When EC Comics Told the Comics Code Authority to...

As a follow up to my post from yesterday about comic book racism: There is a cool CBR article about EC Comics and a black/white situation.

This is the proud comics tradition that I'm talking about. From the article:

"When the issue first came out in 1953, it was heavily lauded, including the following missive from a certain Mr. Bradbury…

However, when Gaines and Feldstein went to put it in place of the pulled story, they were told no, the story violated the Comics Code.

Judge Charles Murphy (administrator of the Code) said that they would have to change the astronaut from black to white if they wanted it to be included. This was not part of the Code at the time. Feldstein and Gaines felt that Murphy was just deliberately messing with them (again, Gaines felt that the Code was designed specifically to put him out of business).

After being told that, clearly, the color of the astronaut’s skin was practically the whole point of the story, Murphy backed down a bit, but said that they would at least have to get rid of the perspiration on his skin. It could possibly be that Murphy felt that it was exploitative. I do not know, and neither did Feldstein nor Gaines, who only had their suspicions that they were being screwed with.

Feldstein and Gaines both refused to comply (I believe the terms they used included at least one use of the word “fuck”), and Gaines threatened a lawsuit and/or a press conference to shine a light on why exactly the story was objected to.

The story ran as is."