LanternCast Presents: Green Lantern/Green Arrow #1

Chad enlists the help of Mike Gallagher for the debut episode of his new ongoing spin-off podcast spotlighting the historic 1970′s series by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams ‘Green Lantern/Green Arrow’. Call our voicemail number at 708-LANTERN!

Music by Rival Schools – “Everything Has Its Point”!

Download Episode #1 Here!

I would like to correct one misconception of the post Seduction of the Innocence era--there were "mainstream" comics written, printed, and distributed without the code!

The publishers were Gilberton, Dell Comics, and Gold Key Comics (Golden, Christopher; Stephen Bissette, Thomas E. Sniegoski (2000) The Monster Book Simon & Schuster).

Thanks to their reputation their comics never needed or got the code seal.

They even found ways to go around the limits on horror comics. Gilberton used Classics Illustrated (Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) while Dell (later Gold Key) got licenses to both horror and sci-fi properties in the 1960s (Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, Twilight Zone, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Addams Family, Munsters, etc) and even turned Frankenstein, Dracula, and Werewolf into superheroes (1966-67)

Comicvine has a picture of Ripley's Believe it or Not! True Ghost stories #1 (1965) and as you can see no code on the cover. The same is true of the Karloff book from 1962-1980 Classics Illustrated ran from 1947 to 1971 and NONE of the covers at Comicvine has the code seal!

maximara wrote:I would like to correct one misconception of the post Seduction of the Innocence era--there were "mainstream" comics written, printed, and distributed without the code!

The publishers were Gilberton, Dell Comics, and Gold Key Comics (Golden, Christopher; Stephen Bissette, Thomas E. Sniegoski (2000) The Monster Book Simon & Schuster).

Thanks to their reputation their comics never needed or got the code seal.

They even found ways to go around the limits on horror comics. Gilberton used Classics Illustrated (Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) while Dell (later Gold Key) got licenses to both horror and sci-fi properties in the 1960s (Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, Twilight Zone, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Addams Family, Munsters, etc) and even turned Frankenstein, Dracula, and Werewolf into superheroes (1966-67)

Comicvine has a picture of Ripley's Believe it or Not! True Ghost stories #1 (1965) and as you can see no code on the cover. The same is true of the Karloff book from 1962-1980 Classics Illustrated ran from 1947 to 1971 and NONE of the covers at Comicvine has the code seal!

All good points. I think Mike touched on this VERY briefly by mentioning the "underground" comics of the time. I myself was not familiar with the material. Thanks for the information! If you would, email me your thoughts on the episode so I have a good deal of feedback on the first episode. See what people are thinking of the show.

chad@lanterncast.com

This goes for ALL of you!

Also, I know not everyone will see this but...I've been listening and re-listening to my 'Lanterncast Presents: Green Lantern/Green Arrow' episode to gauge what I can do better next time. Something I caught myself on, I said that Bill Gaines was, "Pretty much responsible for creating the comics industry." That's not true. What I MEANT was that he was responsible for creating the Horror and Crime comics such as they were at the time. MAX Gaines (Bill's father) was actually the one "pretty much responsible for creating the comics industry." (one of them at least)

Apologies.

cage_narleigh wrote:

maximara wrote:I would like to correct one misconception of the post Seduction of the Innocence era--there were "mainstream" comics written, printed, and distributed without the code!

The publishers were Gilberton, Dell Comics, and Gold Key Comics (Golden, Christopher; Stephen Bissette, Thomas E. Sniegoski (2000) The Monster Book Simon & Schuster).

Thanks to their reputation their comics never needed or got the code seal.

They even found ways to go around the limits on horror comics. Gilberton used Classics Illustrated (Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) while Dell (later Gold Key) got licenses to both horror and sci-fi properties in the 1960s (Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, Twilight Zone, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Addams Family, Munsters, etc) and even turned Frankenstein, Dracula, and Werewolf into superheroes (1966-67)

Comicvine has a picture of Ripley's Believe it or Not! True Ghost stories #1 (1965) and as you can see no code on the cover. The same is true of the Karloff book from 1962-1980 Classics Illustrated ran from 1947 to 1971 and NONE of the covers at Comicvine has the code seal!

All good points. I think Mike touched on this VERY briefly by mentioning the "underground" comics of the time. I myself was not familiar with the material. Thanks for the information!

Actually "underground" comics is a term used to describe what was the very antithesis of Gilberton and Dell-Gold Key were. It is on par with calling Dwight D. Eisenhower a 1950s hippy!

Gilberton never did anything but comic versions of classics so they certainly were not counterculture.

In 1953 Dell claimed to be the biggest comic company in the US selling 26 million copies a month! ("Good Friends for Him... and Mother Too.. in Dell Comics!" Saturday Evening Post (January 10, 1953)) They were not some one guy in a basement drawing counterculture comics but rather as mainstream as you could get.

Dell even took an active campaign against Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent pointing out the comics they made featuring Warner Brother Cartoon characters, Lone Ranger, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and dozens of other mainstream material. (Beaty, Bart (2005) Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture University Press of Mississippi)

However most of these comics depended on licensing which their partner Western Publishing owned. Western Publishing was well respected for their Golden Books Family Entertainment line (Little Golden Books were still being printed and sold when I was growing up in the 1970s)

That partnership ended in 1962 and Western not one to sit on well selling license property created Gold Key comics and like Dell didn't bother with CCA seal requirements.

No, the reason Gilberton and Dell-Gold Key were able to thumb their noses at the CCA seal requirements was not because they where "underground" but because they were so mainstream no one even questioned the quality of their comics.

Dell-Gold Key had the added advantage that their comics were small part of much larger publishing firms whose other material could be brought up to present a wholesome family oriented picture.

I would like to point out there was no danger comics would be censored by the government as the Supreme Court changed from its 1952 Adler v. Board of Education stance with Slochower v. Board of Education (1956), Yates v. United States (1957), Watkins v. United States (1957), and many other cases.

In fact, Near v. Minnesota (1931) (regarding "business of regularly and customarily producing, publishing," etc., "a malicious, scandalous and defamatory newspaper, magazine or other periodical) set forth these guidelines:

Liberty of the press is within the liberty safeguarded by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from invasion by state action.

In passing upon the constitutionality of the statute, the court has regard for substance, and not for form; the statute must be tested by its operation and effect.

The fact that the liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any the less necessary the immunity from previous restraint in dealing with official misconduct.

If the court ruled that way on scandal mongering you know any law trying to censor comics would have been axed (assuming Dell and Western didn't bring out the big guns)