These are great videos @msgtv, I totally want to take a class with her, and in a way we all have thanks to you! I’ve wanted to get a hold of a copy of “The Seduction of the Innocents,” for years, and they are available on Ebay, I just haven’t found one in my price range, but I want it my collection and want to read it, very badly.
Stan Lee, when asked about Whertham, would always say, paraphrasing Stan, that Whertham would point out 90% of kids in juvenile detention read comics, but they also drank milk, though he didn’t go after the dairy industry. Lol!
@stefanie.m as @msgtv points out, the code did have periods of revision, the first was in 1971, the famous Harry Osborn drug story in “Amazing Spider-Man 96-98.” Where the government ask Stan to do an anti-drug issue, so they did, then the code wouldn’t let Marvel print it, which was ridiculous, since it was against drug use.
From the Wikipedia about these issues:
Lee recalled in a 1998 interview:
I could understand them; they were like lawyers, people who take things literally and technically. The Code mentioned that you mustn’t mention drugs and, according to their rules, they were right. So I didn’t even get mad at them then. I said, ‘Screw it’ and just took the Code seal off for those three issues. Then we went back to the Code again. I never thought about the Code when I was writing a story, because basically I never wanted to do anything that was to my mind too violent or too sexy. I was aware that young people were reading these books, and had there not been a Code, I don’t think that I would have done the stories any differently.[4]
This lead to a loosing of restrictions in the '70’s, which is why you see all the horror titles from Marvel and DC in the Bronze age, and as has been pointed out, by '89 it was pretty much watered down. So that Northstar from “Alpha Flight,” could come out in the '90’s as one of the first, if not the first, openly gay superheros.
Pride Profile: Rebis. When Grant Morrison writes a title, you never quite know what you’re going to get. In his first issue of Doom Patrol with #19, Morrison created what may have been the first gender non-binary character in comics. Separated from one another, Patrol member Larry Trainor and the Negative force reunited in a flash of energy that also pulled in Doctor Eleanor Poole creating a new, unique person that was simultaneously male and female. Referring to themselves using plural pronouns, Rebis confused their fellow Patrol members, particularly Cliff, but was ultimately accepted. Rebis also helped create another history breaking hero when they had sex with prostitute Kate Godwin, passing power to her and creating transgender Patrol member Cougula.
