Have you actually read "Seduction of the innocent"?

[ctc]

>This trend is all across the board in the print field.

Yeah. On the UP side it doens't affect the proliferation of "small press" type stuff. Thanks to print on demand places lots of stuff gets published. And thanks to the online thing, it's readily available to anyone searching it out. The digital vs print thing gets a lot of play; but it's not as huge an issue as the big companies make it out to be. Production-wise, anyhoo. (Marketing is a different animal altogether.) Best example: newspaper comic strips are dying off, as newspaper strips. But look how many online comics follow the format.

>Hard to believe the original Golden age of Superheroes was less than a decade!

Not really. Well; for me, anyhoo. If you look over their history there’s always been ups and downs. A lot of us were inundated with the mid 80's comic shop boom; which cemented the idea that “comics = superhero” in the minds of a generation. By the late 90's you had a generation for whom “comic = Naruto.”

Don C.

[samurainoir]

Here was the comic book readership breakdown in 1947, according to a industry studies, from the book "The Comic Book in America: An Illustrated History."

95% of all boys age 6-11
91% of all girls age 6-11
87% teen males
81% teen women
41% men age 18-30
28% women age 18-30

In 1947 the Superhero "fad" had worn out except for top titles like Superman, and Young Romance #1 debuted. Hard to believe the original Golden age of Superheroes was less than a decade!

[samurainoir]

That’s okay; it’s cyclic too. Give it another 10, 15 years. I’m wondering if what we got was the Japanese cycle: they tied a lot of the comics in with the cartoons when they brought them over, and the cartoons are expensive. So they started concentrating on what sold; which narrows the variety, which narrows the audience, which perpetuates the downward spiral.

That's exactly what I think is happening. Looking at the stats, the top sellers which are generally the anime and toy tie-ins (Deathnote, Bakugan, Bleach, Naruto, One-Piece etc), are still doing quite well, but it's the mid-list and bottom titles that are the ones suffering.

However in all fairness, in conversation with friends in the Book Retail and Publishing, it's not just manga/graphic novels that have been hit hard in the past few years. This trend is all across the board in the print field. It looks like the future trend in print publishing is going to be the top publishers focusing on their top tier "name" authors like Stephen King, Tom Clancy etc. and quickly dropping everyone on the mid-list and bellow. However, the silver lining to this one might be that these cult-authors such as your Spider Robinsons, go the direct-to-audience itunes route (and perhaps depending on the future of "print to order" services as well).

Interesting point. I wonder what the age range on those books was though. I’d suspect it wasn’t adults; but preteens and maybe teens. I wonder, ‘cos so many of them became generic girls’ magazines by the late 50's.

I've actually got the stats around here somewhere! The percentage for male adult readers at the was fairly substantial, but surprisingly, so was the female readership. Let me see if I can dig them out.

Keeping in mind this was the pre-Television era, where other than arguably Radio, Print still ruled as the dominant media. Off the top of my head, I believe the number stat commonly used to refute Wertham is the fact that 92% of ALL male children read comics.

I think these numbers were fairly significant in eventually CLEARING Comics as a medium, by the Senate committee, but by then the war had already been "lost" in the media and the industry's self-serving (for Archie and DC) comics code instigation.

[ctc]

>Dunno why I said Hogarth. Maybe he’s thinking of me....

Maybe I was thinking of William Hogarth. Still not right, but I AM getting old.

Don C.

[ctc]

>Burne Hogarth? For what? Tarzan?

Had to look that one up.... I meant Topffer, Dunno why I said Hogarth. Maybe he’s thinking of me....

>I was hoping it was a natural adjustment in the initial ten year growth bubble

That’s okay; it’s cyclic too. Give it another 10, 15 years. I’m wondering if what we got was the Japanese cycle: they tied a lot of the comics in with the cartoons when they brought them over, and the cartoons are expensive. So they started concentrating on what sold; which narrows the variety, which narrows the audience, which perpetuates the downward spiral.

>at least EC would have stood a chance at keeping their line of comics and cultivating the existing adult adience for this horror and crime material under the banner that it was aimed for a mature readership.

Yeah. It’s a tough call though; since any instances of comic censorship were from within. I gotta wonder how much EC was dinged by the perception of the public that comics were a kids’ media, as opposed to any sort of organized censorship. They made Mad an oversize magazine so’s to distance it from the comics. On the racks officially, but I gotta wonder if it was to distance it in the minds of the public too.

>we also had the rise of Romance Comics, which ultimately cultivated an adult female readership during the fifties and sixties before (arguably) Gloria Steinem era feminism entered the status quo.

Interesting point. I wonder what the age range on those books was though. I’d suspect it wasn’t adults; but preteens and maybe teens. I wonder, ‘cos so many of them became generic girls’ magazines by the late 50's.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

>it occurs to me that he wasn't the first Pop Psychologist to attack comics in the press.

Even Hogarth's works.... way back when.... were criticized by the press.

Burne Hogarth? For what? Tarzan?

>and offered Wertham the opportunity to write his own brand of wholesome comics

Hmmmm.... the mind reels. I kinda picture Wertham becoming the original Crumb. (Not sure why, but it makes sense to me.)

Given Wertham's crusade for social justice and racial equality in the cities, one would think that he and Bill Gaines might have found some common ground.

Wertham's work in passing legislation restricting the sale of Adult-themed comics to minors in New York was overturned by Gov. Thomas Dewey twice on first ammendment grounds, which is why he went the public route with parent's groups and Seduction of the Innocent. Under this scenario, at least EC would have stood a chance at keeping their line of comics and cultivating the existing adult adience for this horror and crime material under the banner that it was aimed for a mature readership.

Instead Gaines' last ditch attempt to fight back with the formation of the Comics Magazine Association of America backfired when Archie and DC used it as an opportunity to essentially run EC out of business with the formation of the code.

Ultimately this wasn't really what Wertham had intended since he HATED what the comics code represented, which he felt was hypocritical. Wertham pointed out that what the code essentially did was eliminate the consquences of crime and violence and creating an even more distorted view than the pre-code material.

Meanwhile, the comics that were aimed at children thrived under these conditions, and we also had the rise of Romance Comics, which ultimately cultivated an adult female readership during the fifties and sixties before (arguably) Gloria Steinem era feminism entered the status quo.

[samurainoir]

http://blog.newsarama.com/2010/05/12...silver-lining/
looks like Manga is finally falling in sales, Viz is laying off 40 % of its staff.

Yeah, Don and I were talking about that earlier in the thread. I was hoping it was a natural adjustment in the initial ten year growth bubble and the general economic situation, but I think Don is right. We'll see where it goes in the next year or so.

With that said, it's still interesting to see the side by side comparisons over at Icv2 between manga and North American content graphic novels.
ICv2 - Comics and Graphic Novel Sales Down in 2009

[thunderbolt]

http://blog.newsarama.com/2010/05/12/your-manga-minute-trying-to-find-the-silver-lining/

looks like Manga is finally falling in sales, Viz is laying off 40 % of its staff.

[ctc]

>it occurs to me that he wasn't the first Pop Psychologist to attack comics in the press.

Even Hogarth's works.... way back when.... were criticized by the press.

>and offered Wertham the opportunity to write his own brand of wholesome comics

Hmmmm.... the mind reels. I kinda picture Wertham becoming the original Crumb. (Not sure why, but it makes sense to me.)

Don C.

[ctc]

>I think the problem we saw in the nineties with both North American and Japanese industries was the creation of the Pornographic Berlin Wall as a result of the various ratings implementations and obscenity related arrests of comic store staff

Hmmmm.... I’d disagree with this, since the “offensive” books were around WAY before the 90's. I think the ratings and arrests actually had something of a cooling effect overall.... but in a weird way. Yes; there became a more stratified line between “adult” material and non, but I don’t think it led to a proliferation of sex and violence. It gave the existing material more exposure (*ba-DUM-dum!*) and made it more accessible, but it also put it in competition with more mainstream books. So you had an overall decline in the AMOUNT of sexually charged books, but an INCREASE in the sexual content, since they were competing for a suddenly specialized audience.

>in the mainstream "Headlights" are now perfectly acceptable as long as you don't show nipples, so we get the "Bad Girl" movement led by the likes of Lady Death and the return of Vampirella.

And this was the reaction on the other side. Books like this saw an opportunity to increase sales/appeal/whatnot with more sexualization, BUT they were careful not to cross the now well defined line into “sex books.” So costumes got skimpier, boobs got freakishly large, poses got borrowed from “Swank” magazine, but they never quite crossed the actual nudity line. Doing so would have limited the potential audience.

>the PTA or concerned parents were absolutely shocked at anything naked or sexual, but good ol' fashioned EC style decapitations and injury to eye motifs were by this time, perfectly above ground

The ol’ N. American “sex bad, violence good!!!” thing. (Ever see Zardoz? “The gun is good, the penis is evil....”) But even the violence got watered down in the 90's.... but likewise in a weird way. There was more.... I don’t want to say “realism,” but more detail added to the fights: blood, injuries and such; but they were still as superficial as the old superhero days. Weird streaks of stuff the MIGHT be blood, injuries that don’t have any actual effect, stuff like that. Like the sex, the 90's mainstream books made you THINK you were getting something you weren’t, for the sake of still being sellable to the 14 year olds.

>dozens of other important works of the eighties wouldn't have had the same kind of mainstream access in the nineties climate.

Oh, HELL yeah! But I think a lot of that is because of the audience too. Perception is everything, and as the comics stratified themselves into very narrowly defined categories, so too did the fans. A lot of those 80's books wouldn’t have found an audience ‘cos nobody would have known how to take them.

>The end result was an explosion of comic/manga porn led by all the specialty imprints like Eros, but a watering down of mainstream work aimed at a grown up audience by stripping away the element of human sexuality within a more rounded framework of character and story.

Yeah, that I agree with too; and I think it was the result of comic genres becoming so rigid during the 90's. (No doubt ‘cos the 90's boom was a SALES boom and not really a content one, like the early 80's.) If you were doing an “adult” book it had to be WAY adult. If you were doing a superhero book you had to have J-Cup+ boobs, but don’t you DARE show erect nipple topography.... (Wether either added to the story or not.)

>Meanwhile in Japan, creators like Lone Wolf and Cub writer Kazuo Kioke and his artistic collaborator Ryoichi Ikegami suddenly abandoning any kind of sexuality that had been a staple of mainstream work

A lot of that had to do with the animation. The technical level needed for a cartoon in Japan to be accepted by fans is very expensive, and by the early 90's the Japanese animation industry was starting to collapse. Because the comics and cartoons are so closely linked, this affected the books. The bigger publishers started aiming for more middle of the road stuff, so’s to expand their audience; especially for the toons. Then “Pocket Monster” hit, and, well.... you know.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

Just switching back to the Wertham track, it occurs to me that he wasn't the first Pop Psychologist to attack comics in the press.

One of the earliest critics was a famous psychologist who wrote in Family Circle Magazine about the harmful aggressive masculinity that typified the popular comics of the early forties.

So what happened to this guy's campaign? Well it seems that Max Gaines decided to contact him and gave him on offer to write his own comic book. The psychologist decided that his comic book heroine would show the young impressionable audience how to change the world with the power of Feminine love, naming the character Suprema.

Editor Sheldon Mayer convinced psychologist William Moulton Marston, that Wonder Woman was a better name, and thus Marston started writing the adventures of the star spangled fetish laden superheroine under the pen name Charles Moulton, and the rest is history.

Now imagine if Max's son Bill had taken a page from his Father's playbook and offered Wertham the opportunity to write his own brand of wholesome comics for disadvantaged inner city boys based on his own values of social justice and racial equality that he had been fighting so hard for within the health care system of the fifties?

[samurainoir]

Hmmmm.... Japanese comics are like entertainment media anywhere; they move in cycles. The adult stuff was around WAY before the 90's, but became flavour of the month for a bit then. Especially HERE; where it was so different than anything we’d ever produced. Consequently, once “Pocket Monster” made a LOT of money, the Japanese animation market shifted towards more kiddified stuff.

I think the problem we saw in the nineties with both North American and Japanese industries was the creation of the Pornographic Berlin Wall as a result of the various ratings implementations and obscenity related arrests of comic store staff (defended by the CBLDF).

The end result was an explosion of comic/manga porn led by all the specialty imprints like Eros, but a watering down of mainstream work aimed at a grown up audience by stripping away the element of human sexuality within a more rounded framework of character and story.

Thus ANY subject of sexuality or even casual nudity was relegated to the top shelves and back corners of the comic shops. Watchmen, American Flagg, Omaha the Cat Dancer, Yummy Fur, Heavy Metal, Julius Schwartz's ill fated Science Fiction Graphic Novel Imprint, Moonshadow, Peter Bagge's Neat Stuff, Crumb's Weirdo, Speigelman's Raw, and dozens of other important works of the eighties wouldn't have had the same kind of mainstream access in the nineties climate.

As a result we had the explosion of Malibu, Image, Valient, Marvel, DC etc all peddling the same kind of material that was acceptable across the board to the so-called "local obscenity standards" that were holding the comics retailers hostage in court. Which of course meant that the PTA or concerned parents were absolutely shocked at anything naked or sexual, but good ol' fashioned EC style decapitations and injury to eye motifs were by this time, perfectly above ground.

On the other hand, you have eighties work like American Flagg and Watchmen addressing head on the issues of Leather and Domination sexual fetishism that have been inherent in the medium since Wonder Woman pulled out her magic lasso. In the nineties we get XXX-Women from Eros (Fantographics) on the Porn side, and in the mainstream "Headlights" are now perfectly acceptable as long as you don't show nipples, so we get the "Bad Girl" movement led by the likes of Lady Death and the return of Vampirella.

Meanwhile in Japan, creators like Lone Wolf and Cub writer Kazuo Kioke and his artistic collaborator Ryoichi Ikegami suddenly abandoning any kind of sexuality that had been a staple of mainstream work like Crying Freeman, Wounded Man, Madbull 34, Offered, Mai the Psychic Girl, Auction House etc in the eighties.

Even a relatively tame manga like City Hunter (best described as Remington Steel and Benny Hill rolled into one) ended his spying-on-naked-girls-showering-erection-popping-bodyguard/private eye schtick by the nineties (but not before Jackie Chan had a shot at playing him in a live action movie).

[Mod Style]

Censorship works! Just ask the experts....Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Glenn Beck.

[ctc]

>You cannot ask for a better publicity campaign than this kind of censorship movement and subsequent ratings implementation.

HAW! Too true! I’m reminded of the “D&D is satanic, Metal is evil, Mortal Kombat is violent” flaps that only served to expand the market for the targets.

>My understanding is that all the oddball fetishes we attribute to many Japanese adult work is a direct result of a creative response to Japan's censorship laws stating that they cannot depict pubic hair nor can they show penile penetration. Thus the whole hairless "Loli" aesthetic and "Tentacles" as the graphic stand-in.

Sort of. It goes back a lot farther though. (Back to “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife.”) I think ultimately Japan has (and always had) such a huge audience for comics that durned near anything could sell. The sex and violence got ramped up in the 60's.... again, paralleling our own underground movement, but totally mainstream. Because comics were seen as a medium and not a genre. Adult books weren’t seen as weird because it wasn’t weird to see adults reading comics. That’s where I think the Wertham bit really hurt our comic industry. It put the idea in people’s heads that comics were just for kids.

>now with an umbrella that they could legitimately produce material under, there was an explosion of adult oriented manga into the market in the nineties.

Hmmmm.... Japanese comics are like entertainment media anywhere; they move in cycles. The adult stuff was around WAY before the 90's, but became flavour of the month for a bit then. Especially HERE; where it was so different than anything we’d ever produced. Consequently, once “Pocket Monster” made a LOT of money, the Japanese animation market shifted towards more kiddified stuff.

Comics still show some variety though, ‘cos the huge audience is still there and in the minds of a lot of readers comics and cartoons are two different things. (Kinda like how post-Wertham we saw comic BOOKS as kids stuff, but comic STRIPS as more general audience.)

Don C.

[samurainoir]

I think Japan is a good case study on how Censorship (in both comics and other media like film and amime) never works to the benefit of anyone on either side of the fence.

My understanding is that all the oddball fetishes we attribute to many Japanese adult work is a direct result of a creative response to Japan's censorship laws stating that they cannot depict pubic hair nor can they show penile penetration. Thus the whole hairless "Loli" aesthetic and "Tentacles" as the graphic stand-in.

It also seems that the labeling system instigated after the sensationalism of the Miyazaki murders had the exact opposite effect of curbing the more extreme material... now with an umbrella that they could legitimately produce material under, there was an explosion of adult oriented manga into the market in the nineties.

In a similar way that XXX became a marketing standard in North American mainstream pornography in the seventies, and Hong Kong (and chinatowns in North America) benefited from the "rating" of Cat III in the eighties.

You cannot ask for a better publicity campaign than this kind of censorship movement and subsequent ratings implementation.

With the video game ratings for example, there are kids who will instantly want the ones rated for Teens, and Teens of course will want the ones rated for Adults.

In marketing, you are often actually pitching your "Teen" brands for "Tweens", and so on.