Comical comics
Comical comics |
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Page 32 of 34  Sick (Crestwood, 1966). Art: Joe Simon. Critics also began to attack comics for more specifically ideological reasons. The 1950s backlash that resulted in the Comics Code mainly affected adventure comics, though, as we have seen, Mad was briefly a target. In the 1960s, criticism was focused on the humour comics for being violent, sexist and racist. In Britain, The Beano was particularly singled out for its lack of black characters, its emphasis on violent confrontations and the prevalence of corporal punishment (especially scenes where mischievous characters ended up being chased by teachers with canes or dads with huge slippers). In the United States, humour comics were similarly attacked, and were additionally prone to criticism from the Left for being conveyors of capitalist propaganda. This was especially true, it was said, of the Disney titles: for example, a quote from one famed critique of the Carl Barks comics: 'So there is really no history in these comics. For gold forgotten from the previous episode cannot be used for the following one. If it could, it would connote a past with influence over the present, and reveal capital and the whole process of accumulation of surplus value as the explanation of Uncle Scrooge's fortune." |