MORTON: Mr Laws, you mentioned earlier that you’d inherited your business, Scientific Publications, from your father. Could you tell us more about that?

  LAWS: My father, James Laws Senior, published America’s first comic book collection, Funnies on Parade, back nearly twenty years ago. He saw the comic book as an important tool that could help educate America and do a lot of good. He founded Scientific Publications to inform the country’s children about great Americans like Thomas Edison and about new scientific theories or inventions. When my father died in an unpleasant accident, the business came to me and I renamed the company Sensational, so as to more honestly represent the new direction that the line would take under my leadership, although I still consider our books educational.

  Jim pours himself more water takes a sip tries not to lick his lips and can’t help thinking of his father that was one hell of a way to die the best that could be said was that Jim Senior wouldn’t have known anything about it just one moment he’s there teeing up for the eighth hole he’s happy he’s relaxed and the next instant he gets pulverised literally pulverised by thirty pounds of frozen urine let go by a jet plane that was right then passing overhead like the old man was struck down with a bolt of piss not lightning by a God Jim’s dad knew wasn’t there maybe that’s how it goes with atheists and God thinks fuck why waste a thunderbolt but but but Jim is getting off the point here and he’d better concentrate because one of the senators is frowning and now the chief counsel guy is—

  MORTON: ‘Sensational’ would seem to indicate a very different policy from ‘Scientific’.

  SEN. FRASER: Mr Laws, you say your father’s publications had a beneficial influence upon the children reading them. If comic books are capable of altering young people’s minds to this degree, how can you then be sure that your books have no deleterious effect upon their readership?

  LAWS: Senator, with great respect, I think that that’s a matter of intention. Our writers and illustrators are amongst the finest in the field, and can make sure a story will have the effect that was intended. In the instance of my father, it was his intention to produce books that would educate the public scientifically, while in my own case, the intention is to educate our audience morally, so that they might be better people and better Americans. Were you to read our letter pages, I think that you’d be surprised by the intelligence and the maturity with which the social issues we raise in our stories are debated. Please remember that a story dealing with the terrible effects of juvenile delinquency is hardly an encouragement to that behaviour.

  – no more than the Bible is encouraging its readership to massacre the innocents or have sex with their daughters or go crucifying people although in his current circumstances Jim is having doubts about that last one can these people genuinely not see all the moralising him and Feinman put into those stories all the skill and care guys like Slim Whittaker Jeff Pleasant Arnie Eckstein all those guys put into making sure they got their point across and it was only SP had the balls to talk about this stuff about the bomb the Klan the brutal cops the ordinary Americans all gone privately crazy in the suburbs can they not see all of that or is this something else that’s going on here where the outcome was agreed before the hearings even got announced but but but maybe that’s the pills the paranoia making Jim suspect that this is all a set-up and why would the powers that be waste all that effort on a bunch of unimportant comics anyway sure Jim knows all about the uproar with the Wertham thing Seduction of the Innocent but seriously one book with a few bits in Ladies’ Home Journal and that’s all it takes to bring this bullshit down on Jim and everybody else no no no paranoid or not there has to be a bigger picture Jim’s not seeing and there isn’t time to think about it now because Senator Fraser’s saying something to the other Democrat Senator Henning now they’re both looking at Jim he hopes the pills are going to last this out it’s just they’re keeping him up here so long much longer than the others and they’ve got so many questions that he’s—

  SEN. FRASER: Mr Laws, I’ve read a number of the stories in your titles represented here as exhibits, and a majority appear to end in murder and dismemberment without any suggestion of moral instruction. If you are so confident in the redeeming social value of your publications, you would surely have no hesitation in submitting your books to a regulatory authority of the kind that was suggested earlier today, to ensure that they have the salutary effect that you intend?

  LAWS: No, sir, I would not.

  SEN. FRASER: And yet I understand that you do not support the version of these regulations we have seen this morning?

  LAWS: There’s a difference between accepting a regulatory authority in principle, and agreeing with the document that was presented in draft earlier. Some of those proposed regulations I agree with, whereas other ones, I don’t.

  – like like like for example that part where it says that it’s forbidden to have the words Death or Murder as part of a comic’s title and why didn’t these cocksuckers just go all the way and outlaw the word Nutcase too that way they could put all of SP’s biggest sellers out of business in one fell swoop without even working up a sweat but no no they don’t mention Nutcase even though Jim knows that that’s the book that really burns the asses of those bastards at American and Blinky who it just so happens are the major parties when it comes to drawing up this Comics Code thing and so this is their revenge those petty little shits this is the way they get their own back over fucking Blunderman and fucking Blanky that Jim ran in Nutcase and does he regret that now yeah sure he does sure he regrets it he regrets not letting Lenny Berman show the business types cornholing Blunderman’s creators or show Blanky joining the John Birch society that’s Jim’s regrets but but but maybe now is not the time it feels as if they’re starting to go harder on him now these senators like this is when they start to show their teeth or maybe Jim’s just getting tired it’s hard to tell he’s been up here so long—

  SEN. FRASER: I’d like to move on to this text piece in Sarcophagus of Murder #17 as represented by Exhibit no. 10. Its title reads ‘Don’t be a Commie Stooge’, and it makes reference to Dr Wertham and his book while claiming that the people most in favour of suppressing comic books are communists. Are you the author of this article?

  LAWS: Yes, sir, I am. The piece makes reference to the fact that communist groups from around the world – including England, I believe – have launched attacks on comic books so they can indirectly criticise the US and its values.

  SEN. FRASER: You are surely not suggesting that those people who do not approve of comic books are communists?

  LAWS: No, sir, simply that the Communist Party is at the forefront, globally, of the attempt to stifle comics, and the group whose disapproval is the most vociferous. I certainly was not implying that persons connected to these subcommittee hearings might be communists, and I am confident our readers would have understood that.

  – yeah but Jim could say more on that subject about what he’d heard and his you know his speculations when the rumour is that Wertham either is or could be made to look like he’s a communist and in the current climate that’s the end of him the end of his career so when the FBI drop by and spell this out and tell him they can make it go away if he cooperates then he’s all ears and what they want this is according to the story what they want is Wertham should work on this book links comics with delinquency because because because yeah actually why would they do that it’s like Jim was thinking earlier about why go to all this effort for something as trivial as comic books and sure he’d like to think that SP’s books were that important and that influential but he knows that that’s not it and there’s no reason for this persecution for this bullying unless unless unless what if it isn’t comic books they’re after here what if it’s the pulp magazines that some comics financially support like say the science fiction mag Galactic Stories that its publishers couldn’t keep bringing out without the money they get from Galactic Comics and the science fiction magazines the science fiction magazines have been about the only platform in America that’s been unanimous in putting down that prick McCarthy and maybe that’s it maybe this is all fallout come from the House Un-American Activities Commission where they want to silence the science fiction field without it looking like that’s what they’re doing so they set the dogs on comics first knowing the pulps will all come tumbling after but but but this isn’t helping with Jim’s current circumstances his predicament and he’s starting to feel as if they’ve got him on the ropes these senators and Jim had better have his mind set on the job in hand and not keep hopping on these trains of thought that take him out into the wilderness that take him nowhere—

  SEN. DERNE: I’d like to ask a question. Mr Laws, are you not being disingenuous in your replies to this committee? Are you serious in your contention that your publications are meant to be morally instructive to their readers? I draw your attention to Exhibit no. 7, Cemetery of Death #14, and to that issue’s second comic story, ‘Playground Games’. To summarise, it is the story of a Mr Johnson, a corrupt civic official who announces plans to close a much-loved children’s playground so that he can profit from a big hotel development planned for the site. The children of the neighbourhood are shown reacting tearfully to the announcement, asking if there isn’t anything that can prevent the closure. Finally, in the last panel, we learn that these children have killed and dismembered the official, and have then somehow augmented their play area with his body parts. The seats of swings are the man’s severed forearms, while the ropes supporting them are his intestines. His plump torso is pressed into service as a trampoline, and the man’s head adorns the centre of the merry-go-round. His legs have become the two ends of a grisly see-saw, with the children all depicted playing happily amongst his customised remains. The story’s moral, if there is one, is delivered by a leering character known as ‘the Necro-Filing Clerk’ who says, if I may quote, ‘Heh heh heh! Well, Death-Devotees! So Mr Johnson finally got kids to like him – and it wasn’t just the weeping children who went all to pieces!’ Mr Laws, how can you possibly suggest that such a story is intended to improve its audience morally?

  LAWS: I think, I think you should remember that this is, you know, it’s Cemetery of Death, which, clearly, it’s a horror publication. And our readers, they expect this – I guess – ghoulish humour from us. What it does, I think, it makes light of the situation and it tells the reader they should take the story as a kind of joke or, or, or like a folk tale where there’s something violent at the end, like, yeah, say, when the woodsman bursts in and chops up the wolf and rescues Goldilocks’s grandma from inside him. It’s like that. Only it’s not a wolf, it’s a civic official. We’ve updated things.

  – shut up shut up shut up what now he’s trying to tell them that SP’s books are like Goldilocks and that civic officials are like wolves just what the fuck exactly is Jim doing here but but but that guy Derne he’s one of the Republicans he’d come at Jim full on he came out swinging and it took Jim by surprise and when they take a story out of context like that they can make it sound like like Jim didn’t know like it was meant for kids as young as the ones in the story like the story’s trying to get these little kids to dismember officials and it’s oh no what it is he realises is he’s crashing crashing on the pills running on empty and he volunteered to come here and to testify and speak up for his books he was so proud of and now this and everything’s collapsing he’s collapsing and it’s all because they kept him talking here so long and now and now he feels like he’s some kid who’s up before the principal except that there’s four principals and they’re not principals they’re fucking senators why did Jim ever put himself through this what did he think he would achieve and so he’s crashing and he can’t think straight and here comes Fraser now the Democrat he’s shuffling through the exhibits he’s got a face like somebody just farted and Jim has to admit that this don’t look like what you’d call good—

  SEN. FRASER: If I may, I’d like to redirect you from the content of your publications to their cover illustrations. If we could look at Exhibit no. 12, Sarcophagus of Murder #22, and in particular at its front cover. Mr Laws, at any time in my description, if you think I am misrepresenting what I see, I’d be obliged if you’d correct me. Down the illustration’s left side are three cameo caricatures contained in circles, these being your trio of so-called ‘Ghastly Greeters’ – the Corpse-Clutcher, the Necro-Filing Clerk, and the Morgue-Minder – who introduce the various tales within. The cover’s greater part, to which these portraits are appended, shows us the interior of a large department store, perhaps not unlike Macy’s, in what is apparently the Christmas period. Over towards the picture’s left is a large, decorated indoor Christmas tree that has its upper boughs obscured in shadows cast by the department store’s high ceiling. Around the tree’s base, on the shop floor, we see customers and store staff looking up in horror at the tree’s top, where we see, in silhouette against blue shadow, that a seated female figure, hopefully a dead one, seems to be impaled. Down in the store below, children are crying, mothers are fainting, sturdy American fathers are biting their knuckles, and a security guard appears to be vomiting in a cash register. I put it to you, Mr Laws, that this is a scene wholly without redeeming social merit, that has furthermore been both conceived and drawn with no consideration of its moral impact, nor of the most rudimentary standards of good taste.

  LAWS: I, I, I, I disagree. I think, I think that how it’s drawn, how it’s designed, it’s in good taste. You can’t, you know, the way it’s drawn, you can’t see anything, the way we’ve got the shadows there. The horror aspect, see, it’s all in how we’ve got the looks on people’s faces, how we’ve got the horrified expressions. So, the horror’s not direct and, and, and actually I think it’s kind of subtle, what we’re doing there, so, no. I don’t agree. I think it’s in, I think the cover’s in good taste.

  SEN. FRASER: I see. And what, if I may ask, would be your definition of a cover that is in bad taste?

  LAWS: Well, you know, that’s very difficult … it’s very hard to say, I mean, it’s all subjective, but I guess that if we’d had the artist, if instead of how we’ve got it in a long shot, if we’d done a close-up so that you could see the treetop going into her vagina, that would have been in bad taste.

  – and straight away Jim knows he could have handled that a fuck of a lot better because now the whole world seems to have just stopped and all the sound and movement have gone out of everything so all four senators are sitting frozen looking at him with the same expression on their faces like their noses are attempting to retract into their skulls their gaping lips are curled back almost inside out eyes shrivelling in the sockets into hard glass marbles of contempt disgust consuming hatred while all colour has drained from the face of the stenographer and the chief counsel claps one hand over his mouth and stares as if at an appalling train wreck with a hundred dead and all this in a silence so complete that Jim can’t even hear the hum of traffic in the street outside now one by one the senators are standing up they’re gathering their papers and exhibits all without a word without removing the unblinking glares of utter loathing from him for an instant now they’re all leaving the chamber even Jim’s attorney Marv who came along to show support and be a friendly face can only shake his head eyes full of tragedy and follow them out of the room so Jim’s left there alone and doesn’t know what he should do and though time doesn’t seem to pass he notices the shadows of the microphones are getting longer on the tables then eventually the cleaners come in Puerto Rican women who don’t look at him but trade meaningful glances with each other as they clean around him and then even they are gone so Jim sits motionless in the committee room as daylight gradually subsides and knows that it’s all finished sure he can continue Nutcase as a magazine and get around the code thing that way but the vision that he had for comics that’s all over and the lights are going down the lights are going down and Jim knows this is it this is his thirty pounds of frozen piss the lights are going down and even when they hit pitch-black it feels like they’ve still got a way to go—

  9. (November, 2015)

  PAGE 1.

  Panel 1.

  OK, this is a one-page strip that has nine panels, all the same size, arranged in a three-by-three grid with a banner heading at the top that reads: The Origin of THUNDERMAN – Who he is and how he came to be! Maybe over to the far right of this banner, contained in a circle, we could have a head-and-shoulders shot of Thunderman just smiling at the reader, probably in a late thirties/early forties art style where his eyes are sooty wrinkles. Moving on to the strip itself, in this first panel we are in a teenage boy’s room in a working-class house in Delaware, in 1937, and it is night-time. Up in the left foreground, looking into the panel away from us in an approximately head-and-shoulders close-up, we see seventeen-year-old science fiction fan and amateur fanzine artist David Kessler, who has his sketchbook open and visible as he works on a rough illustration, holding the open pad in his left hand while drawing with his right. Kessler has fair hair and wears round, wire-rimmed spectacles. He is smiling with teenage enthusiasm as he sketches, his expression earnest and open: a Depression-era American kid having fun. He is drawing a line illustration of Thunderman, but this is not the Thunderman with which we’re familiar. Instead, this is a bald, villainous science fiction tyrant, wearing a typical 1930s science fiction outfit – all tunics and high boots as I remember – and striking a megalomaniacal pose, hands raised and clawing at the air. The only similarity with the present-day character is the Thunderman chest emblem, the letter T with a thin black cloud forming its crossbar and a white lightning bolt as its riser, which the bald character that Kessler is depicting has on the front of his tunic. Looking past Kessler and his sketchbook into the room, over in the right near background, we can see Kessler’s best friend Simon Schuman, also seventeen. Schuman, slightly shorter and more compressed than Kessler, with dark curly hair but the same eager and enthusiastic teenage grin, is seated full-figure just off-panel right, but is leaning into the right near background, facing left as he types on a battered old Underwood that stands on a small wooden table positioned in the centre near background directly beneath the room’s window. As he types, Schuman looks across the room and grins at Kessler. I really want to get across the thrill, the fun, the genuine teenage excitement that these kids are getting from creating something together. As for the room they’re in, it’s cosy, shabby and lamplit. Perhaps we can find one of those oppressive wallpaper designs of the era, with the outsized floral motifs, and paper the room with it here? See what you think, and then do what looks best to you, as ever. If there’s room, we might see a couple of pulp science fiction magazines lying around the room, with titles like Unbelievable Stories or Spicy Astronaut. Out through the window that is positioned directly above the typewriter, to subtly underline the science fiction nature of what is being worked on, we are looking out into the black Delaware night, with perhaps a couple of distant and lonely stars, burning low on the dark horizon. The caption might sit best down towards the panel’s bottom right corner.