Tales from the crypt.

In the early 1950s, a respected psychiatrist and well-meaning reformer named Fredric Wertham published a book entitled Seduction of the Innocent and nearly destroyed an indigenous American art form. Wertham alleged that comic books were a major cause of juvenile delinquency, violent crime, social disaffection, and deviant sexually (sound familiar?). Not only did he wax apocalyptic over the lurid horror comics of the time-EC Comics' The Haunt of Fear, Tales from the Crypt, and The Vault of Horror--even the superheroes fell under his ever-critical eye. Wertham accused Wonder Woman of promoting lesbianism (under the very scientific theory that dykes wear skimpy flag costumes and fly about in invisible air, planes) and fearlessly sniffed out the homosexual undertones in the relation, ship between those costumed bachelors, Batman and Robin. The end result of the 1950s comic-book-violence controversy--which ranged from community bonfires to Senate Judiciary Committee hearings--was the creation of the Comics Code, which managed to keep comics from maturing for at least 20 years.

Because the code actually prohibited the use of the words horror and terror in comics' titles, EC publisher William Gaines was forced to shut down his popular horror comics. As a result, EC editors Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein threw all their efforts into the company's one remaining money, maker: Mad magazine.

For the smarter kids of two generations, Mad was a revelation: it was the first to tell us that the toys we were being sold were garbage, our teachers were phonies, our leaders were fools, our religious counselors were hypocrites, and even our parents were lying to us about damn near everything. An entire generation had William Gaines for a godfather; this same generation later went on to give us the sexual revolution, the environmental movement, the peace movement, greater freedom in artistic expression, and a host of other goodies. Coincidence? You be the judge.

William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman both died in 1992 but are fondly remembered by legions of fans. Fredric Wertham is currently on the same internal chain gang as Anthony Comstock --using his bare hands to lay down hot asphalt along the Good Intentions Expressway. (I hope the Crypt-Keeper's there too, with a shotgun and mirrored sunglasses, shrieking, "What we have here, boys and ghouls, is a failure to communicate! Eee-hee-hee-hee!")

Like most predators, censors thrive when the culture can provide lots of weak, disorganized, wiggly little creatures for them to chew up and swallow --and the past 15 years have seen a virtual Cambrian-scale explosion of such organisms. The advent of the printing press helped facilitate the Protestant Reformation; today, for any number of reasons, people have greater access to more forms of expression and entertainment than ever before. I don't think rap music would be half as vital if the Reagan administration hadn't spent years kicking the hell out of the under, class, and it wouldn't be anywhere near as technically complex and sonically challenging as it is without the advent of digital sound technology. Suddenly, kids who would never be able to afford a whole studio could mount assaults of sound with merely a boom box and a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer. In publishing, desktop systems helped such radical efforts as On Our Backs and Z to be born, and thanks to advances in software, nearly anyone can design a magazine that looks as cool as Mondo 2000 or Spy. There's a nifty device for Amiga computers called the Video Toaster that lets video freaks create special effects that rival those of Industrial Light and Magic (for example, the new TV series "Babylon 5" does its effects with a bank of Toasters).

Of course, this good stuff isn't all due to technology. Inspired by the creative independence of the "under, ground" comics of the late 1960s, as well as the desire of many comics workers to gain some control over their work, artists and writers have been starting their own companies, taking care of their own distribution, and throwing off the constraints imposed by the code. The result? Draw $200 out of your bank account, go to your local comics store, and check out the following titles: Cerebus by David Sim; Concrete by Paul Chadwick (a member in good standing, by the way, of the American Humanist Association); a novel called Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons; Omaha the Cat Dancer by Reid Waller and Kate Worley; Sin City and Hard Boiled by Frank Miller; Neat Stuff and Hate by Peter Bagge; Jim by Jim Wood, ring; The Tick by Ben Edlund; and Love and Rockets by the Hernandez brothers. Pick up anything else that looks interesting; there are hundreds of great comics out there.

Comics are as American as the banjo, jazz, and motion pictures. We don't own them, but we invented them, and we should have a parent's protective instincts when they're in danger. Despite the genius evident in the work of Winsor McKay (Little Nemo), Walt Kelly (Pogo), Al Capp (Li'l Abner), George Herrimann (Krazy Kat), and many others, comics have generally been treated as worthless trash to keep the kids quiet. This has made them easy tar, gets for the Werthams of the world--no self-respecting adult wants to defend something everybody "knows" is worthless. Few comic-book stores, companies, or artists can afford to protect them, selves as effectively as a major media conglomerate can. Comics, in short, are easy prey for the Forces of Darkness.

That is why recent crackdowns on comics--mirroring attacks on other entertainment media--are so disturbing. For example: Timothy Parks, 42, is the owner of Comic Book Heaven, a shop in Sarasota, Florida--the same town where Pee Wee Herman was busted for masturbation, in the same state that gave us 2 Live Crew's obscenity trial and Janet Reno's anti-satanism crusade. On April 1, 1992, a group of kids went into Parks' store and tried to look at the plastic-bagged "adults only" comics. Parks, in accordance with state obscenity statutes, took the comics away from the kids and asked them to leave.

One of the kids' parents filed a complaint with the Sarasota County Sheriffs Department, which in turn went into Parks' store and confiscated several of the "adults only" titles. Parks was arrested and spent a month in jail; during the months that followed, the sheriffs office continually revised the original charges (the kids couldn't t deliver a coherent deposition), Parks spent his weekends in jail on additional charges, and his business all but collapsed. By late 1993, Parks was convicted.

In El Cajon, California, the local police have never exactly specified just what laws governing the sale of comic books applied to the Amazing Comix store they raided in 1992. The police department claims it sent a 17-year-old undercover decoy" into the store to buy adult comics; store owners deny ever having sold "obscene" comics to minors.

In Chino Hills, California, a new city ordinance requires that "minor, oriented" businesses (arcades, baseball-card shops, comic-book shops) be licensed by the city. It is widely suspected that this ordinance is aimed at forcing Carlos Tortora's City Comics store out of town. Last December, Tortora's stepson pleaded guilty to selling a signed collector's copy of the comic book Faust to a 17-year-old. Applying for the new license--essentially a license to sell books--Tortora was photographed and fingerprinted. It should be mentioned that Chino is also the home town of Chick Publications, whose "evangelical" horror comics are notorious for their lurid imagery (mainly of hellfire, drug abuse, and satanic cults) and religious hatemongering.

In what could be the most difficult of comic-book battles, the Board of Equalization in the state of California has ruled that comic-book artwork does not qualify as an "original manuscript" Art Speigelman, who won a Pulitzer prize for Maus (a two-volume comic book about the Holocaust), says that the implication here is that "comics are not literature but simply a commodity." Poems, music, novels, even comic-book scripts are not subject to sales taxes, but comic-book artwork is considered to be commercial art and is therefore subject to the sales tax.

California is the birthplace of underground comics. It is also a state desperately looking for revenue and not averse to squeezing the thousands of artists in all media who live in the state and would now be forced to cough up the sales tax. For example, the BOE claims that artist Paul Mavrides--collaborator with Gilbert Shelton on The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, well known for his own political cartoons and paintings and his work for the Church of the SubGenus--owes back taxes for several years' worth of royalties. For Mavrides, like most artists, paying these taxes would require retroactively billing five years' worth of clients for the sales tax. But the BOE means to make an example of Mavrides; it has already placed a hen on his property. Some observers of the situation say that, if the BOE can successfully put the bite on Mavrides and others like him, it will work its way up the media ladder. "The tax collectors need it spelled out sweetly and simply," says Simpsom creator Matt Groening. "Comics are free speech, and you don't put a tax on free speech"

In his amazing TV series, "The Day the Universe Changed," James Burke cited the anti-Catholic pamphlets of Martin Luther as examples of the first "propaganda war," an important result of the new printing presses with movable type. Holding up one of these one, sheet tracts, Burke pointed to its separate elements: Latin for the churchmen, German for the everyday folk, and woodcut cartoons for the illiterate. The cartoon depicted two men baring their asses at the pope, with thick plumes of fart gas curling like roses in his holiness' direction. Okay, so it's not exactly Noel Coward wit, but it does demonstrate that rudeness and bawdy laughs are pretty universal.

Most comics "zines" have a lot in common with Luther's pamphlets: they are the frequently raw, crude work of someone just trying to communicate with that big herd of folks beyond the walls (the zines are usually photocopied after hours at the day job, hand-stapled, and mailed out to small lists of subscribers). The subject could be any, thing: masturbation fantasies, frustration at media junk, science-fiction monsters, the local buffoons in city government. They are the print equivalent of hanging in a local bar, nursing 50-cent beers while your friend's band plays Velvet Underground covers on stage. It's not high art, but it's good to get it out of your system.

Mike Diana's zine Boiled Angel is just such a project. Its circulation never topped 300 copies or so, and its subject matter--horrifying depictions of rape, child molestation, dismemberment, and the sadomasochism implicit in Christian imagery--wasn't about to get Diana nominated to the Chamber of Commerce. It did earn him some attention from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which reasoned, through very scientific, criminological techniques, that because Diana drew a comic-book about gross subjects, he might be a serial killer they were looking for in Gainesvine.

In fact, Diana works at his dad's convenience store, likes comics and zombie movies, and lives in a trader with his younger brother. Not only does he not have the bucks to pay a decent lawyer, but Diana fits a blue-collar profile that some middle-class, "decent" folks look upon with contempt and suspicion. It's cases like Diana's that demonstrate the need to defend free speech for everyone.

Somewhere or other, The Humanist has picked up a reputation for sober, august articles on (in this issue alone) a peace movement against crime, the future of democratic socialism, and the nature of work. And yet, here's your "Skeptical Eye" columnist raving about kid stuff like rap music, computer video, comic books, and Mad magazine. But there's a good reason--a really, really good reason--for this.

Human beings need a rich and varied culture to keep their minds vigorous, supple, and informed. When some, one demonstrates some new insight to you, or some private way of seeing the world, you can't help but be enriched by it. Sadly, there are thousands of terrified people who can't bear this wonderful anarchy--the same frightened or frustrated people who bitch about the evils of "multiculturalism" and how people should be reading Plato and Goethe instead of Alice Walker and Carlos Fuentes. A single, unified culture is an Alzheimer's of the soul. We need craziness, lunatic theories, incoherent rage, and fart jokes every so often, even if it's just to piss off the popes of our time.

A nonprofit organization has been set up to coordinate efforts to protect comics creators--as well as the rights of their readers. Its address is the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, P.O. Box 693, Northampton, MA 01061. Remember: by protecting comics, the CBLDF is fighting to protect our minds from fundamentalits, opportunistic politicians, "concerned parents," the intellectual heirs of Boss Hogg among our local police departments, and other neural mummies. Send'em what you can: make a bequest, cash in the bonds, sell the car and get some bike-exercise. The mental health of the nation is at stake.