Happiness is a stack of comic books.
— Charles M. Schultz
A mint-condition copy of Action Comics #1—the comic-book premiere of Superman—sold for $3.3 million this week, according to Antiques & the Arts Weekly.
"This book launched the superhero genre," auctioneer Vincent Zurzolo told Antiques & the Arts Weekly. "There’s a reason collectors and fans will always be obsessed with it."
If you missed this week's auction, or can't spare $3.3 million for a comic book, I suggest you at least spend $16 and buy a copy of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
While I never had $3, much less $3 million, to spend as a kid, I remember buying comic books religiously. They cost only 12 cents and—given the gripping stories and lavish, cover-to-cover illustrations—were well worth the price. Find eight empty soda-pop bottles, redeem them for the three-cent deposits, and you could go home with two!
Always a festive day, a new batch of titles would show up every other Tuesday at the neighborhood confectionery. My friends and I would rush to the store after school, to make sure we didn't miss out on our favorites.
Mine were without doubt The Fantastic Four; Detective Comics (featuring that ethereal night-creature Batman); Strange Tales (featuring Dr. Strange); Tales to Astonish (featuring Ant-Man and The Incredible Hulk); Classics Illustrated (retellings of great books like Kidnapped, Mysterious Island and The War of the Worlds); Our Army at War (featuring the broody, brawny Sgt. Rock); and the always rip-snorting Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandoes.
Happiness indeed was a stack of comic books. Little did I know the comics I loved were unloved by millions of parents.
Parental displeasure stemmed in large part due to Seduction of the Innocent, a 1954 best-seller by a crusading disciple of Freud, Dr. Fredric Wertham.
Dr. Wertham's call for federal oversight of the comic-book industry gave rise to Congressional hearings and to the Comics Code Authority, an effort by publishers to censor themselves.
The authority was superheroes' Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
Publishers would submit their comic books to the authority and, if approved, include its seal on the covers. The seal on the cover proved to distributors, retailers, parents and readers that the a comic book had met the authority's ironfisted code.
It also required that "in every instance, good shall triumph over evil;" that "if crime is depicted, it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity;" and that, if the cartoons illustrated violence, none were "lurid, unsavory, or gruesome."
Depictions of "nudity in any form" and of "sex perversion, abnormalities, and illicit sex relations" were all strictly taboo. So were depictions of vampires, werewolves, ghouls, cannibals, zombies, and women's cleavage.
The Comics Code Authority remained the industry's arbiter until 2001, when the censors made the mistake of rejecting an issue of Marvel Comics' X-Force. After the rejection, Marvel quit submitting comics for approval, and other publishers soon followed suit.
Despite efforts to police itself through the Comics Code Authority, the mid-century comic-book industry was too inherently anarchic to save the children.
In 2003, cultural critic Edward Said wrote, “I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result. Everything about the enticing book of colored pictures, but especially its untidy, sprawling format, the colorful riotous extravagance of its pictures, the unrestrained passage between what the characters thought and said, the exotic creatures and adventures reported and depicted: all this made up for a hugely wonderful thrill, entirely unlike anything I had hitherto known or experienced."
