The Rise and Fall of the Comics Code

Nowadays comics are considered anything from light-hearted entertainment to a unique art form and genre of literature all their own. Yet for decades they were considered a gateway to sin. Join Ben and special guest Christian Sager as they explore the moral panic, censorship and collusion that led to the rise of the comics code.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. You
gotta love paranoia. It's what made this country great. Fear
of the reds, fear of getting old, fear of failure,

(00:25):
fear of each other. Deep down, we all just want
to be the same. Oh, my geneity is Luod. We
must destroy diversity and Welcome to the show. As you
know that music means that you're in the right place
hopefully here with me Ben, our producer Null the Invisible Brown,

(00:45):
and our co host Matt Frederick, who is here in
spirit but right now he's working on a fantastic video
episode that we can't wait for you to see. Never
feared the show soldiers on. We're here today with a
very special guest. Uh, ladies and gentlemen. It's Christian Sager,
fellow comic book lover co writer man about town of

(01:08):
how stuff works. Hey, Ben, I'm happy to be here,
and I wish Matt was here. But he's a busy gentleman.
He is he is. He is a busy guy on
testament to how much quality goes into your series. Oh yeah,
it's it's it's all him. It's him. I I sometimes
I get a sandwiches. Uh. So we're here today to

(01:31):
talk about something that fascinates both of us. I think
Matt will probably really want to hear this episode two.
It's a little bum that he couldn't make it. We're
talking about a very strange episode in American history, right, Yeah,
we're going to talk about the beginning of the Comics

(01:52):
Code of America that or at least that was used
in American publishing, also known as the Comics Code Authority,
started after legislative hearings in nineteen fifty four. And of
course we opened up with a quote some of you
may recognize, Well, what do you think we should tell
people or let them guess? Well, that quote is actually
from a favorite comic book of ours, of Ben, Matt

(02:16):
and myself, which is The Invisibles. Is what we kind
of brought us in common together on this topic. Uh.
It's by Grant Morrison, and it's a great series from
Vertigo from the late nineties. Uh, and it's about all
kinds of things. I imagine a lot of your audience
are familiar with it or or would be fans of
it because most of all it's about conspiraci conspiracy theories. Yeah,

(02:39):
the idea of what if every conspiracy you have ever
heard is true and they squeeze it into this one
story arc in a way that reminded me of the
Illuminatus trilogy, which is another another fantastic book. Big influence
I think on Grant Morrison for that. Oh yeah, definitely.
So what so that's one of the comics we all

(03:00):
have in common and listeners. I know it might sound
strange at first to say, hey, you were looking for conspiracies.
You guys are telling about comic books, but do we
have a story for you. Uh. The comics of today
right that you would find in your local local store. Uh,
are radically different in many ways to the comics of yesteryear. Yeah. Absolutely,

(03:25):
especially from the fifties. But basically if you go by
decade fifties, sixties, seventies, then in the eighties when the
direct market really took over, up until today. But by
and large, the reason why they're mainly different is because
none of the comics publishers today use the comics code anymore.
It's slowly, over the last fifteen years, was taken out

(03:49):
of use by Marvel, d C, dark Horse Image, all
of the big name players. I think the last two
were inven and I want to say it was Archie
Comics and d C comics that finally just decide to
use their own in house systems. Do you remember, do
you remember the gold Key comics and e C and
stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, I loved those as a

(04:10):
kid because there there was such graphic depravity you know, Yeah, yeah,
I mean that. And those are not necessarily the gold
Key ones, maybe some of them, but the EC stuff
is really what got the code started, uh, and how
graphic it was. There were depictions of graphic violence, monsters, sexuality, uh,

(04:35):
criminal activity and we'll get into this, but there was
an idea that by reading these comics, uh, young kids
were learning how to be juvenile delinquents. They were learning
how to become criminals, right, how to owt to skip
school or lie to your teachers. And one thing, and
you're absolutely right, Christian gold Key is if anything more, Um,

(04:57):
their scary stories were more suspenseful, I think than horrific.
But the the thing that I loved about e C
as well is that you know, these comics for people
who haven't read them yet, do check them out if
you and especially if you enjoy horror. For a lot
of ec stories, each comic was like an anthology which
had you know what, three to four shorter pieces in there,

(05:19):
and the only thing they had in common is that
everybody in the stories went from zero to a hundred
so quickly. They were like, hey, I'm I'm tired of
you being a bully, so clearly the best thing to
do is to dissolve you in this line or like, uh,
there's a classic one. I don't remember the exact details,
but we're like a baseball team like cuts a guy
up into pieces and uses his head as a baseball

(05:43):
to play like a game. And then like you I
think like other body parts are like bassis or something
like that. Yeah, it's pretty morbid, and uh, you know,
all in good fun, ladies and gentlemen, all in good fun.
But but the idea which you mentioned there that that
this would be teaching kids to be jew no delinquents,
or teaching them how to cut someone apart and use

(06:04):
their head as part of a game. Uh. Yeah, it
was a little deeper than that, but there were and
we'll get into that, but that Yeah. Generally there's the
idea that the moral depravity of these books with somehow
uh infect the agency of America's youth and make them darker,
may turn them into murders or criminals, or uh you know,

(06:27):
even affect, for instance, their sexuality. Okay, So what we're
looking at here is a full blown moral panic in
some ways similar in some way similar to the idea
of uh, you know, heavy metal music being a terrible
influence or Dungeons and Dragons being a terrible influenced yeah,

(06:47):
or even like uh more recently, that national Baseball was
a bad influence because of the steroid use among the
players and that they weren't necessarily good role models. Very
similar kinds of things went on between the government and
the baseball industry, as went on between the government and

(07:08):
the comics industry in the nineteen fifties. So okay, yes,
let's get right to it. What what the heck is
this comic code? Where does it come from them? How
it happen? Sure? Okay, So, uh the code came out
of some legislative hearings that we're in nineteen fifty four,
and we'll talk about those more in detail down the
down the road in the podcast. But basically, there were

(07:32):
hearings that were placing comics on trial for what we
just suggested that they were a bad influence on America's youth.
Coming out of the hearings, the major publishers that were
involved in comics decided that to preemptively strike against the
government and to keep the government from creating any kind

(07:53):
of censorship program, they would create their own in house
program that was the Mix Code Authority UH. And basically
this was forty one provisions that they wrote up that
purged sex and violent and all other kinds of critical
standards that people were up in arms about out of comics. UM.

(08:14):
For instance, respect for government and parental authority was stressed
a lot, and there was even like grammar police type
stuff going in there. And you weren't allowed to use
certain kinds of slang, colloquialisms, um. And you could only
receive this seal of approval on the front of your
comic if it passed this group this UH. Basically, what

(08:36):
they did is all of the companies paid into this
Comics Code Authority to keep it running as an operation,
and it had I don't know what the the manager
of the Comics Code Authority, or we can call it
the CIA, I guess for the rest of the Yeah, yeah, sorry,
the c c A. Uh, but he was sort of

(08:56):
a czar of comics basically, and he had an office
of of you know, mostly admins who read all the
comics that these publishers were gonna put out a month
or two before they happened, decided whether or not they
were morally objectionable, objectionable or not, and then uh subsequently

(09:16):
signed off on them or sent them back to the
publisher and said you need to take this out or
you need to fix this before we'll put the seal
on it. No smoking, no heroin. Well, although drug use
was probably a big red flag. I'm sure at that
point smoking cigarettes was fine. Uh yes, I think smoking
cigarettes was fine, but you're right, narcotics was a big deal.

(09:39):
And uh, we'll talk about it again a little bit later,
but it was narcotics used in comic books was actually
the turning point in nineteen one that caused the c
c A to change the code. Huh. So okay, I
gotta tell you, Christian right now, it sounds like a
dream job to work with this czar and just read comics.

(10:04):
I don't know necessarily that it would have been, because
that the people who were reading them were largely uh,
middle aged women who the comics weren't designed for and
who were um how do I put this Like, they
had a very administrative role, and they treated it very seriously,
and there were struggles between them and the publishers. But

(10:27):
for the most part, um, they had a sort of
matronly role. They took on a mother like role looking
at these comics and deciding whether or not they deemed
that it would be appropriate for their children. Moral authorities. Yeah, exactly.
And so these these women and the czar who they
worked for. Uh, that guy's role changed over time, and

(10:48):
there were multiple people who held the position. Uh. They
you know, by and large were making the decisions of
how comic books would enter the market. Uh. If they
didn't have the seal, they couldn't be carried by major distributors.
Therefore you wouldn't be able to buy them, for instance,
like on a spinner rack and a grocery store or
convenience store. I don't know about you, but I first
started buying comics at my local Delhi when I was

(11:10):
a little kid. Um, and this was back when the
code was being enforced. Uh So, yeah, yeah, they were.
They were the gatekeepers who decided what we could and
could not read, which is interesting because the there there's
inherent misogyny in comics already, and it's kind of strange
that at that time the people in charge of giving

(11:31):
the final call were themselves women and probably probably saw
a lot of condescending portrayals of women that weren't objectionable
under the code. Yeah, And what's really interesting about that
is that it starts because of their role and how
women were portrayed in comics, especially from the fifties until

(11:52):
let's say, like the late eighties. Uh, there were really
two different images of women that you saw. There were
the femme fatale as that were all familiar with that.
These were the women who were portrayed as being sexier
using their charms or or or were drawn in a
way that maybe wasn't anatomically correct, which is common in

(12:13):
comic books for sure. Uh. And as long as those
women were treated as ultimately villainous is then the Comics
Code authority was okay with that. But the rest of
the time, women were largely portrayed as being you know, naive,
nice girl friends, the kind of girl that you'd want
your son to bring home and marry. Uh And so

(12:35):
that's where we get like a lot of the superhero
girl friends of the of the sixties, right like uh,
Mary Jane Gwent, Stacy, Karen Page, We we've all been
watching Daredevil lately, Page, who else? Lewis Lane, although Lois
had been around long before that, but certainly started to

(12:56):
fit that role more in the during that period of time.
So we se what we're seeing here in a lot
of ways is uh Art as a reflection of society
and social efforts to idealize this reflection um if we could,
if I could be a bit pretentious about it, Yeah,
I mean I think that that's definitely a valid point,

(13:17):
ben uh And there are such interesting things that were
written into the original nine code that were prevented from
being published in comics that when you think back on
it and you realize how it was influencing our culture,
sort of influencing what the limits were of what we
could think, you know, or what what we were what

(13:38):
we considered to be sort of a moral authority. I mean, like,
for instance, here's just one line Policeman judges, government officials,
and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a
way as to create disrespect for established authority. So that
is like an immediate moral line in the sand about

(14:00):
following authority. No crooked cops, no bad senators, nothing like that. Absolutely,
and I think in some ways that extends to ideology
as well, right, like no great communist. Oh yeah, that
was a huge no note, especially in the fifties when
a lot of superhero comics, especially, we're using communists as

(14:22):
their villains. You know, in fact, like a um, those
who are familiar with Captain America and his villain the
Red Skull with the Red Skull started off as a Nazi.
Actually the Red Skull started off as a as a
sleazy businessman. Then he became a Nazi. Then the fifties
he became a communist. Somehow. His his ideology is just
shifted to whatever it was that we as a as

(14:45):
a nation didn't like. There's one thing an evil businessman
will love, it's communism, right, yeah, exactly, he had he
if anything else, you know, he had a variety of
thoughts about other world should operate. Yeah, he is a
man of many opinions, so so what else like this code,

(15:05):
which which you showed me, and which is also available
online for anyone interested. Uh this, at least this first
iteration of this code had a lot of pretty specific
stuff about what could be portrayed. Yeah, it did, and
it's long, so you know, I won't go through all
of it here, but I did highlight some of my
favorite bits, and um, if you do want to read
the code, all three instances of it are replicated in

(15:29):
full on the comic book Legal Defense Funds site. Highly
recommend checking that out. And there's also a great summary
piece on there by a woman named Amy Kissed Neiberg.
I believe it's how you pronounce her name, and she
has actually written the definitive book on this, on the
history of the code. It's called Seal of Authority. So
if you really want to dive deep into this topic

(15:51):
and learn about all the you know, behind the scenes
secrets of the comics industry, that's a great place to start. Fantastic,
But so here's here's some of my favor writs. Okay,
you weren't allowed to use the word crime or the
word horror on the cover of a comic book. Those
words were not allowed to be written no true crime,

(16:11):
no true horror, Nope, nothing like that. Um, and it
wasn't allowed to especially up here alone on the cover.
Here's another one that's kind of interesting, specifically dealing with
horror comics scenes dealing with or instruments associated with the
Walking Dead. Ironic that that's the terminology they used. The
Walking Dead. Torture, vampires and vampireism, ghoules, cannibalism, and were

(16:38):
wolf is um are prohibited, not like cantherpy Nope, they
didn't really have their terminology down were wolf is um
right right away. I mean that's borderline racist against lican throps.
I think it's a very different time, but yeah, so,
I mean there's very clearly like a line being drawn
of like these kind of comics are acceptable, these kinds aren't.

(16:59):
And by and large the ones that weren't were crime
and horror comics, and those were the ones that were
published mainly by EC Comics, but also by you know,
a number of other smaller publishers at the time, and
the code pretty much got rid of them. Well, um,
here's some other interesting stuff. They weren't allowed to treat
divorce humorously or represent it as being desirable. WHOA, Yeah,

(17:24):
that's an interesting one. Really kind of throws you back.
You know, it makes me, it makes me wonder if
somebody was like, had a bad relationship, maybe maybe they did. Yeah,
And then there's this one respect for parents, the moral
Code and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. Respect for
parents Moral Code. So basically all child characters had to

(17:47):
be portrayed as having respect for their parents. If they didn't,
book didn't make it onto the stands. Yeah, and it's
strange to when we think about this moral backlash that occurs.
You were telling me that a lot of this originated,
a lot of the public outcry or uproar originated because
of a trial they got nationwide attention, um, and that

(18:09):
there were some uh fairly like, what's the best way
to say it, crucial moments where you know, there's a
guy holding up the magazine or holding up the comic.
Oh yeah, sorry, when you use the term trial, I
got confused for a second. Yes, that's the that that
was the committee. That was the subcommittee that led to
the code being created. Yeah, it was led by a

(18:31):
guy named St. S. Kifaver Um. I've got notes on
it for later on. I can we review the rest
of the but there is um, yeah, that is basically
what it led to, although there were some minor hiccups
before that too that caused uh, basically the public to
be concerned about comics in general, whether it was for
religious reasons or literary reasons or even um, you know,

(18:55):
psychiatric reasons, which Dr Frederick Wortham brought in to the table. Yes.
So okay, So well that's kind of a teaser, I
guess then for later on the show. But what what
iterations has the code gone through? Okay? So we just
talked about the nineteen fifty four version. Then there are
two others after that that were basically revisions of the code.

(19:19):
The first of these came about in nineteen seventy one.
And here's how it came about. Have you ever heard
of a guy named stan Lee before? Uh, the name
rings a distant bell. So he wrote a little comic
called spider Man. And actually, uh, listeners, Ben already knows this.

(19:39):
But I I went through airport security with Stanley couple
of days ago, which was really interesting. I got to
watch t. S A pat him down. Uh. But anyways,
so in nineteen seventy one, Stanley wanted to do a
comic book and spider Man about drug abuse. And it
was going to be about, you know, a character who
was having trouble with narcotics and Spider Man was going

(20:02):
to help them out. It was basically supposed to be
kind of a cautionary tale type thing. It wasn't glorifying
drug no, not at all. Uh and uh. The idea
was that Marvel asked permission of the Comics Authority people
to publish this special issue. They said, can we please
for this, you know, this one instance work around the code.
We know it says that we can't you know, portray

(20:24):
drug use, but we're trying to portray it badly as
a sort of you know, public service announcement, right yeah. Um.
And they did not get permission. The Comics Code Authority said, no,
absolutely not, We're not going to do this. So Marvel
went ahead and published it without the permission of the
Comics Code Authority, got out on the news stands. Actually

(20:46):
had support from the US government to put it out
there that the the U. S Government wanted Spider Man
to be this sort of um moral figure that would
help you know, children learn that drugs were bad. Right.
That makes sense and uh. As a result, it was
hugely popular. It's a classic issue of Spider Man, and
a lot of people you know, look back on and

(21:08):
the this was. This caused the publishers and the c
c A to say, Okay, maybe we need to relax
these restrictions a little bit. Maybe we're being a little
too strict here, and maybe things have changed in the
last you know, almost twenty years. Um. So there were
a lot of shifts. Um. So for instance, like they
still prohibited the use of horror or terror on the cover,

(21:28):
but they were a little bit more liberal in terms
of how sex was reflected in society. Um. Obviously drug
use based on the Spider Man thing. Um, there's some
really interesting stuff that changes with regards to remember we
were talking about werewolf is Um, yes, okay, so this
is they changed that line, uh so that that stuff

(21:51):
shall be permitted to be used when handled in the
classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula and other high haliber
literary works whose works are read in school or around
the world. So as long as you know, um, your
monster had some literary grounding in it, it could be

(22:15):
portrayed in comics. But werewolf is Um, I don't know.
Was there a classic literature werewolf. I mean not from
that time. There's ancient literally, there are ancient texts which
depict the power different near human or near god, things
change in shape. It's if anything, it's it's an older
tradition than vampires. I would probably see that as being

(22:38):
like pagan though yeah, it might be not be Western enough.
What we really need is it's just like the closest
thing is like maybe Dr Jacklin, Mr. Hyde is sort
of werewolf. Ee, yeah, that's similar. But what we really
need is something that's like a um, a general werewolf
or a soldier, a soldier being a werewolf fighting whomever

(22:59):
the threat was at the time, the British Communist. I
think we got a pitch in our hands. He Actually
one of the show that I was at this weekend,
I saw Stanley at somebody was trying to sell a
comic book called uh Nam Wolf, which was about where
wolf and I would read that. I would totally read that.
I think I would too. So so, I mean, we

(23:19):
have pretty predictable taste in that regard. But so they're
allowing now, um, they're they're learning that these broad brush
strokes that had originally been used. Are not going to
be going to be effective over time, right, Yeah, exactly.
And but at the same time, a lot of the
things that we were talking about earlier, you know that
I specifically cited, are still in there. This stuff about

(23:40):
government officials being respected and good always triumphing over evil,
and specifically the word crime being a bad thing. All
situations within the family unit should have as their ultimate
goal the protection of the child and the lifestyle of
the family. That was another one that they That was
the line they added in for seventy one version, which is,

(24:02):
you know, similar to what we were talking about earlier
in terms of children having respect for authority, but it's
a very very strict idea of what family means. UM.
Divorce was still a problem. Uh. Drugs had a like
based because of the whole Spider Man thing. Drugs had
this whole set of sub bullets basically of like, Okay,

(24:25):
here's what you can and can't do. Uh you know
that would that would make it work or not? Um.
There were also restrictions for advertising matter like, for instance, UM,
you weren't allowed to have ads that had realistic gun
facts similes, So like if you wanted to sell a
water gun, it had to look like a water gun.
It couldn't look like a real gun. Um. Or even

(24:48):
advertising for fireworks. They didn't allow that at the time,
which is strange because they led a lot of weird
advertisements into comics, especially around that around that time, like
just leading up to the seventies and during the seventies.
You know, listeners, if you re comics back then, you'll
probably remember that there would be these two page splash
ads with a bunch of tiny, tiny ads advertising just

(25:13):
ridiculous stuff. Build your own submarine. There were all kinds
of weird things. Yeah, sea monkeys like um. The one
thing that was really popular in the sixties was like
physical exercise programs to like make you turn you into
a strong man, like a kind of Charles Atlas type
weightlifting body type guy. Um. There were like martial arts lessons. Yeah,

(25:37):
I was Did you ever order anything from uh? I
never did. I never did. I ordered comics. I never
heard like any of the that stuff. And at our
at our age Wrench we probably those those kind of
ads had their heyday before we came on the scene. Yeah,
they were starting to fade away, I'd say probably by

(25:58):
the end of the eighties, I started reading comics, I'd say,
like eighty three, eighty two. Um, so yeah, maybe by
the time I actually had pocket money to spend on
stuff like that, they weren't really around anymore. There slowly
became video games. Yeah. Right. There is one big aspect
so far that is missing from the Comic Code as

(26:22):
know it, and that his depiction of race. Yeah. So
that's actually a really interesting factor in the nine revision
addresses that specifically. Essentially, they again they came to a
point in time in which d C Comics had decided
that they were going to eliminate the seal from their book.
And uh, they were arguing with the Comics Code Authority

(26:45):
about you know, what should or should not be reflected
in the in the code around this period of time,
and as a result, they drafted up a document that
basically revised the entire code. Uh. And there was a
task force that was put together of you know, different
different publishers, people from various publishers at the time eighty nine.
Of course it would have included Marvel in d C. Probably,

(27:09):
It's hard to say what other comics were including what
other comics companies were included at the time Archie, because
a lot of them were being absorbed into d C
throughout the eighties, you know, Charlton Fawcett. I think Fawcett
was even earlier than that. But anyway, what ended up
happening was they did have this new nine version of

(27:31):
the Code was very specific about how you could portray national, social, political, cultural,
ethnic and racial groups, including religious institutions. So there was
a lot of um sensitivity to how different groups were
being portrayed, to the point that there is actually a

(27:52):
line in the eighty nine Code if for dramatic purposes
it is necessary to portray such a group of individuals
in a negative manner, the name of the group and
its individual members will be fictitious, and its activities will
be clearly identifiable within the routine activities of any real group,

(28:12):
or rather won't be okay, so they can't even have
a coincidental commonality. Yeah. So, like a really interesting example
of this, UH was in Captain America in the eighties.
I've I've done a lot of research in Captain America, UH,
and UH in Captain America in the eighties, he would
often come up against these examples of societal conflicts that

(28:36):
were happening at the time. So, uh so the National
Organization for Women was very you know, it was growing
at the time. And to address that, Captain America came
up against a group of super villain feminists that were
called the Feminison's Kristen and Caroline over at stuff mob
never told You Gonna Love You. Yeah, I really want

(28:58):
to show them those issues because they're fascinating. I think, like,
if I remember correctly, the Femisons even like try to
start their own society on a cruise ship. They like,
uh like commondeer a cruise ship and take it around
the world as their own like floating country. Do they
have superpowers? Yeah, because some of them do. But I
think they were like, uh, you know, there were the
Femisons and then they were like the women that they

(29:20):
were liberating from various in the world. Um so, you know,
he couldn't address now, but he addressed the Femisons, and
it was you know, obviously incredibly conservative take on feminism
in the eighties. And then you know when you had
Tipper Gore and the Parent Music Resource Center, you know,
getting into the whole heavy metal thing you're talking about earlier.

(29:43):
To address that he came up against a group called
the Watchdogs, and it was like this fictional group of
terrorists who wanted to advocate for advocate for censorship. Uh.
And they were so into censorship that they would like
blow people up if they didn't have their way. So yeah,
and this it's interesting because while Captain America is not

(30:06):
the by far not the only um story or fiction
work of fiction to deal with these real life stand ins, uh,
it's one that a lot of people see, and some
of it is so on the nose, you know. Yeah.
One of my favorite Captain America stories, and this is
actually from the early seventies, is, uh Captain America becomes

(30:26):
disillusioned with the American government because this is under writer
Steve Engelhardt, who wrote some of the best Captain America
stories of all time. Uh, and he becomes disillusioned with
the American government when he learns that the President of
the United States is actually in charge of a conspiracy
organization called like the Secret Empire. And this Secret Empire
is basically like Hydra from the movies, right, or or

(30:49):
like the Illuminati, like controlling everything behind the scenes. And
when Captain America finally confronts him. On the last page
of this comic, Captain America runs into the Oval Office
confront it's the President, and the President blows his brains
out commits suicide after admitting that he's the leader of
this evil organization. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating that they could

(31:10):
get away with that. And they didn't show Richard Nixon's face,
but it was pretty obvious it was supposed to be
Richard Nixon did like the draw of the over the
shoulders shot they were using like silhouette or something. Yeah. Yeah,
And it's it's funny you bring up Secret Empire because
I remember reading that and recently with the with the
rise of Marvel movies, uh own Empire, I've been thinking

(31:32):
a lot about the faceless semi corporate conspiracy villains or
antagonists because there's so many. There's Leviathan, Hydra, Secret Empire, um,
and they're like five more that I'm not even thinking about.
There are a lot, especially in Marvel uh And and
a big reason for that actually is that, you know,

(31:53):
the writers at the time were critiquing their employers. Uh.
It was the the only way that they had to
sort of creatively right. They were writing about political issues
at the time. Of course there was a lot of
distrust for the American government during presidency, but there was
also issues that they had with their corporate masters. Yeah,

(32:14):
and so they would depict them in these kind of
you know overlord rock Song Corporation. That was always whenever
there was a problems with corporations or corporate integrity, especially
the oil industry. Yeah, they would always bring in this
corporation called Rock Song Corporation, and they they they were

(32:35):
responsible for everything, right, and they make I think they
make Uy make appearance in Daredevil. I feel like either
in Daredevil or Captain America there was a little easter
egg with Rocks on. And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised
if they show up later on in them in the
Marvel like Phase three movies or whatever we're running up
on now. Yeah, somewhere in Wakonda. So yeah, and there's

(32:59):
advanced idea mechanics Zodiac. Also, you know, one of my
favorites of course, the Serpent Society. Oh, the Serpent Society
is the best secret society of people who dress up
like different kinds of snakes and they all like have
code names based on the kind of snake that they dressed. Like, yeah,
and they're a that's loosely related to that snake. Yeah, right,

(33:22):
Like there's a like a sidewinder, but he's just like,
you know, a guy with a kate that allows him
to teleport or something. But I don't know, I don't
think sidewinders can teleport in real life. No, And not
all of them had I know, such as tangent, but
not all of them actually had powers, which is so
weird to me. There was one guy I can't remember
who his name was. He just threw like these snake

(33:44):
shaped silhouette. There weren't even boomerangs. I totally remember what
you're talking He just threw. But but anyway, so to
to get back to that, um, I guess what we're
saying is, although ostensibly a lot of this would just
be the ame um bang up the bad guy kind
of comic book, there's a deeper story that was being told,

(34:06):
especially in Captain America. It's a story about the society
in which we live. Yeah, I would argue that, and
you know, I've argued that in academic articles that I
wrote when I was in school. But but also that
you know, just that the ideology of the time was
reflected in that medium, especially because of this code that

(34:27):
the code restricted in such a way what you could
portray so that you could get broader distribution. Uh in
a similar way, I guess to the m p a
A with movies. Um. But what's interesting is as the
distribution model changes, the code becomes less relevant. So, UM,
those of you who are familiar with comic book stores,

(34:48):
their rise was really the late seventies early eighties, and
they came out of a network of head shops actually
from the from the sixties. So a lot of those
store owners kind of conver worded over to comic bookstores
or like a mixture of the two. Uh. And this
broad network across the United States of direct distribution comic

(35:11):
book stores or what people call their local comic bookstore,
even lcs if you're that you're that into comics line,
uh r LCS for instance, or my LCS is criminal
records here in Atlanta, you know, or or I think
there's also Oxford. You know, there's there's Tighten, there are
a few around yeah, uh and uh. So the idea

(35:34):
is that these direct distribution platforms didn't have to have
the seal on them, So you started seeing a few
comics here and their experiment with doing gritty, more realistic
issues that they didn't have the code on, and then
you had the rise of sort of like what most
people refer to as the black and white independent comics
of the eighties Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or um uh Concrete,

(36:00):
Um Love and Rockets, books like that that were very
different from the superhero genre. Uh well, I mean Teenagent
Ninja Turtles was a parody and a sort of homage
to superheroes, but but ultimately it was a lot more
violent and gritty than what we see now in the
cartoons and movies of that property. Those started to get

(36:20):
distributed and they were just bypassing the code entirely. Uh,
they didn't even bother with it. So by the time
you get to eighty nine and they make this final
change to the code, it's really on. It's it's a deathbed.
It's last like because because there's something not quite ethical
about the formation of the code anyway, which we're going

(36:42):
to get too shortly. Yeah, I think it's important that
we just kind of cover what it is, how it
worked first, and then we can get back to the
sort of collusion aspect, right, right, So this the thing
here is that this code, as as you're saying, is
becoming less and less relevant. The only reason it worked,
the only howur it really had, uh hinged upon relatively

(37:04):
monopolistic distribution practices. Absolutely, yeah, and in fact, uh that's true.
But in comparison to the way that comic books are
distributed in print now, it was far less monopolistic. So
the direct market had some very interesting stuff go on
with it in the late nineties. I'm not gonna get

(37:25):
into it here. It's probably a whole different podcast, but uh,
it has basically one major distributor for all of the
stores in the United States, and now they decide whether
your book makes it into a store or doesn't. And
it's not based on any kind of moral authority. It's
more on sort of, you know, will this sell or not?

(37:45):
Uh we think it will say exactly, it's their opinion. Hunt.
So so that kind of that practice still exists, but
the comic code itself no longer exists, right, right, So
in two thou was in one Marvel uh had been
going through a huge corporate shake up, They had bankruptcy.

(38:07):
They finally kind of we're starting to get their business
back in order, and they dropped the code in two
thousand and one. They said, we're going to use our
own in house rating system now. So like if you
look at the back of Marvel Comics on the INDI SHA,
there's like a little like M or I don't know
what they're They might use an A I think for
adult or something like that, or T for teenager or something,

(38:29):
I don't know what they all these different companies have
their own rating systems now, so it's kind of oblique.
But um, yeah, after fifty six years of dominating comics,
when Marvel backed out, that was basically the end. A
lot of the independent publishers stopped using it. And then yeah,
like I said earlier, in two eleven, it was January
eleven when DC Comics was like, yet, we're done with

(38:50):
it too, were use our own in house rating system.
Then Archie Student followed after and that was the last gas. Yeah,
and without any of those publishers around to pay for
or you know, these gatekeepers to keep reviewing comics anymore,
the Comics Code Authority closed its doors. And what was
my question is, was at the same hundred something ladies
reading the comics fort at that I don't know. I

(39:12):
think that would be a fascinating story to kind of,
you know, interview one of the employees who had been
there for a really long time, or if there was
a lot of turnover. I'm not sure. So. One thing
that I noticed early on when we were initially talking
about this, the whole Comics Code, the rise and fall
of this strange moral authority, was that this group, when

(39:35):
it was formed in the fifties, UH, did something that
so many other private industries did, which you can trace
back to Burns and propaganda. Uh. They picked a name
that sounded like it was a government thing. Oh yeah, yeah.
For I mean, I don't know about you, but when

(39:55):
I was a kid growing up, I always assumed the
Comics Code Authority was a governmental unit. Yeah. It wasn't
until I was an adult and started researching this stuff
that I realized that it had, you know, the government
had nothing to do with it except for the legislative hearings. Yeah,
and it happens so often. This. This is an interesting
thing because these sorts of name tricks were just very

(40:15):
widespread in the fifties. But lest we think that day
and age of disingenuous marketing is over, all you have
to do is look up some various trade associations, all
of which have some very Uncle samish names, and none
of which our government related. Yeah. Yeah, that's true, and
that's an interesting I never thought about that aspect. I

(40:37):
think that's an interesting thing about coming on this podcast
because you and Matt have such expertise at looking all
these various kind of machinations over the years, your two
kind man. Uh, you know, honestly, we we do, we
do try, but we've got uh got a great team
of listeners who lets us know when we get stuff wrong. Yeah. Cool. Well,
I hope that the listeners respond to this episode two

(40:57):
because I'd love to hear if you know, there's ways
little tidbit stories out there that add to this unique
kind of untold story of comics. So, so, okay, this
came about like we we've got what it is, and
we know, uh, we know how it changed and how
it rose and it fell. But what made these people

(41:20):
so concerned, these teachers, these parents? Yeah? Sure. So it
started off as a thing in probably like the late forties,
where there were groups of librarians and teachers and conservative
religious groups that were accusing comics of being inappropriate specifically
for juveniles. Uh. And it wasn't because of their effects

(41:44):
on children. They didn't come to that argument until later.
What their problem was with it was that they thought
that comics had a low literary quality, that they were
too lowbrow for children, and that by reading these it
was basically the equivalent of like junk food. It was
like read in junk food, and they didn't want their
kids reading it, so they considered it to be uh, immoral,

(42:05):
especially because of this, you know, scantily clad women that
you would find in jungle books, or the glorification of
villains in in crime comics or horror comics. Um. And
there was this study in nineteen forty nine that concluded
that children who read superhero comics in particular did so
to deal with self esteem issues. Now, this study was

(42:28):
by today's standards, I think we would we would judge
it as not being very empirical. Uh, But that basically
the idea was that kids who read comics had self
esteem problems because they were looked up to these hero
figures and looked to them for a sense of security. Yeah.
And uh, you know, it was interpreted as being you know,

(42:49):
an unwanted behavior. In your children. Uh. What ended up
happening after that was that the publishers adopted their own
code in this is or the code that we've been
talking about for the episode so far. They had this code.
It lasted like maybe a year, and it just failed completely.
The publishers didn't take it seriously. Uh. And again ironically,

(43:13):
what was then Marvel Comics, Timely Comics just said, you
know what, We're going to just use our own in
house code. Thanks, but no thanks, we don't need to
pay into this thing. Uh. But what shifted the tide
was Dr Frederick Wortham. Ah, the psychologist you mentioned earlier, right,
So Dr Frederick Wortham who was a New York City psychiatrist,
and his campaign was basically that comics shouldn't be sold

(43:36):
to children. His argument was that children imitated the actions
of comic book characters and that the content within them
desensitize these children to violence. And he built up a
following over this idea. Um. He started off with articles
and presentations and conference hearings, and ultimately he wrote a
book that you can still get today. It's this fascinating

(43:58):
read called Seduction of the Innocent. I like the title, Yeah,
it sounds very saucy. Uh, it's it's it's nowhere near
as interesting as fifty Shades of Gray, but probably a
more apt title. Uh. Anyways, So Wortham's you know, broad
argument was essentially that the kids that were reading these
comics were enamored with gangsters that were in them, or

(44:19):
monsters or murderers. It would subsequently use these comics as
a like how to manual to perform these actions themselves.
And he saw this as sort of leading up to
the crime problems that inner cities were facing all across America,
especially you know, in New York City where he lived.
So what he advocated for was legislation by the government

(44:41):
on comic books, regulating comic books. And what this led
to was the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. This is
the big hearing, you know, what you refer to as
a trial earlier um that the Senate staged in New
York City, And it happened on April one and twenty
two and then again on June four in nineteen fifty four.

(45:01):
And what they did was they called up a bunch
of different witnesses to testify about comics. They had comic
book publishers, comic book creators, comic book readers, and Frederick Wortham.
They're kind of expert witness, right. And just to be clear,
the reason I referred to it as the trials because
earlier we said that comics were on trial. Yeah, I
mean that's that's essentially what was going on here. Yeah, definitely.

(45:25):
And what was really fascinating about the whole thing is
that it led to a really interesting conversation between the
committee and a guy named William Gaines, who is the
publisher of EAC Comics, who we've been talking about earlier. Yes,
now he in in in the mind of the committee
and in the mind of Wortham, is sort of he's

(45:47):
the super villain. Yeah, yeah, he is in fact, uh
a little plug for myself here. I wrote a little
comic book a couple of years ago called Think of
the Children, in which it is about this period of
time and these the villain in the store or he
is William Gaines, and he is an evil like a
sorcerer who's uh, bewitching the minds of children and turning

(46:08):
them into little monsters that attack the members of the subcommittee.
Oh that's great, that's fun. It's a fun story. Anyway,
what actually happened was William Gaines, UH when he came
up to testify UH Senator sts Keifaber, who was this
like very publicity minded politician at the time. He was

(46:29):
from Tennessee. He really wanted to be president, and he
was kind of famous for going after organized crime at
this point, so he wanted to use this as sort
of his new platform for catapulting himself to the next
level in political stardom. So he goes after Gains in
the middle of his hearing and he holds up a
cover to one of the ECS books. I don't I

(46:49):
don't think it was a Tales from the Crypt. It
might have been a crime Suspense Stories issue. I'm not
sure which one, but it's it's famous cover now of
a person holding a severed head of a woman with
a bloody axe next to it. And he asked William Gaines,
do you think this is in good taste? And Gaines
just kind of stammered and he said, well, uh, I

(47:11):
think it's in good taste for for horror comic and
then he just, you know, I just have this stream
of excuses and they were really, you know, rhetorically lame
and it made him look really bad. It made comics
look really bad. It was on the front page of
all the papers the next day, and that was essentially
the killing blow to horror comics, which is a shame

(47:35):
because I don't know about any other horror comic fan.
But now, just for some context, now people go out
of their way to collect and find these uh well,
you know, they're comic books, so they're kind of fragile
after a certain amount of time, right, so people are
going back in a way, this ruling ultimately heightens the value,

(48:02):
especially because so many of the other horror comics publishers
at the time went out of business, and you know,
they didn't think that those comics we're gonna be worth
anything fifty years down the road, so they that you know,
we're pulping these books. Basically, um, yeah, it's it's a
really fascinating, you know, economical model when you think about,
you know, what came out of this, especially in terms

(48:23):
of how it changed the comics industry too, and what
was being published afterward. So basically, this hearing goes on,
and I do want to say one thing about Frederick
Wortham before we go too far. He's often vilified by
comics fans like myself as being this big, bad guy
who said all these terrible things about comics that weren't true. However,

(48:45):
I will say that I think there's a bit of
a debate here if you really look closely at Wortham's work,
he had good intentions. Um, he was largely concerned. He
had he had moved to the United States from Germany
after World War Two, he had seen horrible atrocities, and
he was concerned about inner city kids in New York

(49:06):
City and the violence that was going on in his community.
And by and large he blamed comics for this. And
that's the problem here, is that, you know, he had
this very single minded solution to to what he thought
was society's greatest problem, and he blamed violence and racism
and even fascism on comics. And he was homophobic, and

(49:28):
he thought that comic books were, in their own way,
advocating for homosexuality. In fact, there's kind of like infamous
quote of him talking about Batman and Robin as being
a sort of you know, he was one of the
first people to insinuate that they had a homosexual relationship.
Certainly not the last, No, certainly not the last. But

(49:49):
it's interesting you say this. So what we're seeing here
is that his intentions are good at base. Yeah, he
was just wrong basically. Yeah. I mean I think he
meant well. I think he genuinely just wanted society to
be better and safer, but his methodology was was really

(50:13):
pretty awful. So this led to the self regulation that
began in October of nineteen fifty four, a couple of
months after these hearings, where publishers all got together and
adopted this regulatory code and you know, through their their
fees in every month, so that the the team over
at the Comics Code Authority would you know, uh censor
their books. How did Gaines feel about it? Well, this

(50:36):
is the interesting part is that Gains was not into
it at all. In fact, he initially refused to join
the group at all. He wasn't going to submit his
comics for review UM. But because wholesalers refused to take
any comics that weren't didn't have that little stamp of
approval on them, he eventually had to join UM. But
this was short lived because uh, basically Gains just kept

(50:59):
by heads with them. Uh. There was a point where
there's a there's this infamous story I want to say,
Al Williamson was the illustrator of it in an EC
comic in which there was an African American astronaut who
was um sweating. Uh. He was he was like in
a spaceship and I think he was scared of something
he was seeing off panel, so he's sweating to condicate

(51:21):
that his fear. Uh. This was rejected by the Code
because they thought that it was ridiculing race. Uh. And
so there was some interesting issues there. Whim Games would
argue back and forth with them. Eventually this story would
see publication. But ultimately, you know, Gains was the first
and kind of biggest casualty of the Code. He folded

(51:46):
the EC Comics brand, all those horror comics, you know,
we're taken off the shelves and uh. He ultimately kind
of had the last laugh though, because he left comics
and started Mad Magazine and Mad mag Maazine because it
was a magazine and not a comic book, couldn't be
regulated by the Code, and therefore he could get away

(52:06):
with whatever he wanted to in there. And it was
a huge hit. Yeah, and you gotta wonder what would
have happened if he went. If he stayed with horror
instead of going to humor, yeah, I think it would
have been really interesting, you know, I mean it would
have changed the face of comics. Comics, Like I was
saying earlier, the direction of comics changed because of this code.
Horror was one of the most popular genres at the time.

(52:28):
Crime was one of the most popular genres at the time.
Without those things, we see the rise of the superhero,
and the superhero ends up meeting a lot of the
regulatory needs of the code, you know, holding up American
ideals and moral standards and not glorifying crime or violence. Well,

(52:48):
that can be argued, right, right, A hitler punch is fine, yeah, right, Like,
well that's pre code. But yeah, like well, you know,
bring him back, Red skullum exactly on it, right, Yeah,
punching the Red Skull over and over and over. Right.
I wonder who has the dubious title of most punched
super villain. That would be a fascinating It would be

(53:11):
a good thing to find out. Might be the Red Skull.
And you know, he gets punched a lot for someone
who's supposed to be so smart, that guy gets clocked
on a regular basis and he's been around for over
seventy years, so the numbers might just be on his side.
So here's here's where we find a little bit of
a conspiracy of foot. This is not a conspiracy theory

(53:34):
because this actually happened. You know, the creators of the
comic code panicked by these hearings. UM could could easily
you know, smell the coffee on the wind, I guess
to butcher a phrase. And uh so they actually entered
into this as a sort of conspiracy or collusion, right, Yeah,
I mean I think that's fair to say, and I

(53:55):
think most you know, comics historians would agree that they
got together. They saw that this was an oppertun tunity
for their interests to push out their strongest competitor so
that their companies could survive. And yeah, their book lines
changed too. I mean, like, let's go back to that
Captain America example for a second. Captain America was canceled
between the late forties and the um almost all of

(54:17):
the fifties. Uh, it wasn't until the early sixties. I
think that Marvel brought him back as a character with
Stanley working on it with Jack Kirby. Um. Not that
Stanley created it. I'd like to qualify that Stanley did
not create Captain America. He was created by Joe Simon
and Jack Kirby. If anything, he uh revived Captain America. Sure, yeah,

(54:40):
he was the one who brought him out of the ice. Yeah,
there we go. That's fair. But this isn't the only
comic book related conspiracy. We we had talked and you
had a few others as well. Right, there's a couple
of interesting instances with comics over the years, a lot
of comics history. It's pretty shady, and a writer that

(55:01):
I admire, who I won't name here, refers to comics
as being a pirate industry. Uh, and that there's you know,
there's a lot of uh high jinks and backstabbing going
on behind the scenes. So yeah, there's a couple instances
that let's let's talk about here. So, um, in the sixties,
what was then what became DC Comics then it was

(55:22):
called National Periodicals was in charge of distribution for all
of comic books. Uh sorry, I said sixties. This is
the late fifties. And what this meant was that they
could decide how many comics of a certain type other
publishers could distribute, So being that they were really popular
at the time with the Silver age versions of our

(55:43):
superheroes we know now like a Flash or green Lantern
stuff like that, maybe Martian Manhunter, I'm not sure. Uh.
They they decided, well, uh, you know, Marvel, you can
only publish six issues a month. You're allowed to put
out anything more than that. Uh and uh So Marvel's
answer to this was the Fantastic Four. Um, they came

(56:07):
up with their own superhero team, but they were like,
we're going to do it differently, you know, We're we're
gonna inject that. This was the Stanley inject that sense
of quote unquote realism into superheroes, right and uh and
that led to the Fantastic Four, which led to Spider
Man and the whole Marvel renaissance in the sixties. So yeah,

(56:28):
there seems to be such a such a disturbing comparison
to the recording industry when we talk about these shady
or questionable business practices. Um, but it doesn't just stop
at the distribution. It goes deeper than that, right. Yeah.
So then there's a really interesting story from I believe

(56:48):
it's the seventies in which UM comic book creators were
starting to talk to each other about what their page
rates were to you know, see whether or not they're
being screwed over by their parent corporations or if they
could get better rates. Uh. And what happened was Stanley,
who was editor in chief of Marvel at the time,
and Carmine Infantino, who's the editor in chief at DC

(57:08):
at the time, got together and they drafted an agreement
where they were going to share information on what their
freelancer rates were back and forth so they could keep
the freelancer rates as low as possible and keep those
creators from arguing for higher paid rates. And when Roy Thomas,
who was I'm sorry Stanley was an editor in chief

(57:29):
at the time, he was probably like a president of
the company at the time. Roy Thomas was editor in chief.
When Roy Thomas found out about this, this that was
the end for him. Uh. He actually referred to it.
He resigned for Marvel Comics, and he referred to it
as being unethical, immoral, and quite possibly illegal. Uh. You know,
it sounds like it very well could be. This is

(57:51):
something this kind of collusion is something that has been
reported with other companies too. I think Apple got in
trouble was either Apple or some other tech company got
in trouble in the past few years for doing the
same thing. That sounds about right, Yeah, And if you
want to learn more about stories like that, highly recommend
this book by Sean how called Marvel The Untold Story.

(58:12):
It has got so many great behind the scenes secrets
of how Marvel rose to power and fell and then
rose to power again. And there's there's one very recent
one that we should talk about. It just briefly mentioned. Yeah,
this is interesting. It's a rumor right now. I guess

(58:32):
a year from now we're going to look at back
back at this and laugh, or we're gonna say, oh,
it is correct. But the rumor is, Uh, Marvel doesn't
own the movie rights to some of their own characters
right now, so X Men, Spider Man, UH, Fantastic Four
and a couple of others are owned by Sony and Fox.
And as we record this now in April, there's a

(58:55):
new Fantastic Four movie that's about to come out this summer. Uh,
And rumor has it that the guy in charge over
at Marvel does not want the Fantastic Four to do well.
He wants it to fail and Therefore, they're going to
cancel the Fantastic Four comic book. Uh, They're going to
basically do everything they can to discourage promotion of this movie. Uh. Now,

(59:20):
this is completely a rumor. Yes, the Fantastic Four is
being canceled. I believe its last issue is this month
or next month or something like that. But who knows.
It's comics. You know they'll come back. They could come
back three months from now or something. Who knows. Um.
But the the the theory is that right now that yeah,
Marvel is doing this on purpose because they just want

(59:41):
to squeeze out their movie competition. And I have to
say again, we we do know that there's a rumor,
but it makes sense, and the timing makes sense. The motivation,
if it was there, makes sense. That might be a
little inside baseball for anyone who for some reason doesn't
love comics. But uh, we have touched on some really

(01:00:03):
really huge ideas here, and I think the biggest one
is the concept of censorship, which haunts, uh, which haunts
the United States even today. You know, since Ulysses all
the way up to the modern times, the and I
mean Ulysses the James Joyce book, not the UH not Ulysses,

(01:00:23):
not the mythical hero, not the mythical hero ever since
he came to Jersey. Um. But but we also see
that there's there's a reason for this because we see
that powerful forces, authority figures are actively working um to
shape the minds of readers. Right. Definitely, whether in you know,

(01:00:45):
in this case, at the beginning of the of the
comic situation, it was religious groups or moral groups parents,
but that but it really got legs when the government
took a look at it and then sbsequently the companies
themselves said we can take advantage of this and we
can use it to increase our sales. So now this

(01:01:07):
is one of my favorite parts of the show towards
the end is I want to just ask the big question,
and we don't have to have studies. It is just
your opinion, uh and and mine as well, What if
any influence do you believe fiction has on people's behavior.
This is a very contentious question to ask, especially if

(01:01:30):
you're going to ask an academic setting, because there's a
question of human agency and how much we have agency
beyond the media that we consume. Right, So the idea
that media can make us do something is very deterministic. However,
I uh, you know, in my academic work really investigated

(01:01:52):
this idea that ideology and and uh national culture especially
was informed by or subsequently informed our popular culture. So yeah,
I think it's I think it's something that's worth looking
at um over the years. You see, you know, especially
with the Code as an example, it's perfect example of

(01:02:13):
what restrictions we are allowed to consume in our media,
and then when those restrictions are lifted or how they change.
You know, there's just interesting flux. Is like the whole
um is something that you often hear people from European
countries say that they don't get about television in the US.

(01:02:35):
Is this uh propensity for violence, this glorification of violence
is deeply, deeply troubled relationship with sexuality. If Frederick Wortham
were alive today and he saw television, you'd probably have
a heart attack and die all over again. Yeah, I
mean the stuff that we consume now, which I love,

(01:02:55):
by the way, and I'm a huge fan of violence
and graphic anything if it's used to tell a good story. Uh,
but you know, it's it's very different from what our
moral sort of code allowed fifty sixty years ago, and
I think that we're seeing this evolution still. So listeners,

(01:03:18):
we hope that you enjoy this episode, and we'd like
to hear your stories from your country, from your town
about the ways in which you think the media or
any media is being used to shape behavior or ideology.
And Christian has been a huge pleasure to have you
on the show today. So I have to ask, um,

(01:03:39):
is it okay if I plug that latest Stuff to
Blow your Mind episode? Yeah? Sure, Okay, So you guys, Uh,
Christian worked with our friends over It's Stuff to Blow
Your Mind to do a fantastic episode on Grim Noise,
and uh, when Matt and I heard it, we thought
this would be perfect for our audience too. What do
you guys talk about now? Yeah, Robert and I talked
about the history of magical texts going back to zero

(01:04:04):
BC DC. Uh. Yeah, just the basis for all these
old tomb tomes sorry of magical spells or rituals or
demon summoning or angel knowledge, all kinds of weird stuff
throughout history. And how you know, it's kind of similar
to what we're talking about now. Actually, is that like

(01:04:26):
the written word that was in those books at that
time was strongly considered to be to have us an
effect on the people that read it and were subsequently burned.
And you can find that. You can find that episode. Uh,
let's see, we're we're all over the internet. You can
find that episode on iTunes, Stitcher, your streaming service of choice.

(01:04:47):
And while you are online, if you would like to
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to Know, you can find everyone we've ever done on
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I don't trust social media, we of all people get it,

(01:05:10):
and that is why you can send us an email directly.
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