"On one a maniac is forcing a woman's head onto a burning stove top, on the next three guys are blasting away with machine guns at a bloodied bank teller, the next cover had a bloodied man thrown from a speeding car and yet another had a guy about to hack a woman with a cleaver while there were five dead men "hanging" from a tree limb nearby. It is not difficult to understand why this title was so popular, but it is difficult to understand why comic publishers took so long, five years, to cash in on the crime title's success." (Comic Art and Graffix Gallery)
Another common sight on the covers of both horror and crime comic books is what is known as "Good Girl Art". Rather than being art depicting 'good girls', it was 'girl art' that was 'good'. Images of this type featured busty women (large breasts were known as 'headlights') wearing scanty clothing and showing as much cleavage and skin as possible, without being naked (Comic Art and Graffix Gallery, p. 5). These images are related to the "cheesecake" pin-ups of the 1940s, and the later "Bad Girl Art" of the 1990s (Jim Burrows). The Phantom Lady, created for Quality Comics and later adopted for DC comics, is a good example of Good Girl Art.
 |
| Cover of Phantom Lady #17 |
Although these comic books met with huge popularity and success, in the 1950s negative sentiment against them began to appear. Allegedly following an incident where an American senator's son was caught by his mother reading comics depicting Good Girl Art, a panel named The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency released a widely circulated report detailing the negative effects of comic books on America's youth (Comic Art and Graffix Gallery). This was followed by an article and a book by psychologist Frederic Wertham blaming comic books for the degradation of America's youth and detailing examples of sex and violence in comics. As a result, outraged parents and communities "...hosted bonfires to rid themselves of comics" (Leopold), American news stands stopped displaying crime and horror comics, and the comic book industry took a fall from which many publications never recovered. America's Comic Code Authority introduced strict regulations that prevented offensive material (including most key elements of crime comics) from being published: this was mirrored in Britain (where American comics were imported), whose parliament in 1955 passed the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act, which contained similar prohibitions and is still in force today.
Today, crime comic books are perhaps remembered as an interesting, and revealing part of America's comic book history, as Nicky Wright acknowledges:
Like so many things, crime comics were a strange and unique corner of Americana... and an extraordinary chapter in the history of comic books. Long live their bloody memory. (Wright, 1998)
Sources:
Burrows, J., "Strong Women in Comics, Part 1: The Traditional "Good Girls", 2005. Accessed April, 2011: http://www.eldacur.com/~brons/Comics/Women1.html
"Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955 (as Enacted)", The National Archives. Accessed April, 2011: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/3-4/28/enacted
Graffix Multimedia, "The History of Comics" in "Comic Art and Graffix Gallery", 2006. Accessed April, 2011: http://www.comic-art.com/history/history1.htm
Leopold, T., "The pictures that horrified America", CNN Entertainment, 2008. Accessed April, 2011: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-05-08/entertainment/comic.books_1_comic-books-frederic-wertham-anti-comics-movement?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ
Wright, N., "Seducers of the Innocent: The bloody legacy of pre-Code crime!", in "Crimeboss: Crime Comic Books of the 1940s & 1950s", 1998. Accessed April, 2011: http://www.crimeboss.com/history02-1.html
