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From the day this site was born there’s always been a thought towards what would be posted during Black History Month. February would roll around, same time every year, and lack of forethought, unsure what theme to focus on, or just the business of life got in the way. This year preparedness rules and Black History in Comics begins.

Judgment Day or How EC Comics’ William Gaines Won Our Respect
We are not a fan of melodrama. Pulling emotional strings for the sake of tugging at an audiences’ heart cords smacks of laziness. Exceptions to this are: if it’s done for the sake of comedy or if you’re talented enough to pull it off. The list of creators capable of doing the latter are few. But there are times when, to paraphrase a Winston Churchill quote, ‘the anvil must be dropped.’

While strolling through TV Tropes, killing precious time, we learned of EC Comics “Judgment Day.” It’s this tale of the battle to get the story published uncensored that won our respect for Mad magazine publisher William Gaines.

Gaines waged a number of battles with the Comics Code Authority in an attempt to keep his magazines free from censorship. In one particular example noted by comics historian Digby Diehl, Gaines threatened Judge Charles Murphy, the Comics Code Administrator, with a lawsuit when Murphy ordered EC to alter the science-fiction story “Judgment Day.” The story depicted a human astronaut visiting a planet inhabited by robots as a representative of the Galactic Republic. He finds the robots divided into functionally identical orange and blue races, one of which has fewer rights and privileges than the other. The astronaut decides that due to the robots’ bigotry, the Galactic Republic should not admit the planet. In the final panel, he removes his helmet, revealing himself to be a black man. Murphy demanded, without any authority in the Code, that the black astronaut had to be removed. As Diehl recounted in Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives:

This was the 1950s, faithful reader. That time in American history where contemporary politicians like to harken upon as “better days.”It was also a time where this writer would not be allowed to drink from the same water fountain as his white classmates. This also assumes we were allowed to attend the same public school.

In the 50s the newly created Comics Code was the voluntarily accepted moral authority. This authority insisted the human astronaut couldn’t be a black man which, as Gaines pointed out, was the point of the whole damn story.

Feldstein, interviewed for the book Tales of Terror: The EC Companion, reiterated his recollection of Murphy making the racist request:
“ So he said it can’t be a Black [person]. So I said, ‘For God’s sakes, Judge Murphy, that’s the whole point of the Goddamn story!’ So he said, ‘No, it can’t be a Black’. Bill [Gaines] just called him up [later] and raised the roof, and finally they said, ‘Well, you gotta take the perspiration off’. I had the stars glistening in the perspiration on his Black skin. Bill said, ‘Fuck you’, and he hung up.

William Gaines is a man we would have loved to have met.

The link hoppers in the audience may have noticed that we’ve been dropping a few anvils of our own.

If you’re wanting to read the story in question you can. Click on over to Daily Scans and read on…

• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EC_Comics#.22Judgment_Day.22
• History: http://www.eccrypt.com/
• VIDEO: The Story of EC comics
• READ: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/54803.html
• EC Comics on TV Tropes:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.ECComics