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Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children?

The Great Misunderstanding: When Comics Were Labeled as “Kids’ Stuff”

One of the claims we often encounter as comic book readers when interacting with non-specialized environments is the idea that these types of productions are aimed at a child audience. The presence of colorful illustrations, speech bubbles, and animated or live-action adaptations on television and in film are some of the elements that motivate such an assertion, and let’s say it doesn’t come from nowhere. But this perception, so deeply rooted in the collective imagination, hides a fascinating history of censorship, creativity, and cultural revolution that deserves to be thoroughly explored.

The world of illustration and graphic narrative has traveled an extraordinary path since its beginnings. What started as simple entertainment aimed primarily at young readers evolved into a complex and multifaceted art form capable of addressing profound themes with a visual sophistication that rivals any other medium. This transformation was neither casual nor peaceful, but the result of decades of creative, cultural, and commercial battles that redefined the boundaries of what a comic book could be.

Throughout this journey, we’ll discover how comics went from being considered simple children’s pastimes to becoming vehicles for artistic expression, social criticism, and psychological exploration. We’ll see how creators fought against censorship, reinvented entire genres, and constantly expanded the horizons of what was possible within the medium. A journey that will take us from the innocence of the Golden Age to the moral complexity of the Dark Age, revealing that comics were never really “kids’ stuff,” but a cultural battlefield where important debates about values, freedom of expression, and the power of images were waged.

Heroic Beginnings: When Superheroes Conquered Children’s Imagination

While we can find thousands of stories aimed at an adult audience with large amounts of explicit content, this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when childhood was a fundamental target for the comic book market. Consider that the first superhero comic came from National Allied Publications, which would later become part of DC Comics, when they introduced our beloved Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in Action Comics #1 in April 1938. From then on, we had in our hands the adventures of that powerful extraterrestrial from Krypton who would dedicate himself to saving thousands of lives, thus becoming the favorite character and role model for many readers. Shortly after, at Timely Comics, which would later become Marvel, the Human Torch was born in 1939. From the same source, Captain America would originate in March 1941 with his patriotic spirit.

First appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1
First appearance of the Human Torch
First appearance of Captain America punching Hitler

Joe and Norm in 1953, at the height of their creative collaboration, gave us these first appearances of Superman, the Human Torch, and Captain America that marked the beginning of a new era in visual storytelling. These characters didn’t emerge in a cultural vacuum, but as a response to the emotional and psychological needs of a society in crisis.

What was the landscape then? A context loaded with anxieties: World War II, the need for hope in the face of an enormous military conflict that brought the fear of losing loved ones to family dinner table conversations, economic crisis, concern for the future. The birth of comics allowed for moments of essential alienation at a very low cost. It’s because of their success and strong revenues that this period is called the “Golden Age.”

This era represented much more than just the emergence of iconic caped characters. It was a moment when artists discovered the true narrative potential of combining words and images to create something completely new. The visual language of comic panels was being codified, experimenting with perspectives, camera angles, composition, and inking techniques that would dramatically improve the visual impact of each page. Explore these fascinating visual composition techniques here!

The creators of this pioneering era worked under almost industrial conditions, producing astonishing amounts of pages each month to satisfy the insatiable public demand. For many young artists, it was a brutal but invaluable training ground, where they learned their craft on the fly. The technical limitations of printing at the time—with restricted color palettes and cheap paper—forced artists to develop creative solutions that would eventually define the distinctive aesthetic of the medium.

But this prominence put the spotlight on what young people were reading in those years. And this became a reason for great discussions and regulations in successive decades. The massive popularity of the medium soon attracted skeptical and critical gazes from those who viewed with concern how these colorful publications captured the attention of millions of eager young readers.

Moral Panic: When Comics Became Public Enemies

What could be the harm in reading stories about superheroes who confronted villains to preserve Justice and citizens’ lives? Precisely that, the confrontation. Different community actors began to express their concern about children’s exposure to representations of violence and, additionally, the romantic interests of our protagonists, who, as we know, were often shown in situations of erotic suggestion. Thus, the role models suddenly became a bad influence on the readership to the point of being accused of promoting juvenile delinquency.

This was raised in this way from different spaces. On one hand, actors in the educational system, accompanied by conservative and traditionalist parents, argued that there was a negative change in reading habits since the works chosen for leisure moments by children did not obey “good literature” but rather minor genres linked to pulp and horror magazines. There, tastes were harmed while, according to them, the writing quality of students was diminished. For its part, the Church expressed concern about the endangerment of tradition, good customs, civic and family values.

Meanwhile, from psychiatry, Dr. Fredric Wertham advocated, in different symposiums and specialized publications, that children’s mental health was being attacked and that had to be stopped at all costs.

Dr. Fredric Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent

One of the professional’s main arguments was that comics caused a desensitization of children who sought to imitate what they found in the pages of their favorite magazines, thus causing serious damage to their behavior patterns and ways of relating in society. For him, by becoming accustomed to seeing situations of violence, aggressiveness would become an everyday response to any conflict situation that might arise, instead of trying to solve problems peacefully.

Thus, with the aim of regulating the content of comics, he published Seduction of the Innocent in 1954. But it wasn’t just about violence but also sexuality. Let’s remember that we are in a social, political, and cultural stage defined by the advent of McCarthyism, so one of the lines of censorship also attacked homosexuality, considering it a perversion. It’s not surprising, then, that Wertham dedicated several lines to this topic, as we can see below in his reference to the relationship between Batman and Robin:

“Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident.”

As if that weren’t enough, in Batman issue 84 published in April 1954, in the midst of the controversy, the following panel was published.

Batman and Robin sleeping in the same bed

Batman and Robin wake up together, in the same bed, with a happy and intimate closeness. This image, contextualized in the paranoia of the time, provoked an immediate reaction. Why imagine Wertham’s reaction when he came across this? For the psychiatrist, this scene confirmed his worst suspicions: that comics not only promoted violence but also “deviant behaviors” according to the standards of the time.

What is perhaps most fascinating from our contemporary perspective is that many of Wertham’s interpretations said more about his own prejudices and those of society at the time than about the actual content of the comics. His reading of homoerotic elements in Batman and Robin reveals a gaze obsessively focused on finding “perversions” where others simply saw a mentor-pupil relationship. Interested in analyzing visual narrative from a critical perspective? Discover fascinating analytical tools here.

The Code That Chained Creativity: The Comics Code Authority

Faced with all these accusations, various publishers formed the Comics Magazine Association of America and established a regulatory code that dictated what topics could see the light of day and in what ways under the Comics Code Authority seal.

Comics Code Authority approval seal

In other words, the content creators themselves carried out their self-regulation to publish and avoid criticism that would harm their sales. This was also necessary because specialized sales as we know them today did not exist, but rather there were intermediaries in the distribution between publishers and the public who reviewed whether or not they adhered to the Comics Code Authority seal. It wasn’t legally mandatory to carry the seal of approval, but there was a lot of pressure from advertisers, distributors, and different civic groups to respect it to the letter.

Of course, some companies decided not to adhere to this type of censorship, others went bankrupt, and this also gave rise to an independent circuit of comics and fanzines, but that’s another story. The impact of the Code was immediate and devastating for certain genres. Horror and crime comics, which had enjoyed enormous popularity, practically disappeared overnight. EC Comics, famous for titles like “Tales from the Crypt” and “Crime SuspenStories,” was forced to cancel almost all its publications, surviving only with MAD Magazine (which avoided the Code by transforming from comic to magazine).

The restrictions were amazingly specific and limiting. It was forbidden to show zombies, vampires, or werewolves. Scenes of torture or sadism could not be depicted. The words “horror” or “terror” could not appear in titles. Authorities such as police, judges, or government figures had to always be presented with respect. Crime could never be shown in a way that generated sympathy for criminals or distrust of authorities. And, of course, any suggestion of sexual content was absolutely prohibited.

However, this is not an isolated case, as the Hays Code had already been established in Hollywood cinema in 1930, which governed considerable censorship in scripts and exhibitions from 1934 to 1967. The regulations of both codes have several coincidences that are located in the field of preserving American values regarding the treatment of violence, drug abuse, the representation of religious and governmental institutions, parental authority, in addition to restricting the erotic imagination. As if the above were not enough, the lexicon used was also regulated to avoid slang and colloquialisms that could deteriorate the linguistic learning of youth.

Examples of comics before and after the code

As we can imagine, the regulations were very strict, and this led to the inevitable infantilization of stories, considerably reducing their reach to the adult audience. Sales were dropping, and it was essential to carry out a reinvention of superheroes with incredible creativity. For artists, this posed a formidable challenge: how to convey emotion, danger, and drama without being able to show their most obvious manifestations? If you want to explore how to represent intense emotions within creative limitations, don’t miss these invaluable resources.

The result was a strange creative paradox. On one hand, the Code stifled more mature and realistic explorations. On the other, it forced creators to develop more subtle and sophisticated forms of visual storytelling. Unable to show explicit violence, artists perfected the art of insinuation, of off-screen action, of communicating through shadows and suggestions what they could not show directly. This tension between restriction and expression defined an entire era.

The Silver Age: Reinvention and Renewal Under Restrictions

In this way, we enter the period we know as the “Silver Age.” In it, Marvel Comics was born, also known as the “House of Ideas” which, under Stan Lee, created the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, our friendly neighbor, in the early years of the 1960s. With the prohibition on the treatment of the supernatural, the abilities of superheroes had a more scientific origin and underwent a process of humanization that brought them closer to their ideal audience. The publishing market thus returned to having important profits while self-regulating.

This period marked a fundamental turning point in the evolution of the medium. Faced with the restrictions imposed by the Code, creators responded with an ingenious reinvention of the superhero genre. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko led this revolution at Marvel Comics, introducing a new type of superhero: fallible, conflicted, and deeply human despite their extraordinary powers. Peter Parker struggled to pay rent and care for his sick aunt. The members of the Fantastic Four argued like a dysfunctional family. The X-Men faced rejection and discrimination for being different.

This approach struck a chord with readers, especially teenagers, who could identify with these imperfect heroes in ways they had never experienced with the more idealized superheroes of the Golden Age. Storytelling became more sophisticated, with continued story arcs that developed over multiple issues, rewarding loyal readers and allowing for deeper character development.

However, Stan Lee himself was one of the first to confront the Comics Code Authority by publishing a story arc in The Amazing Spider-Man (#96 – #98) that problematized drug abuse. Although this story arc was requested by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, it did not get the approval seal and was published anyway.

Drug storyline in The Amazing Spider-Man

It’s very difficult to talk about the dangerous implications of drug abuse if we can’t mention them, right? This historic episode perfectly illustrates the absurdity that the Code had reached: even when a comic tried to convey a positive and educational message against drug abuse—something that theoretically should align with the values that the Code claimed to defend—the mere representation of the topic was enough to deny approval.

Marvel’s decision to publish these issues without the Code seal was a significant act of rebellion that set an important precedent. It demonstrated that a major publisher could commercially survive without Code approval, and that the public was ready for more mature and socially relevant content. Would you like to learn how to create graphic narratives with social impact? Visit here to discover how.

This event triggered a revision of the Code in 1971 that reduced its restrictions on horror works, violence, and mild sexual content. Additionally, it began to allow the appearance of drugs as long as they were shown in a negative light. But this also, among other issues, triggered the “Bronze Age” and one of the most traumatic events in superhero history: the death of Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man’s first girlfriend, from the perspective of Gerry Conway and Gil Kane in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 – 122 in 1973.

The Bronze Age: When Comics Grew Up With Their Readers

While it’s debatable whether this is the beginning or not, since we could find the kickoff in Green Lantern #76 by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams in February 1970 or in Conan #01 with script by Roy Thomas and illustration by Barry Smith and published by Marvel Comics in the same year, what’s interesting here is that there was a break. Social reality began to seep into comics, and death was a terrible and possible probability.

Blood appears, characters have more psychological depth, the mandatory distinction between Good and Evil is nuanced, antagonists gain relevance, and self-criticism appears in comic circuits. Frank Miller gave us Batman in the form of The Dark Knight and Alan Moore wrote Watchmen. The Comics Code Authority was losing power and relevance.

The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

The Bronze Age represented the moment when comics began to “grow up” along with their original readers. The children who had devoured Superman and Batman in the 40s and 50s were now adults, and many maintained their fondness for the medium. Creators, aware of this, began to introduce more mature themes and perspectives that resonated with this evolving audience.

O’Neil and Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories directly addressed social problems such as racism, drug addiction, and environmental pollution. The X-Men, under Chris Claremont’s pen, became a powerful allegory about discrimination and intolerance. Gwen Stacy’s death broke the mold by showing that not even superheroes’ loved ones were safe, introducing an element of real consequences and lasting trauma that forever transformed the genre.

Artistically, this period saw an explosion of experimentation and sophistication. Artists like Neal Adams, Bernie Wrightson, Jim Steranko, and Barry Windsor-Smith introduced more expressive and technically ambitious styles, radically expanding the visual possibilities of the medium. Deepen your understanding of the evolution of visual style in comics and learn advanced techniques of artistic expression here.

By this time, however, few publishers remained under its yoke, such as Marvel, Archie, Harvey, and DC. The latter, in fact, was considering removing the seal from its productions as it reduced and harmed the artistic expression of its members. Additionally, with the change in distribution, since it began to be direct from publishers to the market, some of them were able to start dispensing with the Comics Code Authority seal since the enforcing arm of regulation had lost its validity.

This prompted a new modification in 1989, but it was already too late; the “Dark Age” had begun, and there would be no turning back. Thus, we were spectators and participants in the death of Robin (Jason Todd) in A Death in the Family in Batman issues 426-429 from late 1988. And we also consumed the rebellion of publications like The Killing Joke, The Death of Superman, Spawn, Deadpool’s debut in New Mutants #98, among other great works and appearances of the 20th century.

Image of representative comics from the Dark Age

The Dark Age: Deconstructing Heroes and Challenging Limits

With these modifications, the superhero industry grew enormously to the point of offering excessive amounts of merchandising. Such relevance of “customer” readers and the urgency to please them produced more ruptures in the field to the point that the mainstream big publishers had become bitter enemies of creativity and originality for some artists. In this context, Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson, and it was there that Frank Miller had a place to publish one of his great works, Sin City.

The so-called “Dark Age” or “Modern Age” of comics was a period of profound deconstruction of the superhero concept and radical experimentation with form and content. Works like Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons or The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller completely rethought what a superhero comic could be, subjecting the genre to a ruthless analysis and revealing its internal contradictions. Heroes were no longer simply forces for good; they could be complex, morally ambiguous, even deeply disturbed.

This period also saw the emergence of independent publishers and lines for adult readers within the major companies. Vertigo, a DC Comics imprint launched in 1993 under the direction of Karen Berger, became home to innovative works such as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Hellblazer, and Preacher. Image Comics, founded by a group of star artists who left Marvel in 1992, established a new model of creative ownership that challenged the dominance of major publishers. Boost your creativity with innovative narrative techniques that will revolutionize your own stories! Click to discover more.

Narrative sophistication reached new heights during this period. Non-linear structures, unreliable narrators, metafiction, and other complex literary devices that were previously reserved for “serious literature” found their way into comics. At the same time, art became increasingly stylistically diverse, from detailed hyperrealism to expressive abstraction, including styles influenced by Japanese manga.

Marvel, for its part, created its own regulation system in 2001, and by 2011, the only publishers that continued to publish under the Comics Code Authority seal, DC and Archie, abandoned it completely. The Code, which had once exercised almost totalitarian control over the content of American comics, finally died, not with a bang but with a whimper, having lost all relevance in a medium that had evolved far beyond its limitations.

Beyond Prejudice: Comics as Mature Art in the 21st Century

In the last two decades, the world of comics has experienced an explosion of diversity in both content and styles that would have been unimaginable to the censors of the 1950s. Today, the medium encompasses everything from intimate autobiographies and journalistic reports to speculative science fiction and epic fantasy, covering practically any conceivable genre. This diversification has been accompanied by unprecedented critical recognition, with graphic novels winning prestigious literary awards and being included in academic curricula.

The 21st century has also seen a significant democratization of comic creation. The internet and digital technologies have allowed independent creators to reach global audiences without the need for large publishers. Webcomics, digital comics, and crowdfunding platforms have opened new pathways for innovative voices that might never have found space in the traditional system.

At the same time, global influence on comics has intensified, with Japanese manga, Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, and traditions from around the world mutually enriching their visual languages and narratives. This cross-pollination has led to an era of unprecedented experimentation, where the boundaries between “national styles” are continuously blurred. Expand your artistic horizons by exploring global styles of illustration and visual narrative here.

Paradoxically, while comics have matured as an artistic medium, they have also conquered mainstream culture like never before. The massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is perhaps the most visible example, but it represents just the tip of the iceberg of how characters, aesthetics, and narratives born in comic panels have deeply permeated contemporary popular culture.

Comics: A Medium Without Age or Thematic Limits

Let’s return, then, to the beginning: are comics children’s reading? Not necessarily. A long road was traveled to divert it from the weight of that label. Numerous discussions and negotiations were disputed over more than fifty years, and now we are here, choosing, even though they tried to take that opportunity away from us. That said, before giving a comic book as a gift, remember that comics are not child’s play.

The history we have traveled shows us that comics have always been a reflection of their time: of its anxieties, hopes, values, and contradictions. From the first superheroes who offered escapism and hope during the Great Depression and World War II, to the complex contemporary narratives that explore the moral ambiguities of our time, this medium has constantly evolved to remain relevant and meaningful.

What began being perceived primarily as children’s entertainment has transformed into an artistic vehicle capable of addressing the deepest and most complex themes of human experience. And yet, it has also retained that unique ability to marvel, surprise, and transport us to other worlds that captivated the first readers more than eight decades ago.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from this evolution is that comics, like all great art, should not be pigeonholed or limited by simplistic expectations. They are a medium, not a genre; a visual language with unlimited potential to express any type of story, for any type of audience. Ready to bring your own stories to life? Find the inspiration and tools you need here.

In this path of transformation and maturation, comics have demonstrated, time and again, their ability to reinvent themselves and overcome obstacles. From suffocating censorship to cultural prejudices, no barrier has managed to contain the creativity and innovation of generations of artists committed to pushing the boundaries of what this medium can achieve.

So the next time someone suggests that comics are “just for kids,” we can smile knowing that this perception simply reveals how much they have yet to discover about the rich, complex, and fascinating evolution of an art that continues to surprise us with its ability to tell stories that matter, regardless of the age of who reads them.

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Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children?

The Great Misunderstanding: When Comics Were Labeled as “Kids’ Stuff”

One of the claims we often encounter as comic book readers when interacting with non-specialized environments is the idea that these types of productions are aimed at a child audience. The presence of colorful illustrations, speech bubbles, and animated or live-action adaptations on television and in film are some of the elements that motivate such an assertion, and let’s say it doesn’t come from nowhere. But this perception, so deeply rooted in the collective imagination, hides a fascinating history of censorship, creativity, and cultural revolution that deserves to be thoroughly explored.

The world of illustration and graphic narrative has traveled an extraordinary path since its beginnings. What started as simple entertainment aimed primarily at young readers evolved into a complex and multifaceted art form capable of addressing profound themes with a visual sophistication that rivals any other medium. This transformation was neither casual nor peaceful, but the result of decades of creative, cultural, and commercial battles that redefined the boundaries of what a comic book could be.

Throughout this journey, we’ll discover how comics went from being considered simple children’s pastimes to becoming vehicles for artistic expression, social criticism, and psychological exploration. We’ll see how creators fought against censorship, reinvented entire genres, and constantly expanded the horizons of what was possible within the medium. A journey that will take us from the innocence of the Golden Age to the moral complexity of the Dark Age, revealing that comics were never really “kids’ stuff,” but a cultural battlefield where important debates about values, freedom of expression, and the power of images were waged.

Heroic Beginnings: When Superheroes Conquered Children’s Imagination

While we can find thousands of stories aimed at an adult audience with large amounts of explicit content, this wasn’t always the case. There was a time when childhood was a fundamental target for the comic book market. Consider that the first superhero comic came from National Allied Publications, which would later become part of DC Comics, when they introduced our beloved Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in Action Comics #1 in April 1938. From then on, we had in our hands the adventures of that powerful extraterrestrial from Krypton who would dedicate himself to saving thousands of lives, thus becoming the favorite character and role model for many readers. Shortly after, at Timely Comics, which would later become Marvel, the Human Torch was born in 1939. From the same source, Captain America would originate in March 1941 with his patriotic spirit.

First appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1
First appearance of the Human Torch
First appearance of Captain America punching Hitler

Joe and Norm in 1953, at the height of their creative collaboration, gave us these first appearances of Superman, the Human Torch, and Captain America that marked the beginning of a new era in visual storytelling. These characters didn’t emerge in a cultural vacuum, but as a response to the emotional and psychological needs of a society in crisis.

What was the landscape then? A context loaded with anxieties: World War II, the need for hope in the face of an enormous military conflict that brought the fear of losing loved ones to family dinner table conversations, economic crisis, concern for the future. The birth of comics allowed for moments of essential alienation at a very low cost. It’s because of their success and strong revenues that this period is called the “Golden Age.”

This era represented much more than just the emergence of iconic caped characters. It was a moment when artists discovered the true narrative potential of combining words and images to create something completely new. The visual language of comic panels was being codified, experimenting with perspectives, camera angles, composition, and inking techniques that would dramatically improve the visual impact of each page. Explore these fascinating visual composition techniques here!

The creators of this pioneering era worked under almost industrial conditions, producing astonishing amounts of pages each month to satisfy the insatiable public demand. For many young artists, it was a brutal but invaluable training ground, where they learned their craft on the fly. The technical limitations of printing at the time—with restricted color palettes and cheap paper—forced artists to develop creative solutions that would eventually define the distinctive aesthetic of the medium.

But this prominence put the spotlight on what young people were reading in those years. And this became a reason for great discussions and regulations in successive decades. The massive popularity of the medium soon attracted skeptical and critical gazes from those who viewed with concern how these colorful publications captured the attention of millions of eager young readers.

Moral Panic: When Comics Became Public Enemies

What could be the harm in reading stories about superheroes who confronted villains to preserve Justice and citizens’ lives? Precisely that, the confrontation. Different community actors began to express their concern about children’s exposure to representations of violence and, additionally, the romantic interests of our protagonists, who, as we know, were often shown in situations of erotic suggestion. Thus, the role models suddenly became a bad influence on the readership to the point of being accused of promoting juvenile delinquency.

This was raised in this way from different spaces. On one hand, actors in the educational system, accompanied by conservative and traditionalist parents, argued that there was a negative change in reading habits since the works chosen for leisure moments by children did not obey “good literature” but rather minor genres linked to pulp and horror magazines. There, tastes were harmed while, according to them, the writing quality of students was diminished. For its part, the Church expressed concern about the endangerment of tradition, good customs, civic and family values.

Meanwhile, from psychiatry, Dr. Fredric Wertham advocated, in different symposiums and specialized publications, that children’s mental health was being attacked and that had to be stopped at all costs.

Dr. Fredric Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent

One of the professional’s main arguments was that comics caused a desensitization of children who sought to imitate what they found in the pages of their favorite magazines, thus causing serious damage to their behavior patterns and ways of relating in society. For him, by becoming accustomed to seeing situations of violence, aggressiveness would become an everyday response to any conflict situation that might arise, instead of trying to solve problems peacefully.

Thus, with the aim of regulating the content of comics, he published Seduction of the Innocent in 1954. But it wasn’t just about violence but also sexuality. Let’s remember that we are in a social, political, and cultural stage defined by the advent of McCarthyism, so one of the lines of censorship also attacked homosexuality, considering it a perversion. It’s not surprising, then, that Wertham dedicated several lines to this topic, as we can see below in his reference to the relationship between Batman and Robin:

“Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident.”

As if that weren’t enough, in Batman issue 84 published in April 1954, in the midst of the controversy, the following panel was published.

Batman and Robin sleeping in the same bed

Batman and Robin wake up together, in the same bed, with a happy and intimate closeness. This image, contextualized in the paranoia of the time, provoked an immediate reaction. Why imagine Wertham’s reaction when he came across this? For the psychiatrist, this scene confirmed his worst suspicions: that comics not only promoted violence but also “deviant behaviors” according to the standards of the time.

What is perhaps most fascinating from our contemporary perspective is that many of Wertham’s interpretations said more about his own prejudices and those of society at the time than about the actual content of the comics. His reading of homoerotic elements in Batman and Robin reveals a gaze obsessively focused on finding “perversions” where others simply saw a mentor-pupil relationship. Interested in analyzing visual narrative from a critical perspective? Discover fascinating analytical tools here.

The Code That Chained Creativity: The Comics Code Authority

Faced with all these accusations, various publishers formed the Comics Magazine Association of America and established a regulatory code that dictated what topics could see the light of day and in what ways under the Comics Code Authority seal.

Comics Code Authority approval seal

In other words, the content creators themselves carried out their self-regulation to publish and avoid criticism that would harm their sales. This was also necessary because specialized sales as we know them today did not exist, but rather there were intermediaries in the distribution between publishers and the public who reviewed whether or not they adhered to the Comics Code Authority seal. It wasn’t legally mandatory to carry the seal of approval, but there was a lot of pressure from advertisers, distributors, and different civic groups to respect it to the letter.

Of course, some companies decided not to adhere to this type of censorship, others went bankrupt, and this also gave rise to an independent circuit of comics and fanzines, but that’s another story. The impact of the Code was immediate and devastating for certain genres. Horror and crime comics, which had enjoyed enormous popularity, practically disappeared overnight. EC Comics, famous for titles like “Tales from the Crypt” and “Crime SuspenStories,” was forced to cancel almost all its publications, surviving only with MAD Magazine (which avoided the Code by transforming from comic to magazine).

The restrictions were amazingly specific and limiting. It was forbidden to show zombies, vampires, or werewolves. Scenes of torture or sadism could not be depicted. The words “horror” or “terror” could not appear in titles. Authorities such as police, judges, or government figures had to always be presented with respect. Crime could never be shown in a way that generated sympathy for criminals or distrust of authorities. And, of course, any suggestion of sexual content was absolutely prohibited.

However, this is not an isolated case, as the Hays Code had already been established in Hollywood cinema in 1930, which governed considerable censorship in scripts and exhibitions from 1934 to 1967. The regulations of both codes have several coincidences that are located in the field of preserving American values regarding the treatment of violence, drug abuse, the representation of religious and governmental institutions, parental authority, in addition to restricting the erotic imagination. As if the above were not enough, the lexicon used was also regulated to avoid slang and colloquialisms that could deteriorate the linguistic learning of youth.

Examples of comics before and after the code

As we can imagine, the regulations were very strict, and this led to the inevitable infantilization of stories, considerably reducing their reach to the adult audience. Sales were dropping, and it was essential to carry out a reinvention of superheroes with incredible creativity. For artists, this posed a formidable challenge: how to convey emotion, danger, and drama without being able to show their most obvious manifestations? If you want to explore how to represent intense emotions within creative limitations, don’t miss these invaluable resources.

The result was a strange creative paradox. On one hand, the Code stifled more mature and realistic explorations. On the other, it forced creators to develop more subtle and sophisticated forms of visual storytelling. Unable to show explicit violence, artists perfected the art of insinuation, of off-screen action, of communicating through shadows and suggestions what they could not show directly. This tension between restriction and expression defined an entire era.

The Silver Age: Reinvention and Renewal Under Restrictions

In this way, we enter the period we know as the “Silver Age.” In it, Marvel Comics was born, also known as the “House of Ideas” which, under Stan Lee, created the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, our friendly neighbor, in the early years of the 1960s. With the prohibition on the treatment of the supernatural, the abilities of superheroes had a more scientific origin and underwent a process of humanization that brought them closer to their ideal audience. The publishing market thus returned to having important profits while self-regulating.

This period marked a fundamental turning point in the evolution of the medium. Faced with the restrictions imposed by the Code, creators responded with an ingenious reinvention of the superhero genre. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko led this revolution at Marvel Comics, introducing a new type of superhero: fallible, conflicted, and deeply human despite their extraordinary powers. Peter Parker struggled to pay rent and care for his sick aunt. The members of the Fantastic Four argued like a dysfunctional family. The X-Men faced rejection and discrimination for being different.

This approach struck a chord with readers, especially teenagers, who could identify with these imperfect heroes in ways they had never experienced with the more idealized superheroes of the Golden Age. Storytelling became more sophisticated, with continued story arcs that developed over multiple issues, rewarding loyal readers and allowing for deeper character development.

However, Stan Lee himself was one of the first to confront the Comics Code Authority by publishing a story arc in The Amazing Spider-Man (#96 – #98) that problematized drug abuse. Although this story arc was requested by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, it did not get the approval seal and was published anyway.

Drug storyline in The Amazing Spider-Man

It’s very difficult to talk about the dangerous implications of drug abuse if we can’t mention them, right? This historic episode perfectly illustrates the absurdity that the Code had reached: even when a comic tried to convey a positive and educational message against drug abuse—something that theoretically should align with the values that the Code claimed to defend—the mere representation of the topic was enough to deny approval.

Marvel’s decision to publish these issues without the Code seal was a significant act of rebellion that set an important precedent. It demonstrated that a major publisher could commercially survive without Code approval, and that the public was ready for more mature and socially relevant content. Would you like to learn how to create graphic narratives with social impact? Visit here to discover how.

This event triggered a revision of the Code in 1971 that reduced its restrictions on horror works, violence, and mild sexual content. Additionally, it began to allow the appearance of drugs as long as they were shown in a negative light. But this also, among other issues, triggered the “Bronze Age” and one of the most traumatic events in superhero history: the death of Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man’s first girlfriend, from the perspective of Gerry Conway and Gil Kane in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 – 122 in 1973.

The Bronze Age: When Comics Grew Up With Their Readers

While it’s debatable whether this is the beginning or not, since we could find the kickoff in Green Lantern #76 by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams in February 1970 or in Conan #01 with script by Roy Thomas and illustration by Barry Smith and published by Marvel Comics in the same year, what’s interesting here is that there was a break. Social reality began to seep into comics, and death was a terrible and possible probability.

Blood appears, characters have more psychological depth, the mandatory distinction between Good and Evil is nuanced, antagonists gain relevance, and self-criticism appears in comic circuits. Frank Miller gave us Batman in the form of The Dark Knight and Alan Moore wrote Watchmen. The Comics Code Authority was losing power and relevance.

The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

The Bronze Age represented the moment when comics began to “grow up” along with their original readers. The children who had devoured Superman and Batman in the 40s and 50s were now adults, and many maintained their fondness for the medium. Creators, aware of this, began to introduce more mature themes and perspectives that resonated with this evolving audience.

O’Neil and Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories directly addressed social problems such as racism, drug addiction, and environmental pollution. The X-Men, under Chris Claremont’s pen, became a powerful allegory about discrimination and intolerance. Gwen Stacy’s death broke the mold by showing that not even superheroes’ loved ones were safe, introducing an element of real consequences and lasting trauma that forever transformed the genre.

Artistically, this period saw an explosion of experimentation and sophistication. Artists like Neal Adams, Bernie Wrightson, Jim Steranko, and Barry Windsor-Smith introduced more expressive and technically ambitious styles, radically expanding the visual possibilities of the medium. Deepen your understanding of the evolution of visual style in comics and learn advanced techniques of artistic expression here.

By this time, however, few publishers remained under its yoke, such as Marvel, Archie, Harvey, and DC. The latter, in fact, was considering removing the seal from its productions as it reduced and harmed the artistic expression of its members. Additionally, with the change in distribution, since it began to be direct from publishers to the market, some of them were able to start dispensing with the Comics Code Authority seal since the enforcing arm of regulation had lost its validity.

This prompted a new modification in 1989, but it was already too late; the “Dark Age” had begun, and there would be no turning back. Thus, we were spectators and participants in the death of Robin (Jason Todd) in A Death in the Family in Batman issues 426-429 from late 1988. And we also consumed the rebellion of publications like The Killing Joke, The Death of Superman, Spawn, Deadpool’s debut in New Mutants #98, among other great works and appearances of the 20th century.

Image of representative comics from the Dark Age

The Dark Age: Deconstructing Heroes and Challenging Limits

With these modifications, the superhero industry grew enormously to the point of offering excessive amounts of merchandising. Such relevance of “customer” readers and the urgency to please them produced more ruptures in the field to the point that the mainstream big publishers had become bitter enemies of creativity and originality for some artists. In this context, Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson, and it was there that Frank Miller had a place to publish one of his great works, Sin City.

The so-called “Dark Age” or “Modern Age” of comics was a period of profound deconstruction of the superhero concept and radical experimentation with form and content. Works like Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons or The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller completely rethought what a superhero comic could be, subjecting the genre to a ruthless analysis and revealing its internal contradictions. Heroes were no longer simply forces for good; they could be complex, morally ambiguous, even deeply disturbed.

This period also saw the emergence of independent publishers and lines for adult readers within the major companies. Vertigo, a DC Comics imprint launched in 1993 under the direction of Karen Berger, became home to innovative works such as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Hellblazer, and Preacher. Image Comics, founded by a group of star artists who left Marvel in 1992, established a new model of creative ownership that challenged the dominance of major publishers. Boost your creativity with innovative narrative techniques that will revolutionize your own stories! Click to discover more.

Narrative sophistication reached new heights during this period. Non-linear structures, unreliable narrators, metafiction, and other complex literary devices that were previously reserved for “serious literature” found their way into comics. At the same time, art became increasingly stylistically diverse, from detailed hyperrealism to expressive abstraction, including styles influenced by Japanese manga.

Marvel, for its part, created its own regulation system in 2001, and by 2011, the only publishers that continued to publish under the Comics Code Authority seal, DC and Archie, abandoned it completely. The Code, which had once exercised almost totalitarian control over the content of American comics, finally died, not with a bang but with a whimper, having lost all relevance in a medium that had evolved far beyond its limitations.

Beyond Prejudice: Comics as Mature Art in the 21st Century

In the last two decades, the world of comics has experienced an explosion of diversity in both content and styles that would have been unimaginable to the censors of the 1950s. Today, the medium encompasses everything from intimate autobiographies and journalistic reports to speculative science fiction and epic fantasy, covering practically any conceivable genre. This diversification has been accompanied by unprecedented critical recognition, with graphic novels winning prestigious literary awards and being included in academic curricula.

The 21st century has also seen a significant democratization of comic creation. The internet and digital technologies have allowed independent creators to reach global audiences without the need for large publishers. Webcomics, digital comics, and crowdfunding platforms have opened new pathways for innovative voices that might never have found space in the traditional system.

At the same time, global influence on comics has intensified, with Japanese manga, Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, and traditions from around the world mutually enriching their visual languages and narratives. This cross-pollination has led to an era of unprecedented experimentation, where the boundaries between “national styles” are continuously blurred. Expand your artistic horizons by exploring global styles of illustration and visual narrative here.

Paradoxically, while comics have matured as an artistic medium, they have also conquered mainstream culture like never before. The massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is perhaps the most visible example, but it represents just the tip of the iceberg of how characters, aesthetics, and narratives born in comic panels have deeply permeated contemporary popular culture.

Comics: A Medium Without Age or Thematic Limits

Let’s return, then, to the beginning: are comics children’s reading? Not necessarily. A long road was traveled to divert it from the weight of that label. Numerous discussions and negotiations were disputed over more than fifty years, and now we are here, choosing, even though they tried to take that opportunity away from us. That said, before giving a comic book as a gift, remember that comics are not child’s play.

The history we have traveled shows us that comics have always been a reflection of their time: of its anxieties, hopes, values, and contradictions. From the first superheroes who offered escapism and hope during the Great Depression and World War II, to the complex contemporary narratives that explore the moral ambiguities of our time, this medium has constantly evolved to remain relevant and meaningful.

What began being perceived primarily as children’s entertainment has transformed into an artistic vehicle capable of addressing the deepest and most complex themes of human experience. And yet, it has also retained that unique ability to marvel, surprise, and transport us to other worlds that captivated the first readers more than eight decades ago.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from this evolution is that comics, like all great art, should not be pigeonholed or limited by simplistic expectations. They are a medium, not a genre; a visual language with unlimited potential to express any type of story, for any type of audience. Ready to bring your own stories to life? Find the inspiration and tools you need here.

In this path of transformation and maturation, comics have demonstrated, time and again, their ability to reinvent themselves and overcome obstacles. From suffocating censorship to cultural prejudices, no barrier has managed to contain the creativity and innovation of generations of artists committed to pushing the boundaries of what this medium can achieve.

So the next time someone suggests that comics are “just for kids,” we can smile knowing that this perception simply reveals how much they have yet to discover about the rich, complex, and fascinating evolution of an art that continues to surprise us with its ability to tell stories that matter, regardless of the age of who reads them.

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