The Jack Kamen Issues That Got Blue Beetle Banned, Up for Auction

Best remembered for his work at EC Comics throughout a variety of genres together with science fiction, horror, and crime, Jack Kamen additionally made noteworthy late-Nineteen Forties contributions to publishers like Fiction House and Fox Feature Syndicate, the place his good lady paintings on titles like Phantom Lady amongst others can also be extremely wanted by collectors. Kamen did in depth work for Fox on titles like Dagar, Desert Hawk, and Rulah, Jungle Goddess, and his Blue Beetle work can also be extremely wanted by collectors.  This period of the Blue Beetle sequence is well-known to have garnered a few mentions in Fredric Wertham‘s Seduction of the Innocent, however that is solely a part of the story.  In 1948, shortly after the harder-edged true crime story and good lady artwork period had begun for this sequence, a variety of main metros across the nation put Blue Beetle on their banned comics lists.  An necessary a part of comedian e book historical past that has lengthy been wanted by collectors, there are a selection of the Blue Beetle points together with the legendary Blue Beetle #54 pictured in Seduction of the Innocent, plus #47, 50, 53, and #56 with Kamen covers or content material up for public sale within the 2022 December 1 Fox Comics Showcase Auction #40214 at Heritage Auctions.

1948 is an under-discussed flashpoint for the comedian e book business and its battle with would-be censors.  Even because the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers introduced its code pointers and the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of a New York State statute prohibiting the sale of publications with “pictures and stories of deeds of bloodshed, lust or crime” in WINTERS v. PEOPLE OF STATE OF NEW YORK, dozens of cities throughout the nation had been getting ready native comedian e book ordinances designed to avoid that call.  Blue Beetle and far of the remainder of the Fox line had been on most of these lists. While a lot of the Fox line survived the 1948 period, Blue Beetle successfully ended that yr with challenge #57.  With the attractive ladies of Kamen and others more and more pushing the title character off the covers virtually solely, and true crime-style content material generally crowding him out of the inside tales, maybe Fox felt there was now not some extent in maintaining the pretense. But undaunted by the occasions, Fox would launch 5 new titles inside three months of slicing Blue Beetle.

The title would briefly return in 1950 close to the top of the Fox Feature Syndicate lifespan, with a extra conventional model of superhero story.  But just a few years later when ethical panic over comedian books was on the rise once more, two of those Kamen-era points had been singled out in Seduction of the Innocent.  The cowl of Blue Beetle #54 is pictured within the e book with the fairly blunt caption “Children call these ‘headlights’ comics.”

Wertham additionally singled out a panel from a half-page characteristic on late nineteenth and early twentieth century New York City gangster Monk Eastman in Blue Beetle #56.  About this panel, he notes, “In one comic book is a sexy picture of a blonde female dressed in a string of beads and a scrap of material. She says: ‘A gentleman, he never blackjacked a woman. He hit them with his fists.’ Millions of children have been taught that this kind of thing is the smart thing to say.”

Of course, elsewhere within the e book Wertham affords what he represents as a toddler’s description of Blue Beetle, after noting that the boy has learn the title “many times”.  As quoted by Wertham, the child described the character by saying, “He is like Superman. He is a beetle, but he changes into Superman and afterwards he changes into a beetle again.”

These 1947/1948 points that includes work by Jack Kamen are an necessary a part of the historical past of the interval, and there are a selection of the Blue Beetle points together with the legendary Blue Beetle #54 pictured in Seduction of the Innocent, plus #47, 50, 53 and #56 with Kamen covers or content material up for public sale within the 2022 December 1 Fox Comics Showcase Auction #40214 at Heritage Auctions. If you’ve got by no means bid at Heritage Auctions earlier than, you may get additional data, you may take a look at their FAQ on the bidding course of and associated issues.

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