Monday, September 21, 2015

Manic Monday--The 12 Commandments!

Even before the famous 1954 Congressional hearings, crime comics were drawing increasing attention in some quarters as being over violent, and a bad influence on our youth.

So in 1948, Lev Gleason Publications announced their own preemptive proto-Code (click to embiggen):

Of course, this was largely PR, and not actually followed too faithfully. For example:

And in the very same issue in which this was published:

Man, someone didn't get the memo.

Of course, you could make the argument that insisting that all of your ultra-violence be blood-free is worse for the kiddies than showing blood.

A closer look at a few of the other prohibitions in comics devoted to showing people get killed, and then the killers get killed:

Ah, the Frank Cho rule!

"Relatively varied in bone structure"?!?! WTF?!? Is that some kind of code word for "make some of them realistic heavy-set?"

Don't tell that to Geoff Johns or Dan DiDio...

So much for Joker stories...

From Desperado #1 (1948)

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