Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

Bingham 29
Frederick Wertham prompted swift and significant changes in the content of mainstream
comics and motivated an underground movement. Wertham's book, The Seduction of the
Innocent, argued that comics directly targeted children as an audience and pushed them
toward delinquent habits by immersing them in stories about crime, sex, drugs, and other
vices (Tabachnick 13). The Seduction of the Innocent became a rallying cry for
concerned parents whose worries helped galvanize a Congressional inquiry into the
comics industry itself. 3 Rather than face the strict controls of government regulation, the
Association of Comics Magazine Publishers or ACMP, opted for internal regulation and
self-censorship. Though the trade group had existed since 1947, the threat posed by
Wertham's attack prompted re-organization into a new entity. This group was called the
Comics Magazine Association of America; it was responsible for the development of the
Comics Code Authority which drew inspiration from the ACMP's original publishers
code. Members would submit their titles to the CAA who would screen the work to see if
it adhered to the code; if there were no violations, the work would receive the CAA's
authorization to place its seal upon the comic book's cover. Some of the restrictions of
the code included: “Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy
for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others
with a desire to imitate criminals,” “Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary
knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated,” and,
“Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and
vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited” (Code of the Comics
Magazine Association of America. 26 Oct. 1954). Though these rules were intended to
preserve the moral values of youth exposed to topics presented by the genre, they also