,920 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 1: his comics for review UM. But because Wholesale refused to

880
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:03,760
Speaker 1: take any comics that weren't didn't have that little stamp

881
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:07,640
Speaker 1: of approval on them, he eventually had to join UM.

882
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:12,759
Speaker 1: But this was short lived because basically Gains just kept

883
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:15,680
Speaker 1: butting heads with them. Uh. There was a point where

884
00:53:15,719 --> 00:53:17,879
Speaker 1: there's a there's this infamous story I want to say,

885
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:20,799
Speaker 1: Al Williamson was the illustrator of it in an EC

886
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 1: comic in which there was an African American astronaut who

887
00:53:25,239 --> 00:53:29,440
Speaker 1: was um sweating. Uh. He was he was like in

888
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:31,360
Speaker 1: a spaceship and I think he was scared of something

889
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:34,080
Speaker 1: he was seeing off panel, so he's sweating to condicate

890
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:37,600
Speaker 1: that his fear. Uh. This was rejected by the Code

891
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:42,799
Speaker 1: because they thought that it was ridiculing race. Uh. And

892
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 1: so there was some interesting issues there. Whim Gains would

893
00:53:45,600 --> 00:53:48,319
Speaker 1: argue back and forth with them. Eventually this story would

894
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:53,960
Speaker 1: see publication. But ultimately, you know, Gains was the first

895
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 1: and kind of biggest casualty of the code. He folded

896
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: the ec comics rand, all those horror comics, you know,

897
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:07,200
Speaker 1: we're taken off the shelves. And uh. He ultimately kind

898
00:54:07,200 --> 00:54:09,800
Speaker 1: of had the last laugh though, because he left comics

899
00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:14,279
Speaker 1: and started Mad Magazine, and Mad Magazine, because it was

900
00:54:14,320 --> 00:54:16,960
Speaker 1: a magazine and not a comic book, couldn't be regulated

901
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: by the code, and therefore he could get away with

902
00:54:19,239 --> 00:54:20,960
Speaker 1: whatever he wanted to in there. And it was a

903
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: huge hit. Yeah, and you gotta wonder what would have

904
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:26,000
Speaker 1: happened if he went if he stayed with horror instead

905
00:54:26,040 --> 00:54:28,279
Speaker 1: of going to humor. Yeah, I think it would have

906
00:54:28,280 --> 00:54:31,000
Speaker 1: been really interesting, you know. I mean, it would have

907
00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: changed the face of comics. Comics, like I was saying earlier,

908
00:54:34,719 --> 00:54:38,440
Speaker 1: the direction of comics changed because of this code. Horror

909
00:54:38,520 --> 00:54:40,879
Speaker 1: was one of the most popular genres at the time.

910
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:43,240
Speaker 1: Crime was one of the most popular genres at the time.

911
00:54:43,600 --> 00:54:46,359
Speaker 1: Without those things, we see the rise of the superhero,

912
00:54:46,719 --> 00:54:49,880
Speaker 1: and the superhero ends up meeting a lot of the

913
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:54,280
Speaker 1: regulatory needs of the code, you know, holding up American

914
00:54:54,360 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: ideals and moral standards and not glorifying cry him or violence.

915
00:55:01,480 --> 00:55:05,440
Speaker 1: Well that can be argued, right, right, A Hitler punch

916
00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 1: is fine, yeah right, like well that's code but yeah yeah,

917
00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 1: like well, you know, bring him back, Red Skull him exactly, Yeah,

918
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:17,879
Speaker 1: punching the Red Skull over and over and over. Right.

919
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:20,800
Speaker 1: I wonder who has the dubious title of most punched

920
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:23,960
Speaker 1: super villain. That would be a fascinating it would be

921
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 1: a good thing to find out. Might be the Red Skull.

922
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 1: And you know, he gets punched a lot for someone

923
00:55:28,680 --> 00:55:31,480
Speaker 1: who's supposed to be so smart. That guy gets clocked

924
00:55:31,600 --> 00:55:34,880
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, and he's been around for over

925
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 1: seventy years, so the numbers might just be on his side.

926
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 1: So here's here's where we find a little bit of

927
00:55:43,320 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: a conspiracy of foot. This is not a conspiracy theory

928
00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: because this actually happened. You know, the creators of the

929
00:55:50,640 --> 00:55:55,520
Speaker 1: comic code panicked by these hearings. Um could could easily

930
00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:58,640
Speaker 1: you know, smell the coffee on the wind, I guess

931
00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 1: to butcher a phrase, and so they actually entered into

932
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 1: this as a sort of conspiracy or collusion, right, Yeah,

933
00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:08,160
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's fair to say, and I

934
00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:11,080
Speaker 1: think most you know, comics historians would agree that they

935
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:13,480
Speaker 1: got together. They saw that this was an opportunity for

936
00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: their interests to push out their strongest competitor so that

937
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:21,719
Speaker 1: their companies could survive. And yeah, their book lines changed too.

938
00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:23,760
Speaker 1: I mean, like, let's go back to that Captain America

939
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:27,000
Speaker 1: example for a second. Captain America was canceled between the

940
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:32,120
Speaker 1: late forties and the um almost all of the fifties. Uh,

941
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:35,120
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the early sixties. I think that Marvel

942
00:56:35,200 --> 00:56:38,080
Speaker 1: brought him back as a character with Stanley working on

943
00:56:38,120 --> 00:56:42,360
Speaker 1: it with Jack Kirby. Um, not that Stanley created it.

944
00:56:43,880 --> 00:56:46,920
Speaker 1: I'd like to qualify that Stanley did not create Captain America.

945
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:49,640
Speaker 1: He was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. If anything,

946
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:53,600
Speaker 1: he uh revived Captain America. Sure, yeah, he was the

947
00:56:53,600 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 1: one who brought him out of the ice. Yeah, there

948
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:58,640
Speaker 1: we go. That's fair. But this isn't the only comic

949
00:56:58,760 --> 00:57:02,839
Speaker 1: book related conspiracy. We we had talked and you had

950
00:57:02,880 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 1: a few others as well. Right, there's a couple of

951
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:08,560
Speaker 1: interesting instances with comics over the years. A lot of

952
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:13,960
Speaker 1: comics history. It's pretty shady and uh, a writer that

953
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:16,760
Speaker 1: I admire who I won't name here, refers to comics

954
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:20,640
Speaker 1: as being a pirate industry. Uh, and that there's you know,

955
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 1: there's a lot of uh high jinks and backstabbing going

956
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:27,920
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes. So yeah, there's a couple instances

957
00:57:27,960 --> 00:57:31,480
Speaker 1: that let's let's talk about here. So, Um, in the sixties,

958
00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 1: what was then what became DC Comics, then it was

959
00:57:35,440 --> 00:57:39,440
Speaker 1: called National Periodicals, was in charge of distribution for all

960
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:42,480
Speaker 1: of comic books. Uh sorry, I said sixties. This is

961
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:45,680
Speaker 1: the late fifties. And what that's meant was that they

962
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:49,919
Speaker 1: could decide how many comics of a certain type other

963
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:54,360
Speaker 1: publishers could distribute. So being that they were really popular

964
00:57:54,400 --> 00:57:56,360
Speaker 1: at the time with the silver age versions of our

965
00:57:56,480 --> 00:57:59,080
Speaker 1: superheroes we know now, like a Flash or Green Lantern,

966
00:57:59,280 --> 00:58:02,920
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Maybe Martian Man Hunter, I'm not sure. Uh.

967
00:58:03,240 --> 00:58:07,120
Speaker 1: They they decided, well, uh, you know, Marvel, you can

968
00:58:07,160 --> 00:58:10,920
Speaker 1: only publish six issues a month. You're allowed to put

969
00:58:10,960 --> 00:58:14,920
Speaker 1: out anything more than that. Uh And uh so Marvel's

970
00:58:14,960 --> 00:58:20,000
Speaker 1: answer to this was the Fantastic Four. Um, they came

971
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:23,240
Speaker 1: up with their own superhero team. But they were like,

972
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:25,160
Speaker 1: we're going to do it differently, you know, We're we're

973
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:29,160
Speaker 1: gonna inject that. This was the Stanley inject that sense

974
00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:33,960
Speaker 1: of quote unquote realism in systemper and uh, and that

975
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:36,360
Speaker 1: led to the Fantastic Four, which led to Spider Man

976
00:58:36,520 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 1: and the whole Marvel renaissance in the sixties. So, yeah,

977
00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:45,440
Speaker 1: there seems to be such a such a disturbing comparison

978
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 1: to the recording industry when we talk about these shady

979
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:55,480
Speaker 1: or questionable business practices. Um. But it doesn't just stop

980
00:58:55,600 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 1: at the distribution. It goes deeper than that, right. Yeah.

981
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:01,400
Speaker 1: So then there's a really interesting story from I believe

982
00:59:01,400 --> 00:59:05,480
Speaker 1: it's the seventies in which UM comic book creators were

983
00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:07,439
Speaker 1: starting to talk to each other about what their page

984
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:10,680
Speaker 1: rates were to you know, see whether or not they're

985
00:59:10,680 --> 00:59:13,200
Speaker 1: being screwed over by their parent corporations or not if

986
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:16,520
Speaker 1: they could get better rates. Uh. And what happened was Stanley,

987
00:59:16,680 --> 00:59:18,760
Speaker 1: who was editor in chief of Marvel at the time,

988
00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:21,680
Speaker 1: and Carmine Infantino, who's the editor in chief at DC

989
00:59:21,840 --> 00:59:24,920
Speaker 1: at the time, got together and they drafted an agreement.

990
00:59:25,000 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: But they were going to share information on what their

991
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:30,560
Speaker 1: freelancer rates were back and forth so they could keep

992
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:33,720
Speaker 1: the freelancer rates as low as possible and keep those

993
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:39,200
Speaker 1: creators from arguing for higher paid rates. And when Roy Thomas,

994
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 1: who was I'm sorry, Stanley was an editor in chief

995
00:59:42,760 --> 00:59:45,040
Speaker 1: at the time, he was probably like a president of

996
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:47,840
Speaker 1: the company at the time. Roy Thomas was editor in chief.

997
00:59:47,920 --> 00:59:50,720
Speaker 1: When Roy Thomas found out about this this that was

998
00:59:50,760 --> 00:59:53,480
Speaker 1: the end for him. Uh. He actually referred to it.

999
00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:55,680
Speaker 1: He resigned for Marvel Comics, and he referred to it

1000
00:59:55,720 --> 01:00:01,440
Speaker 1: as being unethical, immoral, and quite possibly illegal. Uh. You know,

1001
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,280
Speaker 1: it sounds like it very well could be. This is

1002
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:07,919
Speaker 1: something This kind of collusion is something that has been

1003
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:11,440
Speaker 1: reported with other companies too. I think Apple got in trouble.

1004
01:00:11,480 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 1: It was either Apple or some other tech company got

1005
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:15,560
Speaker 1: in trouble in the past few years for doing the

1006
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 1: same thing. That sounds about right. Yeah, And if you

1007
01:00:18,040 --> 01:00:21,280
Speaker 1: want to learn more about stories like that, highly recommend

1008
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:24,960
Speaker 1: this book by Sean how called Marvel The Untold Story.

1009
01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:29,760
Speaker 1: It has got so many great behind the scenes secrets

1010
01:00:30,040 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: of how Marvel rose to power and fell and then

1011
01:00:34,520 --> 01:00:38,320
Speaker 1: rose to power again. And there is there's one very

1012
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:42,880
Speaker 1: recent one that we should talk about. It just briefly mentioned. Yeah,

1013
01:00:42,920 --> 01:00:45,640
Speaker 1: this is interesting. It's a rumor right now. I guess

1014
01:00:45,680 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: a year from now, we're going to look at back

1015
01:00:47,320 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 1: back on this and laugh, or we're gonna say, oh,

1016
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:53,280
Speaker 1: it was correct. But the rumor is, uh, Marvel doesn't

1017
01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:55,720
Speaker 1: own the movie rights to some of their own characters

1018
01:00:55,800 --> 01:01:00,160
Speaker 1: right now, so x Men, Spider Man, uh, Fantastic War

1019
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:03,600
Speaker 1: and a couple of others are owned by Sony and Fox.

1020
01:01:04,200 --> 01:01:07,960
Speaker 1: And as we record this now in April, there's a

1021
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:11,640
Speaker 1: new Fantastic Four movie that's about to come out this summer. Uh,

1022
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 1: and rumor has it that the guy in charge over

1023
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:19,640
Speaker 1: at Marvel does not want the Fantastic Four to do well.

1024
01:01:20,120 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: He wants it to fail, and therefore they're going to

1025
01:01:22,920 --> 01:01:27,080
Speaker 1: cancel the Fantastic Four comic book. Uh. They're going to

1026
01:01:27,160 --> 01:01:33,800
Speaker 1: basically do everything they can to discourage promotion of this movie. Uh. Now,

1027
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:37,360
Speaker 1: this is completely a rumor. Yes, the Fantastic Four is

1028
01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 1: being canceled. I believe its last issue is this month

1029
01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:43,240
Speaker 1: or next month or something like that. But who knows.

1030
01:01:43,280 --> 01:01:45,680
Speaker 1: It's comics. You know they'll come back. They could come

1031
01:01:45,720 --> 01:01:48,600
Speaker 1: back three months from now or something, who knows. Um.

1032
01:01:48,640 --> 01:01:51,959
Speaker 1: But the the theory is that right now that yeah,

1033
01:01:52,080 --> 01:01:54,520
Speaker 1: Marvel is doing this on purpose because they just want

1034
01:01:54,560 --> 01:01:58,600
Speaker 1: to squeeze out their movie competition. And I have to

1035
01:01:58,640 --> 01:02:01,680
Speaker 1: say again, we do know that there's a rumor, but

1036
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:05,400
Speaker 1: it makes sense, and the timing makes sense. The motivation,

1037
01:02:05,480 --> 01:02:07,920
Speaker 1: if it was there, makes sense. That might be a

1038
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:11,560
Speaker 1: little inside baseball for anyone who for some reason doesn't

1039
01:02:11,600 --> 01:02:16,760
Speaker 1: love comics. But uh, we have touched on some really

1040
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:19,479
Speaker 1: really huge ideas here, and I think the biggest one

1041
01:02:20,200 --> 01:02:24,640
Speaker 1: is the concept of censorship which haunts, uh, which haunts

1042
01:02:24,720 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 1: the United States even today. You know, since Ulysses all

1043
01:02:28,880 --> 01:02:32,440
Speaker 1: the way up to the modern times, the and I

1044
01:02:32,440 --> 01:02:35,320
Speaker 1: mean Ulysses, the the James Joyce book, not the uh

1045
01:02:35,480 --> 01:02:40,320
Speaker 1: not Ulysses hero, not the mythical hero ever since he

1046
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:44,720
Speaker 1: came to Jersey. Um. But but we also see that

1047
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:47,840
Speaker 1: there's there's a reason for this, because we see that

1048
01:02:48,520 --> 01:02:53,880
Speaker 1: powerful forces, authority figures are actively working um to shape

1049
01:02:53,960 --> 01:02:58,560
Speaker 1: the minds of readers. Right definitely, whether in you know,

1050
01:02:58,600 --> 01:03:01,360
Speaker 1: in this case, at the beginning of the of the

1051
01:03:01,400 --> 01:03:07,240
Speaker 1: comic situation, it was religious groups or moral groups parents,

1052
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:11,720
Speaker 1: but that but it really got legs when the government

1053
01:03:11,720 --> 01:03:14,280
Speaker 1: took a look at it, and then subsequently the companies

1054
01:03:14,320 --> 01:03:16,840
Speaker 1: themselves said we can take advantage of this and we

1055
01:03:16,880 --> 01:03:20,840
Speaker 1: can use it to increase our sales. So now this

1056
01:03:20,960 --> 01:03:23,520
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite parts of the show Towards

1057
01:03:23,520 --> 01:03:27,400
Speaker 1: the end is I want to just ask the big question,

1058
01:03:27,600 --> 01:03:30,760
Speaker 1: and we don't have to have studies, it's just your opinion, uh,

1059
01:03:30,800 --> 01:03:35,880
Speaker 1: and and mine as well, What if any influence do

1060
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:40,320
Speaker 1: you believe fiction has on people's behavior? This is a

1061
01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:44,040
Speaker 1: very contentious question to ask, especially if you're going to

1062
01:03:44,120 --> 01:03:47,480
Speaker 1: ask an academic setting, because there's a question of human

1063
01:03:47,520 --> 01:03:51,880
Speaker 1: agency and how much we have agency beyond the media

1064
01:03:51,960 --> 01:03:55,240
Speaker 1: that we consume. Right, so the idea that media can

1065
01:03:55,520 --> 01:04:01,360
Speaker 1: make us do something is very deterministic. However, I uh,

1066
01:04:01,400 --> 01:04:05,760
Speaker 1: you know, in my academic work really investigated this idea

1067
01:04:05,880 --> 01:04:12,480
Speaker 1: that ideology and and uh national culture especially was informed

1068
01:04:12,520 --> 01:04:17,160
Speaker 1: by or subsequently informed our popular culture. So yeah, I

1069
01:04:17,160 --> 01:04:19,600
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's something that's worth looking at

1070
01:04:19,840 --> 01:04:22,960
Speaker 1: um over the years. You see, you know, especially with

1071
01:04:23,040 --> 01:04:26,240
Speaker 1: the Code as an example, it's perfect example of what

1072
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:31,880
Speaker 1: restrictions we are allowed to consume in our media, and

1073
01:04:31,920 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 1: then when those restrictions are lifted or how they change.

1074
01:04:34,840 --> 01:04:39,360
Speaker 1: You know, there's just interesting flux is like the whole

1075
01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:43,680
Speaker 1: um is something that you'll often hear people from European

1076
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:47,760
Speaker 1: countries say that they don't get about television in the US.

1077
01:04:48,040 --> 01:04:52,600
Speaker 1: Is this uh propensity for violence, this glorification of violence,

1078
01:04:52,640 --> 01:04:57,680
Speaker 1: and this deeply, deeply troubled relationship with sexuality. If Frederick

1079
01:04:57,720 --> 01:05:00,280
Speaker 1: Wortham were alive today and he saw tell and you

1080
01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:03,240
Speaker 1: probably have a heart attack and die all over again. Yeah,

1081
01:05:03,280 --> 01:05:08,040
Speaker 1: I mean the stuff that we consume now, which I love.

1082
01:05:08,120 --> 01:05:11,040
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm a huge fan of violence and

1083
01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:17,200
Speaker 1: graphic uh anything if it's used to tell a good story. Uh,

1084
01:05:17,240 --> 01:05:21,760
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's very different from what our

1085
01:05:22,160 --> 01:05:26,959
Speaker 1: moral sort of code allowed fifty sixty years ago. And

1086
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:31,080
Speaker 1: I think that we're seeing this evolution still. So listeners,

1087
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:34,560
Speaker 1: we hope that you enjoy this episode, and we'd like

1088
01:05:34,640 --> 01:05:37,200
Speaker 1: to hear your stories from your country, from your town

1089
01:05:37,560 --> 01:05:41,120
Speaker 1: about the ways in which you think the media or

1090
01:05:41,240 --> 01:05:46,400
Speaker 1: any media is being used to shape behavior or ideology.

1091
01:05:46,520 --> 01:05:49,480
Speaker 1: And Christian has been a huge pleasure to have you

1092
01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:52,240
Speaker 1: on the show today. So I have to ask, um,

1093
01:05:52,440 --> 01:05:54,720
Speaker 1: is it okay if I plug that latest Stuff to

1094
01:05:54,720 --> 01:05:58,880
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind episode? Yeah? Sure, Okay, So you guys, Uh,

1095
01:05:59,120 --> 01:06:01,560
Speaker 1: Christian worked with our friends over It's Stuff to Blow

1096
01:06:01,600 --> 01:06:05,080
Speaker 1: Your Mind to do a fantastic episode on Grim Noise

1097
01:06:05,240 --> 01:06:07,480
Speaker 1: and uh, when Matt and I heard it, we thought

1098
01:06:07,520 --> 01:06:10,040
Speaker 1: this would be perfect for our audience too. What do

1099
01:06:10,080 --> 01:06:12,040
Speaker 1: you guys talk about now? Yeah, Robert and I talked

1100
01:06:12,040 --> 01:06:17,720
Speaker 1: about the history of magical texts going back to zero

1101
01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:23,280
Speaker 1: BC DC. Uh. Yeah, just the basis for all these

1102
01:06:23,280 --> 01:06:30,520
Speaker 1: old tomb tomes sorry of magical spells or rituals or

1103
01:06:30,800 --> 01:06:35,240
Speaker 1: demon summoning or angel knowledge, all kinds of weird stuff

1104
01:06:35,280 --> 01:06:37,640
Speaker 1: throughout history and how you know, it's kind of similar

1105
01:06:37,680 --> 01:06:39,600
Speaker 1: to what we're talking about now. Actually, is that like

1106
01:06:39,840 --> 01:06:42,600
Speaker 1: the written word that was in those books at that

1107
01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:46,280
Speaker 1: time was strongly considered to be to have us an

1108
01:06:46,280 --> 01:06:50,080
Speaker 1: effect on the people that read it and were subsequently burned.

1109
01:06:50,720 --> 01:06:54,120
Speaker 1: And you can find that. You can find that episode. Uh,

1110
01:06:54,200 --> 01:06:56,400
Speaker 1: let's see, we're we're all over the internet. You can

1111
01:06:56,400 --> 01:07:00,640
Speaker 1: find that episode on iTunes, Stitcher, your streaming service of choice.

1112
01:07:00,840 --> 01:07:03,360
Speaker 1: And while you are online, if you would like to

1113
01:07:03,360 --> 01:07:05,600
Speaker 1: listen to more episodes of Stuff they Don't want you

1114
01:07:05,640 --> 01:07:07,960
Speaker 1: to Know, you can find everyone we've ever done on

1115
01:07:08,040 --> 01:07:10,640
Speaker 1: Stuff they Don't Want you to Know dot com. And

1116
01:07:10,720 --> 01:07:13,720
Speaker 1: that's the end of this classic episode. If you have

1117
01:07:13,800 --> 01:07:17,840
Speaker 1: any thoughts or questions, about this episode. You can get

1118
01:07:17,920 --> 01:07:20,320
Speaker 1: into contact with us in a number of different ways.

1119
01:07:20,520 --> 01:07:22,080
Speaker 1: One of the best is to give us a call.

1120
01:07:22,120 --> 01:07:25,400
Speaker 1: Our number is one eight three three st d w

1121
01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:27,720
Speaker 1: y t K. If you don't want to do that,

1122
01:07:28,040 --> 01:07:30,360
Speaker 1: you can send us a good old fashioned email. We

1123
01:07:30,440 --> 01:07:35,040
Speaker 1: are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they

1124
01:07:35,080 --> 01:07:36,960
Speaker 1: don't want you to know is a production of I

1125
01:07:37,120 --> 01:07:40,240
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit

1126
01:07:40,240 --> 01:07:43,000
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1127
01:07:43,040 --> 01:07:44,240
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.