Excerpts from the Comics Magazine Association of America

Comics Code (1954)

Comics Magazine Association of America

Theater, Volume 33, Number 1, Winter 2003, pp. 10-11 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/41917

[ Access provided at 23 May 2023 15:32 GMT from IFCE-Instituto Feeral do Ceará ]
The Ephemeral Page Mee t s
The Ephemeral stage:
C om i x i n P e r f or m a n c e
Art Spiegelman, Phillip Johnston, and Jean Randich,
Interviewed by Alice Rebecca Moore

Art Spiegelman’s self-proclaimed midlife crisis has taken the form of an escape into
the world of new music-theater with Drawn to Death: A Three Panel Opera. I met with
Spiegelman and his two collaborators — avant-jazz composer Phillip Johnston and
director Jean Randich — in Spiegelman’s New York studio last May to talk about the
opera and its recent workshop productions at Dartmouth and St. Ann’s Church in
Brooklyn. We gathered around a table surrounded by books, art, and at least one com-
puter displaying a future New Yorker cover. An enlarged color drawing of “Art and
Commerce” hung over us. In the drawing, Art and Commerce sleep following a rous-
ing bout of intercourse, while their raunchy and irreverent offspring (cartoons and
comics) prepare to throttle them to death — a fitting backdrop to a conversation that
centered on issues of free speech and censorship, high and low art, human nature, and
the fierce coupling of comics and theater.
In Spiegelman’s script, a couple of guys want to continue doing what they
love — making comics — and the moral majority wants to stop them. When enraged
parents burn mountains of comic books, Drawn to Death evokes the various witch
hunts of American history. The parents unite under a banner of white, upper-class,
conservative dreams for their children, dreams which constitute the norm; they will
mold their children into “aristocrats” who “read Shakespeare” and are not “queer.” And
comics, the low art that caters to a market of adolescents, can only corrupt. As Spiegel-
man says: “We’d rather have dopey bland stuff around for ourselves and our kids than
deal with that fireball of energy that comes from vital work.” And thus the story of
comic book censorship becomes a blueprint for the eradication of perceived social
transgressions everywhere.

5
 mo ore

DRAWN TO DEATH, A THREE PANEL OPERA, is a work that uses the “Seven
Arts” (theater, music, dance, visual arts in the form of sculptural sets and projections) to
scrutinize and welcome that bastard hunchback dwarf of the arts, the “Ninth Art,”—
comix!— into their rarified midst. D2D chronicles the rise and fall of the American comic book
from its birth in the 1930s at the height of the Depression, through its “golden age” in the 1940s,
to the medium’s near-death in the 50s as a result of Congressional hearings on the connection
between comics and juvenile delinquency.
D2D is loosely based on the intertwined careers of JACK COLE (the brilliant creator of
“Plastic Man,” who committed suicide in 1958 on the eve of having achieved his lifelong goal to
sell a syndicated daily comic strip to the newspapers), his friend BOB WOOD (the alcoholic
editor of America’s most popular comic book in the postwar years, “Crime Does Not Pay,”
who — after years of unemployment following the Congressional hearings — murdered his
girlfriend in 1958) and DR. FREDERIC WERTHAM (the eminent psychiatrist whose 1953
bestseller, “Seduction of the Innocent,” brought the industry to its knees). In D2D these
characters have been caricatured into Todd Winks, Woozy Woods, and Dr. Frieda Mensch,
respectively. The work situates itself squarely on the hyphen between the High and Low Arts to
examine America’s fascination with lurid violence on the one hand and its puritanical longing
to legislate morality on the other.
Formally, this piece investigates the relationship between narration in the performing
arts and in comics . . . thereby grappling with the relationship of Time to Space. That is to say,
while theatrical works move through time, comix juxtapose images in a spatial arrangement
on a page to simulate time. Drawn to Death, therefore, will deploy the vocabulary of comix to
stage its story, using three large framed scrims with the libretto (in speech balloons) and
drawings projected onto these screens.
As our occasional narrator, Mr. Crime, puts it: “Newsprint
yellows and crumbles but — still — art for reproduction lives long
after any performance . . . The Murderer is a Public Enemy, but
TIME is the Private Enemy! So we must murder Time and turn it
into Space. Let our story . . . unfold . . . in panels.”

— art spiegelman. new york city

 ephemeral page mee t s ephemeral stage

alice rebecca moore What inspired you to jean randich I read Art’s books when I was
put the world of comic books onstage? in Germany and was profoundly bowled over. I
didn’t yet know Phillip’s work, although, inter-
art spiegelman It was like a jailbreak. I’m
estingly enough, we were both attracted to Tod
too dictatorial in the area of comics. Anything
Browning’s 1927 silent film The Unknown.
that has to do with the printed page, I always
When I started listening to Phillip’s music what
assume I know better. I immediately fang and
really interested me was his sense of humor. It’s
claw up against an editor. It’s not a genuine
in the music.
zone for collaboration. Film really isn’t, either.
It’s about power plays and demographics — try-
spiegelman The Unknown is what finally got
ing to figure out what will make money. I was
me in touch with Phillip as well, although all
invited to do a comic book opera once, and that
arrows had been pointing at him for a couple of
got me interested for the first time in collabora-
years. I went to a showing of the film in
tion, but I soon realized I wasn’t exactly an
Prospect Park that had live orchestra accompa-
opera fan. I didn’t get the phrase “music the-
niment. I loved it. I didn’t realize Phillip was
ater” in my head until much later.
the composer. When I contacted him about
Drawn to Death he came back with the mes-
phillip johnston I’ve been a lifelong comic
sage, “I’m all over this like a cheap suit.” I
book freak, a fan of Art’s work, and very inter-
thought, “OK, the guy’s got the lingo. We can
ested in the early history of comic books. That
work.”
era is related to my music. I work in a lot of
different media —film, theater, dance, concert
randich The Unknown makes you believe
music. I choose the projects based on some-
that a man who has two thumbs on one hand
thing, specifically, that’s different about them,
and pretends to be armless would have his limbs
that’s not just the same old shit. Music-theater Art Spiegelman at
amputated for a woman. It’s graphic. The thing
is an area I’m drawn to. Unfortunately, I don’t work on Drawn to
about comics is that the storytelling is graphic. Death at the
like almost everything I see. The few things I
It’s like Titus Andronicus or Greek tragedy. You Dartmouth College
have liked have excited me, so the opportunity
don’t see that anymore in modern theater. workshop, 2001.
to create music-theater myself was fantastic.

7
 mo ore
spiegelman Comics move into zones where
you don’t have the same degrees of protection
you have with literature. Comics felt really dan-
gerous when they first were invented, both
comic strips and, later, comic books. So much
so that genteel culture in the 1890s tried to sup-
press them as vulgar immigrant culture, semi-
literate. That is the core Drawn to Death is built
around. It reverberates now with video games
and the Internet. We’ve got to protect our kids
from being able to look up pornography on the
Internet. We’ve got to protect our kids from
violent video games. I don’t take the position
that we don’t have to protect our kids, but it’s
usually a defense against having to deal with it
ourselves. There’s no reason why adults should
be protected from mediated culture. New tech-
nologies and new media are Promethean enter-
prises. They bring both light and heat. How do
we reap the benefits that come with the territory
without getting totally burned? That’s one of
the central questions in Drawn to Death.
Phillip, you said Drawn to Death is not just the
same old shit .
johnston Some of the so-called multimedia
works that have been touted as new, wonderful
innovations have been very pedestrian, conven-
tional, hackneyed stories with a few computer
screens thrown in. Drawn to Death goes a little
deeper and investigates the nature of the very
media it employs — comics, theater, video,
film — projected images on the screen. Also,
the narrative is happening on three levels: the
story of Woozy and Todd, the history of comic
books, and, at the same time, an investigation
into the nature of the comic book and, by asso-
ciation, theater. How the story is told is woven
into the story itself.
8
What music-theater have you seen that you liked?
johnston Everything by Brecht and Weill,
and the early Richard Foreman collaborations
with Stanley Silverman, like Hotel for Criminals
and Dr. Selavy’s Magic Theater.
spiegelman I narrowed my operatic tastes
down to Brecht and Weill, too. What I like
about theater is the fact that it’s ephemeral.
Comics are called ephemeral, but, as Mr.
Crime explains, even if the paper is yellow and
crumbling, in a peculiar way it’s a bid for
immortality. Theater is an embracing of one’s
life and death because it’s gone as soon as it’s
over. That particular tension is what made me
want to have my nice, safe midlife crisis by
messing with this new muse.
When I first started conceptualizing
Drawn to Death, I thought the cheap irony of
the guy who created Crime Does Not Pay com-
mitting a murder was going to carry me through
the narrative and allow me to drape the pageant
of comic book history around it. Back then, it
was about Charlie Biro and Bob Wood, the two
cartoonists who made that comic book. The
problem was that Biro was a very colorful and
interesting character, but he wasn’t a cartoonist
I admired. Wood wasn’t either, so I was missing
a place to drape my affection. I still feel awk-
ward using two cartoonists who aren’t Jewish
because one of the historical facts about comics
is how Jewish they were. So I figured the fact
that I’m Jewish would have to stand in. Most of
the comic book world is an extension of the
garment district. The first generations were
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster [Superman]; Bob
Cohen, who became Bob Kane [Batman];
Stanley Lieber, who became Stan Lee [Spider-
man]; Jacob Kurtzberg, who became Jack Kirby
[Captain America]; and on and on. It’s just an
incredibly Jewish American first-generation,
second-generation industry. That aspect got
lost in my embrace of Jack Cole as I discovered
more and more about him. He and Wood were
very close as friends and coworkers in real life.
“ Ephemeral Public ations”

Night. Artists crowded together at drawing tables and desks, even working on the floor, at the Ephemeral
Publications comics office.
A typewriter clatters while a clock ticks loudly. Izzy, cigar in mouth, is typing a page of comics with one
finger (projected as he types in panel 1). The cartoonists, in visors and vests, are hunched over drawing tables
working feverishly.
A page of comics is being ruled out and lettered in panel 2 as soon as it’s described, and penciled and
inked by several pairs of hands simultaneously in close-up in panel 3.

TODD:
It’s kinda fun . . .
figuring out the angles, the page layouts . . .
the timing.
(everything goes silent and freezes)

It’s a whole new way of telling stories — and not just a few panels a day like the newspaper strips. It’s
almost like movies, but you get to be everybody from cameraman to (fluttering his lashes) leading lady.

WOOZY:
Yeah, but we got a scriptwriter who’s brain-dead.
Lookit this Triumphant Trio story we’re doin: Red,
White and Bloozy smash their way out of Dachau,
fly to Hitler’s headquarters in a rocket ship and beat
up the Gestapo guards all in one page. Then Red
blasts Hitler into a swastika-shaped pile of ashes with
his laser gun and snarls “This is for trying to destroy
Democracy, you despicable dictator!”

Jeezis. Izzy. How kin you write such total drivel?

9
E xc e r p t s f r om t h e C om i c s M ag a z i n e
A s s o ciat i on of A m e r ic a C om ic s C ode
of 1954

Code for Editorial Matter

general standards
1. 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.
2. No comics shall explicitly present the unique details and
methods of a crime.
3. Policemen, judges, government officials and respected
institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create
disrespect for established authority.
4. If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant
activity.
5. Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered
glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for
emulation.
6. In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the
criminal shall be punished for his misdeeds.
7. Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of
brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gun play,
physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.
8. No unique or unusual methods of concealing weapons shall
be shown.
9. Instances of law enforcement officers dying as a result of a
criminal’s activities should be discouraged.
10. The crime of kidnapping shall never be portrayed in any
detail, nor shall any profit accrue to the abductor or kidnapper.
The criminal or the kidnapper should be discouraged.
11. The letters of the word “Crime” on a comics magazine cover
shall never be appreciably greater in dimension than the other
words contained in the title. The word “crime” shall never
appear alone on a cover.
12. Restraint in the use of the word “crime” in titles or sub-titles
should be exercised. . . .
10
How did the Brecht/Weill aesthetic influence Drawn
to Death?
spiegelman The fact that it’s epic rather than
classic theater — these are terms I’ve learned
recently — is something that felt natural to my
work. The tension between its aesthetic and politi-
cal dimensions also seems useful. And the fact that
it moves through low life — an interest we all
share.
johnston Weill’s music is a perfect example of
something that’s both funny and serious at the
same time. It’s some of the best music ever written.
The songs are funny but in a dark and vicious way.
They’re malicious. Traditionally, one of the fail-
ings of political theater is that it preaches to the
converted, whereas Happy End or Threepenny
Opera make you feel something very powerful.
They’re truly successful political theater because
they’re about human nature. They’re never dated.
spiegelman Which isn’t to say that Drawn to
Death is a pastiche of Threepenny Opera or any of
the Brecht/Weill work. Their sensibility perme-
ates what we’re about, but the music is really com-
ing from somewhere else.
One of the things Phillip was able to do
with the music, which was so gratifying for me,
was deal with my lumpy rhymes. They don’t stick
to traditional rhythms. Rather than trying to make
one seamless tune, we have the collage sensibility
that’s important in other verbal and visual aspects
of Drawn to Death, without being so overtly dis-
junctive that it’s off-putting, or so ingratiating that Dialogue
it loses its own reason to exist. It echoes every other 1. Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols
layer.
which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden. . . .

johnston What I’m trying to do with the music

is support the different levels in the text. To me, Costume
theater music always has to support the words. In 1. Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue
this particular case, the words are trying to express
exposure.
something that has a number of levels. So the
2. Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is
music has to function that way, too. At the same
time, I love great tunes and rhythms and har- unacceptable.
monies. They’ve got to be good songs. 3. All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable
to society.
Are there songs you’re particularly excited by?
4. Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of
johnston I like “The Comic Book Code.” any physical qualities.

We still have the comic book code today, right?

Marriage and Sex
spiegelman In its vestigial form [see sidebars].
1. Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as

Does it affect what you do? desirable.

2. Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed.
spiegelman No. It doesn’t have the heat it once
had. It’s tried to soften itself several times — to put Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are
itself out of existence. Today, most comic books unacceptable. . . .
aren’t even available on newsstands. There is an 3. Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable
organization called the Comic Book Legal
behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the
Defense Fund that protects comic book stores
problems of love is not a license for morbid distortion.
against censorship. Occasionally crazy things hap-
pen. A young artist from Florida named Michael 4. The treatment of love-romance stories shall emphasize the
Diana was arrested for making pornographic but value of the home and the sanctity of marriage.
very primitively drawn comic books. Part of his 5. Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a
sentence was that he was forbidden to draw. He
way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.
was also prohibited from talking to minors. The
idea that an artist producing his comic book in very 6. Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.
small print runs could be given this sentence seems
like it’s out of some kind of science fiction novel. — From Anne Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the
Similarly, there are comic book shops that have
Comics Code (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press), 166 – 69.
been entrapped for selling inappropriate comics to
minors, and the Comic Book Defense Fund has
been involved in defending those people, some-
times in conjunction with the ACLU.

What is involved in the process of transferring the

two-dimensional world of comics onto a three-dimen-
sional stage?

11
E xc e r p t s f r om t h e C om i c s M ag a z i n e
As s o ciat i on of A m e r ic a C om ic s C ode
of 1989
Preamble
The Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA) was
formed in 1954 by a group of publishers committed to the
principle that the public deserved decent and wholesome comic
books as entertainment for children.
While the comic book industry has changed over the
intervening three decades, as has almost every other facet of
American life, the publisher members of the CMAA remain
committed to providing decent and wholesome comic books for
children. This new updated version of the Comics Code is a
reaffirmation of that commitment.
Institutions
In general, recognizable national, social, political, cultural,
ethnic, and racial groups, religious institutions, and law
enforcement authorities will be portrayed in a positive light.
These include the government on the national, state, and
municipal levels, including all of its numerous departments,
agencies, and services; law enforcement agencies such as the
state and municipal police, and other actual law enforcement
agencies such as the FBI, the Secret Service, the CIA, etc.; the
military, both United States and foreign; known religious
organizations; ethnic advancement agencies; foreign leaders and
representatives of other governments and national groups; and
social groups identifiable by lifestyle, such as homosexuals, the
economically disadvantaged, the economically privileged, the
homeless, senior citizens, minors, etc.
Socially responsible attitudes will be favorably depicted
and reinforced. Socially inappropriate, irresponsible, or illegal
behavior will be shown to be specific actions of a specific
individual or group of individuals, and not meant to reflect the
routine activity of any general group of real persons.
If, for dramatic purposes, it is necessary to portray such a
group of individuals in a negative manner, the name of the group
and its individual members will be fictitious, and its activities
will not be clearly identifiable with the routine activities of any
real group.
randich The actors have to figure out ways to
divide their movements into framed actions. If
they don’t do that, they can’t exist in a world with
the comics. At the workshop at St. Ann’s, Tom
Nelis, Ron Bagden, John Kelly, Anika Larsen, and
Dale Soules each addressed the challenge differ-
ently. John Kelly, who played Mr. Crime, found a
way to physicalize the different metaphors his
character jumps to. He had ways of saying the
words. You’d see it in his eyes.
spiegelman He’d find great bits of business.
When he talked about time he moved his arm so it
would look like a clock sweeping. He helped me
realize that whatever form the production ulti-
mately takes, the acting will have to be very chore-
ographed. It has to be sharp and discrete. Tom
Nelis, who played the Jack Cole character, said,
“I’ve got to set up an entire relationship with some-
body and indicate we’re in love, but I have about
two lines to do it in.” I’m used to working in bal-
loons. You only get about fifteen or twenty words
before they start seeming top-heavy. Everything’s
condensed. An actor is not going through the
Stanislavskian development of character. The
drawings are as important as any of the actors. The
music is as important. I want to have a live person
dancing with an animated, projected image. They
would interact with each other. I’m thinking of
doing that with the Rubber Pup song. I’m eager to
see that happen because it creates an intermediate
zone between comics and theater. I want there to
be a tension between two-dimensionality and
Todd wanders the street, musing, and slips on some dog shit. He sees (a projected drawing of) what looks to be a
very, very long dachshund behind two trees and a fire hydrant. As they finish doing their duty and walk past he
sees it was actually 3 dogs. A lightbulb slowly begins to glow above Todd’s head:

A rubber pup.

(The dachshund loops across the width of the stage and turns into the Rubber Pup)

YUP! A rubber pup!

He kin scrunch himself down
or stretch himself up.
A mutt who kin morph into any old thing:
a lamp,
or a chair,
or a creaky old swing!
A bird,
Or a bra with a triple-D cup.
Better look out, cats . . .
It’s the bouncing Rubber Pup!

three-dimensionality. You can iterate and reiter-

ate a picture in comics in a way that you can’t in
the theater, and insist on a kind of timelessness.
Time isn’t passing; you’re still in the same picture.
That tension between immortality and
mortality, between time and space — because
comics are a spatial media — is what theater
swims through. Being able to make those things
talk to each other seems like something vital. It
will ultimately be a weaving that allows the frozen
visual components of comics to interact with
these mammals that are rotting as you look at
them. That tension operates here. There’s yet
another tension between so-called high and low
art, which is why I love calling Drawn to Death an
13
 Stereotyped images and activities will be not used to
degrade specific national, ethnic, cultural, or socioeconomic
groups.
Language
The language in a comic book will be appropriate for a mass
audience that includes children. Good grammar and spelling will
be encouraged. Publishers will exercise good taste and a
responsible attitude as to the use of language in their comics.
Obscene and profane words, symbols, and gestures are
prohibited.
References to physical handicaps, illnesses, ethnic
backgrounds, sexual preferences, religious beliefs, and race, when
presented in a derogatory manner for dramatic purposes, will be
shown to be unacceptable.
Violence
Violent actions or scenes are acceptable within the context of a
comic book story when dramatically appropriate. Violent
behavior will not be shown as acceptable. If it is presented in a
realistic manner, care should be taken to present the natural
repercussions of such actions. Publishers should avoid excessive
levels of violence, excessively graphic depictions of violence, and
excessive bloodshed or gore. Publishers will not present detailed
information instructing readers how to engage in imitable violent
actions.
Character iz ations
Character portrayals will be carefully crafted and show sensitivity
to national, ethnic, religious, sexual, political, and socioeconomic
orientations. If it is dramatically appropriate for one character to
demean another because of his or her sex, ethnicity, religion,
sexual preference, political orientation, socioeconomic status, or
disabilities, the demeaning words or actions will be clearly shown
to be wrong or ignorant in the course of the story. Stories
depicting characters subject to physical, mental, or emotional
problems or with economic disadvantages should never assign
ultimate responsibility for these conditions to the characters
themselves. Heroes should be role models and should reflect the
prevailing social attitudes.
14
opera, even though I’m not sure what the heck it
has to do with opera.
Do you think Drawn to Death is high art?
spiegelman It’s more interesting to decide
whether something is or isn’t art. There are many
comics that move me a lot more than certain paint-
ings. Things that we now consider part of the
revered canon of our culture were just as gritty in
their day as comics and video games. If something
lasts long enough, it earns a certain degree of ven-
erability.
johnston The reason we constantly get stuck in
this dichotomy between so-called high and low art
is that we can’t always recognize the distinction.
When Ornette Coleman first came out with his
quartet in the 1960s, people said, “It’s not jazz.”
Same thing when be-bop first came out in the
swing era. Now these forms are recognized as part
of the canon of American music. Every two
months you read an article in the New York Times
about how nothing new is happening in jazz. Peo-
ple don’t recognize new jazz because it doesn’t
sound like the jazz of the fifties, sixties, or seven-
ties. What is new is invisible. It’s the same thing
with Drawn to Death. Is it an opera? Is it theater? Is
it multimedia?
spiegelman Miles Davis said, “I’ll play it first
and you tell me what it is later.” Essentially, you
make whatever you need to make, and you use
whatever is at hand.
johnston That’s what early comic books were.
spiegelman The notion of high culture is a form
of static. It freezes things. It jams up your head
from working through something because work
gets made much more organically than that. It
doesn’t fit into boxes. What’s of merit is making
some kind of map of the universe, whether or not
you do it in an idiom that’s immediately recogniz-
able. You use whatever languages are going to get
you there — any style from the past, any combina-
tion of so-called high or low art. My other beef
against so-called high culture is that we assume it
has to be boring. There is a medicinal quality that
comes with certain kinds of high culture; it’s
somehow good for you because you have to get
past your natural desire to sleep. I’m speaking like
the caricaturist I am. Of course, when you find
your way into a work of art, its category becomes
irrelevant.
Do you think of theater as high or as low culture?
spiegelman Theater lost its centrality as a dom-
inant idiom after the Greeks — and certainly after
movies were invented. It’s not the central delivery
system anymore. That’s just beginning to happen
with comics. They’ll either reinvent themselves or
die.
johnston We rail against the fact that the so-
called mainstream is impenetrable to new ideas.
But the mainstream is a kind of mass sleeping
that’s informed by human nature. It resists any-
thing different from itself. It’s part of the structure
of the world for some reason, which doesn’t
change the fact that it sucks.
spiegelman The so-called mainstream wanted to
embrace Maus, so it just decided that Maus wasn’t
a comic. The New York Times front-page review
said, “Maus isn’t a comic. Maybe it’s a tragic.” Peo-
ple don’t know where to put it. But they’ve
included it. Sometimes it’s in the history section,
the memoir section, the biography section of a
bookstore. I haven’t tried to break down cate-
gories; it’s not interesting to me to figure out what
category I should be in and stay there.
Do people still believe that comics should be funny?
spiegelman There are a lot of vestigial layers of
thinking: It should be funny; it should be for chil-
dren; it should be adult superheroes; it should be
imaginary rather than real, fiction rather than
nonfiction.
Substance Ab use
Healthy, wholesome lifestyles will be presented as desirable.
However, the use and abuse of controlled substances, legal and
illicit, are facts of modern existence, and may be portrayed when
dramatically appropriate.
The consumption of alcohol, narcotics, pharmaceuticals,
and tobacco will not be depicted in a glamorous way. When the
line between the normal, responsible consumption of legal
substances and the abuse of these substances is crossed, the
distinction will be made clear and the adverse consequences of
such abuse will be noted.
Use of dangerous substances both legal and illegal should
be shown with restraint as necessary to the context of the story.
However, storylines should not be detailed to the point of serving
as instruction manuals for substance abuse. In each story, the
abuser will be shown to pay the physical, mental, and/or social
penalty for his or her abuse.
Cr ime
While crimes and criminals may be portrayed for dramatic
purposes, crimes will never be presented in such a way as to
inspire readers with a desire to imitate them nor will criminals be
portrayed in such a manner as to inspire readers to emulate them.
Stories will not present unique imitable techniques or methods of
committing crimes.
At tire and Sexualit y
Costumes in a comic book will be considered to be acceptable if
they fall within the scope of contemporary styles and fashions.
Scenes and dialogue involving adult relationships will be
presented with good taste, sensitivity, and in a manner which will
be considered acceptable by a mass audience. Primary human
sexual characteristics will never be shown. Graphic sexual activity
will never be depicted.
— From Anne Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the
Comics Code (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press), 175 – 78.
15
They meet at the elevator. Romantic music wells up
louder and painfully louder.

WOOZY:
Nice gams.

VI:
Love at first sight.
It was fate.

WOOZY:
Nice night.
Nice gams.
Let’s mate.

VI (glancing, straightening
her stocking):
Flatterer!

Thought balloons above Vi’s

head include covers of
romance and confession
magazines;
thought balloons above
Woozy’s head are from
Tijuana Bibles.

What about having thought balloons on stage, so
you can see what people are thinking?
spiegelman There’s one scene where Woozy
and Vi meet at the elevator. Woozy has a
thought balloon of a pornographic comic book
panel from the 1930s, when X-rated comics
were an important subgenre. Vi has a Confession
magazine from the period as her thought bal-
loon — a romance pulp. Those thought bal-
loons indicate they’re coming from two very
different places. It’s great to be able to reiterate
the dialogue by having it appear above the
singers. Sometimes it’s a defense mechanism
against acoustics. It was great to have the cho-
rus trying to burn comic books while their lyrics
appeared in speech balloons. The fact that there
are balloons above people who are trying to
squelch comics is kind of swell.
Is Mr. Crime the only actual comic book character
physicalized in the play?
spiegelman There’s also the Rubber Pup,
but he exists only as a drawing. Mr. Crime
exists in a between zone where he’s both a

16
 ephemeral page mee t s ephemeral stage
drawing and a person. But everybody’s existing
in the interstice between reality and drawing.
They carry the freight of caricature along with
them.
What can you say with caricatures that you can’t
say with well-rounded, complex characters? Why
are caricatures necessary to this story?
spiegelman That’s like asking me, why
would you write in English rather than Dutch?
I don’t know that things can be done any other
way. It’s more general than Drawn to Death —
it has to do with the way I think. Caricature has
a kind of efficiency. It’s like a syntagm in lin-
guistic studies, the smallest unit of meaning.
When you put these little Tinkertoys, these
syntagms, next to each other, you can build
something that’s very complex. Juxtaposing
caricatured elements doesn’t mean you end up
with something simple.
In one reading we had an actress playing
Frieda Mensch who was not cartoon-like and
therefore was able to win a lot of audience sym-
pathy. Her arguments carried a lot of weight. I
tried to make sure she was more caricatured in
the next production.
randich The audience wants to know who
they’re supposed to root for. Because of this
casting decision, people thought Art was mak-
ing an argument against comics.
spiegelman I was worried about going too
far in the other direction with Frieda Mensch,
of creating a straw man I could easily demol-
ish —“The Censor.” I just assumed everybody
would bring to comics the same delirious love I
do. But it was sure easy for them to say, “Yeah,
it’s garbage, burn it!” The last rewrite was about
why this vital culture actually went crazy. I had
to include much more tension between the pos-
sible positions one could take. In the past, I’ve
I’m
The sublime
Mister Crime.
Unlike you, I live forever, outside Time.
Ever since Cain first snuffed Abel
I’ve stuffed network news and cable
With tales of those who’ve joined me on my spree.
Like Attila, that honey,
or George Bush’s simple son — he
Learned everything he knows from dear old me.
Mass Murderers and traitors
Masterminds and masturbators
(even parking violators)
have learned all their lessons at my knee.
But don’t betray your wife
Or even take a single life
til I warn you not to trust a word I say.
Cuz Crime — that rhymes with slime — just doesn’t
pay. Hey! . . .
Crime Does Not Pay.
Well, I tell you,
CRIME DOES NOT PAY . . .
17
E xc e r p t s f r om t h e W r i t i n g s a n d S p e e c h e s of
Psychiatr ist Fredr ic Wertham (1 895–1981)
Comic books have nothing to do with drama, with art, or
literature.
—Seduction of the Innocent (New York: Rinehart, 1954), 241.
The very fact that crime comics are socially tolerated shows how
much expression of hostility we tolerate and even encourage.
—Seduction, 117.
My assistants and I studied children very carefully and off and
on we made the observation that children who got into some
special trouble were especially steeped in comic-book reading.
—“The Curse of the Comic Book: The Value Patterns and
Effects of Comic Books,” Religious Education 49 (1954): 394.
The comic-book publishers, racketeers of the spirit, have
corrupted children in the past, they are corrupting them right
now, and they will continue to corrupt
them unless we legally prevent.
—“It’s Still Murder: What Parents
Don’t Know about Comic Books,”
Saturday Review of Literature,
April 9, 1955, 48.
Some time ago some boys attacked
another boy and they twisted his arm
so viciously that it broke in two pieces,
and just like in a comic book, the bone came through the skin.
—Juvenile Delinquency (Comic Books): Hearings before the Senate
Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, 83d Cong., 2d sess.,
April 21 – 22, June 24, 1954, 85.
The lack of respect for human life can begin in childhood in the
comparative indifference to torture, mutilation, and death so
rife in comic books. The comic books are obscene glorifications
of violence and crime, of sadistic and masochistic social
attitudes.
—“Wertham on Murder,” Newsweek, May 9, 1949, 52.
18
formulated it for myself as a witch-hunt. On the
other hand, cartoonists are sorcerers in the sense
that they bring illusion to life. The fact that comics
have something valuable to offer had to be made
overt.
What are the implications of the “Yeah, it’s garbage,
burn it” reaction?
spiegelman I don’t know what it means to have
to think in real time. When you can’t chew on
something, you actually have to calibrate what
you’re offering to make sure you haven’t whipped
people into a frenzy. Even though that’s true of
theater, I resist it. I’m much more interested in
presenting than manipulating. What does it mean
to have to elicit a laugh or a gasp or a sentimental
tear? This seems to be what traditional theater is
after. It’s not like you want to remove the engine
from the car, but how do you remove that particu-
lar engine?
People have a hard time getting away from realism.
spiegelman I’m very appreciative of things that
have more to do with painting than narrative.
Some things are about perception rather than sym-
bol manipulation. It’s easy to bring symbols to life
and get them to whiz around. But certain responsi-
bilities come with that. An emotional and intellec-
tual response becomes inevitable. Ideally every bit
of the magic act should be on the table. All the
cards are face up. At a certain moment, one pulls
back in order to let the illusion come forward. That
kind of withholding is part of what makes some-
thing exist on an emotional plane without being
manipulative.
You can’t get away from human emotions.
spiegelman Nor should you. But what does one
do to elicit them? I have one panel I’ve been work-
ing on called “In the Shadow of the Towers.” For
most people September 11 was only a media event.
It existed through abstractions and presentations.
Only for a very finite number of people was it
something within arm’s reach, something without
mediation. When thoughts are turned into lan-
 ephemeral page mee t s ephemeral stage

guage and images they actually create the
world. We live through these abstractions, but
they are always being controlled in one way or
another. Who has the right to control them,
and to what end? That’s why censorship is an
important issue — it decides what should be
rather than what is. What responsibilities do we
have to filter through and find our own
responses to things rather than try to stop them
at their source?
What is it exactly that comics offer?
by a different movie at certain points. In those
instances, the way past that fear was to use the
freeze-frame device on the VCR or to play the
video silently. We made movies as close as pos-
sible to comics in order to achieve mastery over
the scary image. You can see all the moments at
once, revisit them, turn the page, go back to the
page, surround it. You can get into the structure
without using any advanced theory. Comics
allow that to happen in a way that theater doesn’t,
even though they lack some of the vividness of
theater.

spiegelman They work the way the brain

randich That’s part of the appeal of the
works — in bursts of language and high-defini-
alienation effect. It’s like stopping the VCR.
tion images. They’re stripped down. Comics
are a kind of personalized sign making. Kids
spiegelman Comics are very immediate. You
can recognize a “have a nice day” face when
just dive in, and at a certain point you don’t
they’re only a few days old and then identify
remember you’re reading a comic book. People
that with their mother smiling. We’re wired to
read Maus and then say, “After a few pages, I
think the way comics think. That’s why they
don’t remember they’re mice anymore, but
have a certain kind of hold on us that moves
every once in a while, I remember it.” The struc-
past our critical defenses. Comics mix theatrical
ture becomes invisible as you enter into the var-
realities and musical realities, verbal realities
ious thickenings of the narrative. Comics take
and visual realities. They are able to make a very
you on a ride but also let you step off that ride
complex gesamtkunstwerk — one that’s often
whenever you want.
been taboo. Until the twentieth century, we
weren’t supposed to mix words with pictures.
johnston My son Moss is obsessed with a
Earlier art criticism put everything in its own
certain Daffy Duck video. He watches it over
box. Poetry was this, painting was that. One of
and over and over.
the powers comics have is being able to move
fluidly through different language systems and
spiegelman It’s very important for kids who
structure them. When done well, comics are an
can’t read yet.
incredibly structured medium. They look sim-
ple because a lot of invisible work is done. The
johnston The cartoon is incredibly violent.
clarity is achieved by articulating syntagms of
People constantly get shot — and they come
thought — both visually and verbally. In “Art
back to life instantly. No one is ever killed.
and Commerce,” some of the high points in the
They’re pretty big on hatchets and chopping.
world of comics dance across the stage as pan-
Moss is seeing a picture of the world that is
els. They include various comic book artists,
probably damaging him.
each of whom has created a world as rich as
those conjured by Faulkner or Shakespeare or
spiegelman Animation resolves itself very
Vermeer.
quickly. For kids that’s a great help, although
As horrifying as a comic may be, it’s a
these cartoons are now seen as pernicious, not
still picture. You’re able to achieve a mastery
suitable for kids. They’re not available in prime
over it that you can’t achieve as easily in other
kid viewing hours. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny
media. Each of my children has been terrified
19
TODD: WOOZY:
Whatcha doin, Woozy? Y’know, violence runs in families, they say,
so you’d think females nearing me would run
WOOZY (straightening up): away;
Oh, nothin’ much, but . . . but I shower them with flattery,
y’see . . . followed by assault ’n’ battery.
I’m like Bluto in some Popeye cartoon.
I’m a tough galoot, I’ll launch a miss like a missile to the moon.
a kinda dissolute I’m a big bad bruiser,
lady splatterer. a substance abuser,
You may find it appalling, I’m a winning little loser:
But I consider it a calling: I’m a batterer.
I’m a batterer!

CHORUS OF PASSING WIMMEN:

He’s a batterer . . .

golden-era animations are televised at later The irony is that you turn on the news and see it all
hours. Over the years there’s been strong criti- anyway.
cism from various groups objecting to cartoons
spiegelman The Cartoon Network owns the
because characters get hit on the head, they
rights to things they won’t or can’t show
jump off cliffs. We don’t want kids jumping off
because outside of their original context they
cliffs. I keep coming back to the same simple-
seem impossible now. You can’t really broadcast
minded answer: we project things onto kids in
Japanese caricatures from the war years. On the
order to protect ourselves. Those Daffy Duck
other hand, they bring WWII and life in the
cartoons are potent. We’d rather have dopey
1940s into vivid relief more than almost any-
bland stuff around for ourselves and our kids
thing else can.
than deal with that fireball of energy that comes
from vital work.
randich “The Batterer’s Song” is amazing,
both musically and in the structure of the lyrics.
20
 ephemeral page mee t s ephemeral stage

spiegelman Phillip had to overcome some
inhibitions to deal with it. It was difficult for the
actor as well. It’s a lounge lizard moment.
johnston What’s challenging is that you
have to make it a good song or nobody will lis-
ten to it. But by making it a good song, you
make the batterer an attractive character, even
though what he’s saying is unattractive. The
way he’s saying it —
randich — is so sexy.

Epilogue when you

read the other
Time does not stay way.
and its travels are relentlessly one way
I can tell you with sorrow, Turning time into space
that it keeps moving toward tomorrow provides the saving grace
and never seems to head toward yesterday. of putting another face
on reality
Toward death the die is cast as it sputters sickly by.
and (though it might be a blast) You can move around a page
you cannot change the past. to undo your old age
On the other hand . . . it’s easy and it’s easy on the eye.
By glancing right to left
you CAN see you need no longer feel bereft.
the first as last Chosen moments can be frozen for replay.
in COMICS,
1954: A P TA Mee ting

“Animated” speech balloons appear over Frieda Mensch’s head and the heads of the parent chorus.

Do you want your kiddies to be misled?

No, we want our kiddies to be well-read!

Do you want your kiddies to be brain dead?

No — we want our kiddies to be well-bred.

Do you want your kiddies to be spoiled brats?

We’d rather they don’t become psycopats!

Do you want your kiddies to be JDs?

We want to protect em from this sleaze!!

Do you want your kiddies to grow up queer?

Good God, NO! It’s what we fear!

Do you want little Sammy to spill his seed?

No ma’am, no ma’am, no indeed!

Then don’t give him this incendiary trash to read!

Take it from me and from Saint Sigmund Freud:
These comic books must be destroyed!
If you don’t want your dear dear babies
to rot away in jail,
Toss those misbegotten comics
in the nearest garbage pail
Otherwise it’s too apparent that as parents you all fail!

Do you want your kiddies to be misled?

No, we want our kiddies to be well-read!
We want our kiddies to get ahead.
We don’t want our kiddies to live in dread
So we’ll do whatever you just said.

Do you want your kiddies to be brain dead?

No — we want our kiddies to be well-bred.
We want our kiddies fed on Wonder Bread
We don’t want our kiddies to wet their beds
So these comic books we’ll gladly shred.

Do you want your kiddies to be spoiled brats?

We’d rather they don’t become psycopats!
We’d rather they become aristocrats
Wearing top hats and wide cravats
Oh, those publishers are such dirty rats.

Do you want your kiddies to be JDs?

No we’d rather see em killed by the Red Chinese
We don’t want our kiddies to be diseased
So, Help us doctor, Help us doctor, help us please

22
 We want to save our kiddies from all this sleaze!!

Do you want your kiddies to grow up queer?

Good God, NO! It’s what we fear!
We want our kids pure from ear to ear
We want our kids to read Shakespeare
We’d like bad things to all disappear
We’re scared of the future
We’re scared of our kids!
And we’re terrified of our own inner ids.

Save us from seduction of our innOHcence:

These detailed instructions in belligerance!
All this corruption is a great offense!
A liposuction of common sense.

A seduction
— A DESTRUCTION —
A seduction of our
InnOHcence!

Amen, brothers and sisters. Amen.

Parents drop large piles of comic books in front of the podium til there’s a mountain full.
The parents light a torch and the curtain comes down on a giant bonfire of comic books.
23
 mo ore

johnston There’s something very sexy about
violence and transgression. A character like this
obviously can’t exist unless there is something
very attractive about him. Women would just
run from him unless what was scary and threat-
ening and what was seductive were all interre-
lated. You have to communicate that. What is
horrifying about that type of character is they
can flip back and forth between extremes. Cult
leaders have a quality that is very seductive, even
when they’re abusing people or ripping them
off or feeding them poisoned Kool Aid. You
need to capture both aspects, but you tread a
very thin line because people feel like you’re
making the character seem cool.
We can laugh at him because of his drunken exploits
and be horrified by the beating scene, but at the end
of the play we get the punch of the photograph.
johnston We’re hoping you get the whole
picture, including the consequences of vio-
lence.

The Dance of Art and Commer ce

They dance together though the muses try to pull ART away and they end up coupling.COMMERCE,
spent, coins jangling, dozes off next to ART. Day turns to night turns to day . . . A Baby cries: It’s The
Yellow Kid, dancing out from under ART’s sheets (to ragtime sounds) followed by a parade of other ’toon
characters who cavort cacophonously. Reaching a whirling crescendo they club their dozing parents to
death. The little demons whirl off to the dying scream of their parents.
 ephemeral page mee t s ephemeral stage

As Art was saying earlier, if you can freeze a ting detective, the consequences of his violence
moment, maybe you can master it. are present. At the end of Drawn to Death, the
audience has to pay for their complicity in “The
spiegelman Comics move through forbidden
Batterer’s Song.”
territory. At their root, they’re misogynistic,
they’re racist, they’re anti-Semitic. They tend
The women in this play are stereotypes—the “good”
to be that way because they deal in caricature
girl, the “bad” girl, the screaming moralist . . .
and because, historically, they have reflected
the dominant culture, which tends to be as
spiegelman We couldn’t afford to have two
misogynistic as “The Batterer’s Song.” Very near
singers for Dot and Vi, which made it obvious
the end of the play, you get to see a photo of the
we were much better off compressing as much
real battered woman’s corpse. To have it there,
as possible and making Dot and Vi different
looming on the screen at the end, has real con-
aspects of the same woman in the otherwise
sequence.
very male universe of the early comics. My clas-
Last night I watched Chinatown for the
sical citation there is to Betty and Veronica.
first time in fifteen or twenty years. One of the
Also, somewhere in the gestation process I had
scenes I really like is where this little rat-like
to say goodbye to Dr. Fredric Wertham and
thug, played by Roman Polanski, cuts Jack
make him into Frieda Mensch.
Nicholson’s nostril with a knife. That’s a rela-
tively small bit of violence compared to what’s
Why?
in the recent Spiderman movie, but it’s so much
more visceral. Part of what makes it powerful is
spiegelman I grew up thinking of Fredric
that, for the next hour, Nicholson has a ban-
Wertham as the devil who tried to kill my
dage on his face. Every time you see this strut-
medium. I had to feminize him to learn to like

A n e xc e r p t f r om Todd’s s p e e c h t o t h e U n i t e d S tate s S e n at e
Subcommit tee on the Judiciary to Inve stigate Juvenile
Delinq uenc y, Wedne sday, Apr il 21, 1954, Ne w York Cit y.

TODD:
I guess comics are just literature-with-pictures.
As old as cave paintings —
But they’re also something brand new —
more vivid than novels
and more intimate than movies.
...
Sure, a lot of the comic books are raw and raucous,
but those are just the growing pains of a baby medium.
Heck — most of these crime and horror comics aren’t
even read by very little kids.
...
Even if you think it’s all garbage,
maybe everyone’s cultural diet could use a little
garbage to round itself out!

25
 mo ore

him. I was able to remove my own prejudices How would you make a distinction between Todd
that way and actually understand his argument. and Woozy?
He wasn’t a censor per se.
spiegelman They’re twin-headed beasts.
Todd’s a genius. He is able to sublimate the sex-
Frieda Mensch claims at least twice, “I’m not a
ual and violent impulses that course through
censor.”
him into something we might call art. When
spiegelman She’s a sophisticated censor,
done in a way that others can share, that may be
perhaps. Her position is not without reason.
our highest achievement as humans. That’s
But the answer is not to set up a Stalinist
different from Woozy’s half-assed, half-engaged
thought police. The imagination is always
sublimation.
coming up against the fabric of social reality
and denting it in some way. People try to legis-
Do you think the real Jack Cole achieved this with
late this. What safety valves is one allowed to
Plastic Man?
open to sublimate one’s sexual and violent
nature as a mammal? It needs to be expressed spiegelman I’ve seen several examples of his
somehow. After my morning scan of the news, work that achieve something close to transcen-
mainly what I see is sex and violence, much of dence. Plastic Man might be our best ongoing
which takes place in the name of politics. How example. Cole was a genius cartoonist. Great
does one express that real life is actually a deeply art offers you a new set of lenses. In my mind,
political issue? Dealing with the real world has there are the Jack Cole lenses — a certain way of
consequences, and this keeps the play anchored understanding the rhythms of the world. That
in something other than purely aesthetic con- makes it art for me.
cerns. I respond to Brecht’s dramaturgy because
it makes social problems vivid enough that they
can’t disappear into rhetoric.

Do you consider Fredric Wertham a sophisticated

censor?

spiegelman What Wertham was trying to

achieve was probably something like a ratings
code with teeth. He was aware of the problem
of censorship but also of the responsibility of
protecting children. He was a sophisticated
person with some rather simpleminded notions,
Cover of Jack Cole but his basic argument is actually quite intelli-
and Plastic Man: gent. He’s talking about the values on which
Forms Stretched to
our culture is built — which have more to do
their Limits by
Art Spiegelman
with commerce than anything else. What can
and Chip Kidd you get away with selling? What are the conse-
© 2001 DC Comics quences of entering the marketplace?

26
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