Forgotten Comics Wars

Or: How Angry Freelancers Made It Possible for A New Mainstream Comics Era (Including Vertigo) to Exist, Part 1

It is first essential to make you completely aware of the context of these events. This is both to frame all that is to follow — to make it absolutely obvious why some of us believed we had to act with some urgency, and why it was more than a little bit ridiculous that the major publishers, DC Comics Inc. prominent among them, were “taking measures” wholly inadequate and in fact quite counterproductive given the reality of the situation.

This opening shot also hopefully provides an answer for those who’ve already contacted me directly, asking either “what did it matter?” and “who cares what a publisher, even one as big as DC, decides to do as far as self-regulating their own product?” These are both good questions, and while it was frustrating at the time how obtuse and/or obfuscating some of the creators and comics industry professionals seemed to be amid the raging controversy, it’s now essential to remind interested parties in 2010 what, precisely, was precipitating all this frantic activity.

I can walk into my local Borders this morning and enjoy browsing, in an open environment, a plethora of graphic novels, manga, magazine racks and two spinner-racks of comic books sans labels. Bone, Tiny Teen Titans and a plethora of DC and Marvel superhero collections reprinting all-ages work from the 1930s-70s are racked right alongside The Walking Dead, Sandman, Hellblazer, Lost Girls, From Hell, etc. without qualm — or labels. The manga section (which is three times larger than the graphic novels section) is even more eclectic in this regard (that product does by and large sport labels, but is not racked according to labeling — the mature titles are not separated out — nor is the mature product segregated from the general manga racking).

Praise be!

Then as now, it’s a given that in bookstore environments, there is one section of children’s books wherein it is “safe” for kids to browse, a more risque (more taboo-teasing and busting in 2010 than would have been tolerated easily in 1986) teen and young adult readers section, and in the rest of the bookstore, you’re on your own.

Labels aren’t required; whether it’s Henry Miller classics, sexually explicit memoirs, Danielle Steele or Stephen King bestsellers, or the most adventurous or grotty of adult prose, books are not emblazoned with ‘Adults Only!’ or ‘You Must Be Over 18 to Purchase This Book!’ stickers or banners.

In 1986, however — and we didn’t know it then — the comic book Direct Sales Market was suffering its mid-life crisis. Underground comix, staking out territory completely apart from mainstream four-color comicbooks, had embraced variations on the ‘Adults Only’ on some titles since 1968. In every way, this was a badge of honor for comix, though there was precious little chance anyone would mistake a head shop or college-town bookshop rack of Zap, Slow Death, Snarf, Bizarre Sex or Big Ass Comics as anything but fare emphatically not for kiddies, and fucking proud of it.

Once Phil Seuling invented the Direct Sales Market in the early 1970s, and comic book stores began to proliferate across North America in the 1980s, the confusion over what was and wasn’t permissable in the Direct Market retail environment became dangerously blurry.

By the mid-1980s, the battle over increasingly adult and sales-worthy content in the wake of the mega-success of The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, among other successes both blockbuster and modest, was creating real problems for some retailers. While it was obvious to the indoctrinated that Frank Miller’s Batman was light years from the comfy all-ages Bob Kane/Bill Finger/Dick Sprang era of Batman, it wasn’t so obvious to the American public.

In the wake of Frank’s Daredevil, Alan and John and Rick and my Saga of the Swamp Thing, Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg, among other various ‘breaking out’ titles, it was becoming a problem.

But it was the major blockbuster success, sales and press attention The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen rightfully scored that really set off alarm bells. There had been skirmishes of sorts over now long-forgotten singular eruptions — the orgy page in a single chapter of Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest, Warren’s notorious 1984/1994, Eclipse Comics‘ Saber ‘birth’ issue, various Love & Rockets and Fantagraphics issues, Frank Thorne’s increasingly adventurous fusions of female barbarian fantasy and sex, the Miracleman ‘birth’ issue (penciled by Rick Veitch), etc. — and yet to come were Fantagraphics’ Eros line, and much, much more.

But throughout all this, with few ripples in few communities, Heavy Metal was sold month after month on American magazine newsstands everywhere. It had been since 1977, following in the footsteps of its parent magazine, the often raunchier National Lampoon.

Now, look closely at the tiny moniker above the Heavy Metal title: it reads, “The Adult Illustrated Fantasy Magazine.”

In short, the buzz over ‘adult’ comics and comix was a problem in a singular retail environment: the comicbook shop. 

The popular perception of, and prejudice toward, comics as inherently a bastard offspring of children’s literature remained the problem.

And some of us didn’t think labeling comics was a solution.

Some of us still don’t — but the market, as I’ve already noted, has already sorted that out. It’s now a given that children’s comics are the exception, not the rule. Sin City, From Hell and Lost Girls in Borders and Barnes & Noble aren’t emblazoned with a stigmatic red “You Must Be Over 18!” warning label, any more than Joe Hill’s new novel Horns or the new anthology of zombie stories The New Dead have to be. 

The reason some of us argued so vigorously against labeling as a viable solution is that we had already had ample evidence in 1986 that labels only served as bullseyes for lazy adults and authorities eager to bust comic shops.

Case in point:

Hmmmm, let’s take a closer look at this Illinois comics retailer bust, shall we? Read the officer’s narrative on the arrest report:

Now, really read the key passage, in which the officer identifies (sans title) what “alerted” him to the fact that obscene material was in reach of a minor:

That’s right.

Our vigilant police officer busted the shop for a magazine many minors browsed in the nearby magazine newsstands — Heavy Metal.

And he popped Friendly Frank’s for selling carefully chosen adult comic and comix product to the officer — an adult.

And it was the label on Heavy Metal that alerted said vigilant officer that Friendly Frank’s Comics needed to be shut down, and immediately.

Note, too: newsstands across the state of Illinois were not thereafter busted for racking and selling Heavy Metal.

The venues were the targets, and the labels were the bullseyes.

[Next: More on the Bust, and the Ratings Debacle Begins...]