A Brewing Backlash · Domesticated Pulp: Archie Publications and the Comics Code

Pulp Publishing, Crime Comics, and a Brewing Backlash

Doc Savage Magazine, cover, October 1934.

Doc Savage Magazine, cover, July 1937.

During the 1930s and early 1940s, publishers of pulp material experimented to find successful formulas for attracting audiences. Intermingled profiles of film actresses, suggestive “art” photography, and humor account for one such approach and is visible in two publications from 1941: CLOSEUP (May) and DASH (June). Both magazines were published at the New York address of MLJ Magazines, the firm started by Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit, and John L. Goldwater in 1939, but the monogram built from the three founders’ given names does not appear on either issue.

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Goldwater led editorial development, increasingly emphasizing comics over pulp photography. MLJ issued comic books under the imprint of Blue Ribbon Comics from 1939 to 1942, and Pep Comics from 1940 to 1946. Archie first appeared in Pep Comics no.22 in 1941. Due to the character’s popularity, Archie debuted under his own title the following year. Goldwater led the company away from material aimed at boys toward more wholesome fare for all audiences.

Detective and crime comic books continued to evolve toward ever more salacious subjects highlighted on covers to drive sales in drug stores and newsstands. Alluring women in grave danger reliably attracted the interest of twelve- to fifteen-year-old boys. Rock and roll, violent comic books, and other forms of new postwar American youth culture began to attract the attention of moral arbiters. The most famous comic scold was New York psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, whose alarming if speciously argued book Seduction of the Innocent inspired a moral panic.