And from out of the shadows, a hero emerges...maybe?

I was about to discuss the absence of a response to the anti-comic movement that Hajdu builds up throughout the first 130 pages. Then I read David Pace Wigransky’s letter (Hajdu 113). It was this kind of backlash that I was looking for, but did not find for the most part in the book. I cannot totally fault Hajdu for this. Maybe there was little to no response to the crucifixion that the comic industry was undergoing, but I tend to doubt that. No matter what the issue is that raises the hairs on mainstream America’s neck, there is always a group that doesn’t see the harm (usually Hollywood). The fact that Hajdu describes the cultural maelstrom as a “debate” at times implies that there were two sides to the story. Perhaps we will see the resistance as we read on, but so far it is not even on the horizon.

Granted, in any free market economy the dollar speaks louder than a Led Zeppelin encore and the comic industry was generating $72 million on roughly 90 million comics in circulation in 1948 (Hajdu 112). What I was looking for, however, was the voice of those who were arguing that the reading of comic books was not the brain melting, ethics raping, drivel that it was made out to be. Part of the problem was most likely that the two groups most noticeably on the side of the comic book industry were its writers and its readers. Its readers being mostly children did almost nothing to give voice to their opposition of the rich, old, white guys that had crept up again in national outrage. On the side of the industry’s creators, a similar problem existed in that even Will Eisner conceded that comic book creators, “lived in a bubble, and lived, breathed, and ate comic books. The world could blow up outside the studio, and the average comic-book man wouldn’t notice” (Hajdu 103). With one group lacking any real voice and the other lacking any real impulse to speak up, there was a void created where there needed to be fist, raised in defiance.

The story about how Sam Kweskin’s mother swept the table scraps onto Sterling North’s, “A National Disgrace” made me wonder where these people were on a national stage (Hadju 43). There needed to be comic book advocates that came from outside the industry. No one was going to listen to the perpetuators of such filth, and certainly not to the brainwashed children it ensnares, so a voice from somewhere else had to pick up the reins. Where was the Bono of the late 1940s? Where was the Bob Geldof of the comic book scene? Someone needed to step in and challenge Winters v. New York, and with the comic book industry’s creation of the Comics Code at the hands of its creators, it seems as though it was not going to come from within (97, 129).

Perhaps there was no one waiting in the wings. If that is the case then my hat is off to you David Hajdu, your argument is damn near bullet proof. If that is not the case, however, then where is the masked crusader ready to step in and take a stand against the beating that the industry was taking? A beating worthy of any panel in Crime Does Not Pay.