COMICS SUCK! - Psychoanalysis #1 (April 1955)

60 YEARS AGO - April 1955

PSYCHOANALYSIS #1 (EC Comics)

Reprint cover. Artwork by Jack Kamen.

From the publisher that brought you such comics as Mad, Weird Science and twisted stories such as "Foul Play" in which a disgruntled baseball team plays ball with a severed head comes the weirdest comic of them all: Psychoanalysis. It's hard to believe this comic was ever published, let alone by EC Comics. It debuted 60 years ago along with sister titles M.D. and Extra! as part of the publisher's New Direction line of comics. Looking back it seems to be a sardonic response to the draconian censorship that had been foisted on the company as a result of a government witch hunt. "So, you don't like the ghoul mags, eh?" publisher William M. Gaines seemed to be saying, "you want us to tone it down, huh? Well, how's this for you? Not too lively for you is it?" Gaines and co. had toned things down alright. The New Direction comics weren't too lively, they seemed to have no pulse at all!

This comic is practically unreadable and it seems to be an extravagant waste of resources and talent just to send a message. The amazing Jack Kamen was the featured artist on this title. We was the artist Gaines and partner-in-crime Al Feldstein would tap any time they needed somebody to draw a sexy dame. But he was more than just the "good girl artist". His pages were livid, his monsters memorable and his depictions cinematic (see "Kamen's Kalamity" from Tales from the Crypt #31 (Aug-Sept '52)). Kamen's art is drowned in a tidal wave of text (see picture below), it's something the writer's of EC's famous horror mags had been guilty of in the past, but they were forgiven because of the exciting subject matter. Psychoanalysis is possibly the dullest comic I've ever read. It's hard to imagine the publishers really expected the 10 year old's who read titles like Vault of Horror in the millions to make it through even a single issue of this title.

While the New Direction did appear to conform to EC's weird sensibilities, it was weird for all the wrong reasons. Imagine your favorite thrash metal band releasing an AM Gold album at the height of their popularity (cough**'Load'**cough). In some ways, EC had always been ahead of their time. I could imagine this comic being put out in 1995 by an underground creator like a Charles Ware, but for 1955 Psychoanalysis magazine was simply outrageous.

About Psychoanalysis, Gaines said this on the inside front cover of this issue:

"This magazine, PSYCHOANALYSIS, the fifth of E.C. Comic's "New Direction" publications, is our most difficult and revolutionary creative effort thus far. Through the medium of the comic format, we will attempt to portray, graphically and dramatically, the manner in which people find peace of mind through the science of psychoanalysis. 

Psychoanalysis is the psychology of the unconscious mind. To understand the human mind by the study of consciousness alone would be the same as to attempt to learn the structure and content of the ocean depths by examination of the surface waters. It is in the unconscious mind that are located the basic reservoirs of emotion. It is there that the roots and sources of passion and prejudice, love and hate are hidden. Most emotional disorders are the result of a tug-of-war between the unconscious and conscious minds! Through analysis, this tug-of-war is dissolved. 

However, don't let this technical stuff scare you away. First and foremost, this magazine has been produced for your entertainment. You're going to meet three tormented and troubled people ... not mental cases, mind you (for the insane cannot be helped by psychoanalysis), but people who are plagued by the same type of emotional disturbances that may be plaguing you or us. You will see how the analyst helps these people discover the subconscious bases for their emotional disorders. This is done by taking the patient back, mentally, to the source of his unsolved conflicts, activating the factors once again, and adding in a new and better solution. This is the method of psychoanalysis. 

An analysis, ordinarily, is a fairly long procedure ... frequently taking two or more years. If an outsider was given the privilege of listening in on an actual analysis, the main effect upon him would be a boredom beyond all endurance. Therefore, for dramatic effect and entertainment value, we plan to telescope each analysis into three to five issue-sessions, according to the severity of the particular patient's problems. For example, Freddy Carter will run four issue-sessions; Ellen Lyman, three; and Mark Stone, five. At the completion of each analysis, a new patient ... with new problems ... will be introduced. (Who knows, you might eventually meet YOU!) 

Another liberty we have taken is with the role of the psychoanalyst himself. Ordinarily, in real life, he gives no advice, and neither criticizes nor condones, praises nor blames. His work is limited solely to assisting the patient to an interpretation of his own thoughts and feelings. Again, for dramatic effect and entertainment value, "our" analyst actively guides the patient in making his discoveries. 

Several psychiatrists checked over the proofs of this first issue. They, too, noted the condensed treatment and the non-passive role of the analyst. Aside from these, and a few minor faults which we will correct in future issues, they were, for the most part, highly enthusiastic."

Unsurprisingly the series was cancelled after issue #5.

Still, after having read countless E.C. revenge horror stories, I wonder if they didn't have something planned. Fredric Wertham, the loudest cheerleader in the crusade against comics and author of the infamous Seduction of the Innocent, was a psychiatrist. Had the series flourished and developed and E.C. been willing and able to fight back against the censorship that had gutted them, it might have led to the greatest revenge tale of them all: the story where "their" analyst is revealed as being utterly, rampantly insane. The final panel: a basement full of rotting corpses and torture devices.

WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?
After reading this issue and having a good snooze, it was time for a pick-me-up. It was time to pop a dime in the 'ol juke and dig on some old hound dog blues in the form of:



SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON - "DON'T START ME TALKIN'"
You listen to a song like this and realize where Elvis Presley came from. What a great record! Sonny Boy Williamson (II) shouldn't be confused with his harmonica-spewing predecessor / contemporary of the same name.

If it seems like I "know-it-all" when it comes to music, specifically the 1950's period stuff, I don't. I started with a rudimentary list of known favorites like Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, John Lee Hooker, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash & Carl Perkins among a few others, but I had to dig down and do my research to unearth the best songs and albums from the decade of crew-cuts and sock hops. So I wanted to share with you the ultimate resource that I found for the best 50's songs: this list of 100 Great Rock & Roll Songs of the 1950's. If you're interested, check it out. You'll be surprised at the potency of some of these mostly unheralded songs of yesteryear. "Don't Start Me Talkin'" is just one of them, and relatively tame to boot!

The same goes for films. One of the great joys of doing these Comics Suck! posts is the research involved. Before I started doing these I didn't know my 1950's and 60's movies from the parliamentary proceedings of the country of Luxembourg. It's been great fun catching up.

I have a list that I add to on an almost daily basis of comics, music and films that I find. Most of the time I have two or three movies (most of which I've never seen) to choose from to talk about. For April 1955 I had a choice between Godzilla Raids Again or The Conquest of Space. Both films are wonderful in their own ways, but let's talk Godzilla.

Originally released on April 24, 1955 in Japan as ゴジラの逆襲 (Gojira no Gyakushū), this early Toho Productions film was distributed in the United States by Warner Brothers in 1959 as Gigantis, the Fire Monster. This movie is arguably an early example of big studios attempt to re-boot a franchise, in this case by giving everybody's favorite giant lizard a new name and origin. It's also an example of American studios needlessly "re-tooling" a franchise for the American audience, which always seems unnecessary to me and ought to be considered an insult to the audience's intelligence. In this particular case it was an attempt to pass of the famous monster as an entirely new entity. Anyway, the heavily re-cut film failed at the box office and all subsequent Godzilla film releases have used the monster's real name.

The American version is an unusual picture to say the least. The film "reads" like a summary. Rather than having events unfold in "real time", the story is told in flashback with a voice-over from main character Soichi Tsukioka (Hiroshi Koizuma), making it more difficult to suspend disbelief. When disbelief is suspended, it's impossible not to sympathize with the monster: thrust into a world he never made the giant lizard has the appearance and demeanor of an upright-walking family dog whose destructive behavior is an accidental consequence due to its size. Godzilla even defends Osaka from an attack by Anguirus, the ankylosaurus, who is, by the way, Godzilla's first monstrous foe. However, the attack nearly destroys the entire city.

It's difficult not to read into the themes of the picture. Japan was a mere 10 years removed from being on the wrong end of the worst single strike in human history. They were still healing from the Great War and doing a great job of it, but seeing the Japanese city in ruins, even in miniature strikes a sobering chord even 60 years later. In a rebuilding mode as the country was, this movie was as much about Japanese industriousness and restoring the nation's pride as it was about a fire-breathing lizard. Which makes the American studios decisions regarding the release and marketing of the film all the more callous. At one point, the plan was to edit out all of the Japanese actors and replace them with Americans, but to keep all the Japanese special effects shots. Thankfully, that plan never materialized.

Morally reprehensible as a re-cut version with all American actors would have been, the greatest loss of all would have been in the english overdub performances. The monster-loving world would have never thrilled to the excitable young George Takei's English overdubs.

Godzilla Raids Again was directed by Motoyoshi Oda and starred the previously mentioned Koizuma alongside, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, everybody's favorite ubiquitous Japanese actor of the era, and Haruo Nakajima as Godzilla, a role he owned until the early 70's. They say he lost ten pounds a day wearing that foam-rubber monster-suit!

COMICS SUCK! - Uncle Scrooge #9 (March 1955)

60 YEARS AGO - March 1955

Cover artwork by Carl Barks.

UNCLE SCROOGE #9 (Dell Comics)

"The Lemming with the Locket"

By Carl Barks (w,a)

One of thee great secrets of comics hidden from the mainstream of superhero adventures is the work of Carl Barks. It's no exaggeration to put Barks works among the all-time greats of the medium. I'm talking about Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, Joe Kubert, Osamu Tezuka, Hal Foster and Winsor McCay. Though he worked in the not-very-well respected field of cartoon illustration, he belongs among that pantheon, without question. Matter of fact he was one of the first three members of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

If you're anything like me, you grew up watching DuckTales and being blown away by the highly imaginative stories and the colorful populace of Duckberg. Well it turns out, most if not all of that originally came from Carl Barks. In later life I've read issues of Dell Comics Uncle Scrooge that were adapted whole hog into DuckTales episodes, stories that remained vivid to me all these years later.

Carl Barks was totally anonymous in 1955, he was never credited in the comics for his Disney stories, it wasn't until comics "fandom" became a thing that the inside baseball stories started getting passed around and Barks found his recognition. Now, he is known primarily as the "Good Duck Artist" and for good reason. This issue is particularly memorable due to the high anxiety levels the reader feels when sympathizing with the money-obsessed Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge has just locked all his money in an impenetrable vault, there are pages of set-up for the vault's absolute impregnability. The only way in or out is by a key, which due to zany and unfortunate circumstance ends up around the neck of a cheese-obsessed lemming and hilarity ensues.

WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?
After reading this issue and having a good snicker, the more adventurous youth of America no doubt hit the jukebox at the local malt shoppe and spun this little record:



FATS DOMINO - "I Know" b/w "Thinkin' of You" (7", 78rpm single)
Rock & Roll was just about to hit the big time (more on that in a minute). Antoine "Fats" Domino was roughly half a year shy from his breakthrough moment "Ain't That a Shame" (keep your eyes peeled to Comics Suck! on September 4 for a discussion on that record). But that doesn't mean the big man didn't have a sublime moment or two in him while no one was looking. In many ways "I Know" is a typical jump blues record, indicative of the uptempo, horn-driven style, but there's something more going on here if you listen closely. Listen to the sound of the guitar. This is an early fuzz rock record with a solo that would make the garage bands of the 60's stand up and take notice. It's not something that the overindulged audiences of today would consider to be "scorching", but it was more than evocative and illicit enough to make a modern listener why the rock n roll style was named after a euphemism for humpin'.

By this point in time, Fats was 5 years into a go-nowhere recording career, stuck tickling the ivories to the same old crowds in the same old clubs at home in New Orleans. While his musical hero Louis Jordan was topping the "race" charts with songs like "Saturday Night Fish Fry", Domino was releasing a raft of locally successful, but nationally ignored singles like "Baby Please" and "Don't Leave Me This Way". The (sexually charged) frustration evident in the titles and felt in the performances on record was arguably too racy for mainstream audiences at the time. But once the tide turned and the youngsters of the nation caught on, it was this very frustration that they could relate to which would eventually propel Fats into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, say what you want about its merits.

But none of it might have happened. Things could all have turned out differently if censors had had their druthers. There wouldn't be a Rock n Roll Hall of Fame to honor musical mavericks like Fats Domino if the newly dubbed "teen-agers" of America hadn't engaged in a quiet uprising.

Parents would tell their adolescents that what they were going through was a passing fad, and that may or may not have been true on an individual level, but the excitement that first wave of rock n roll enthusiasts felt left a legacy that reverberates through both popular and underground music to this day. And it all started with an outing to the theater.

Blackboard Jungle was the Dangerous Minds of its day: an unflinching look at unruly youth through the eyes of an inner city school teacher. It may seem mildly laughable today, but this film was at the cutting edge of cinematic badassery. It showed kids having bad or even nihilistic attitudes smoking and fighting in the classroom, but more importantly, it created a broad and internationally distributed canvass on which a craze was graffitied.

When the drum solo kicks in during the title sequence to ring in Bill Haley & the Comets's "Rock Around the Clock" it marked the beginning of the end of the crew cut, prudish cultural sensibilites and socially conservative mores that ruled the accepted norms of the day. This was the beginning of the popularity of rock n roll.

Voice-over hype during the trailer says it all: "Many people said this story could not, must not, dared not be shown! The picture already has the movie and book world gasping! Blackboard Jungle deals with an explosive subject: the teen-age terror in the schools! It is the toughest, frankest, most realistic film since 'On the Waterfront'! It is fiction, but fiction torn from modern Big City Savagery!"

Blackboard Jungle was released in theaters on March 19, 1955. It was directed by Richard Brooks, whose other notable film work included Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the acclaimed but perplexingly out-of-print Looking for Mr. Goodbar. The film starred Glenn Ford, Anne Francis, Louis Calhern, Margaret Hayes and Sidney Poitier whose role was sadly downplayed in the trailer.

You can watch the trailer right here, aside from that one racist gaffe, it's both hilarious and bad ass:

COMICS SUCK! - Fighting American #6 (Feb 1955)

60 YEARS AGO - February-March 1955

Cover art by Jack Kirby

FIGHTING AMERICAN #6 (Prize Comics)
By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby

Before there was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, there was Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

They created the first 10 issues of the original Captain America Comics. Each issue features multiple stories and they're all excellent. After Simon and Kirby left the book, the series spiraled downward in terms of quality. The series would limp on for another 7 years before being rebranded Captain America's Weird Tales to appeal to fans of the new horror craze that was sweeping the nation. It would finally be cancelled after two issues.

Those first ten original issues remain legendary, however. From there on the team continued to create new interesting characters with unusual depth for the Golden Age era (roughly 1935-1956), including Manhunter, Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion. Later, Kirby would help revive Green Arrow for DC Comics and co-create the Challengers of the Unknown, fore-runners to the Fantastic Four before returning to the company that he had co-created Captain America for. But before returning, there were a few twists in the road.

Fighting American was Simon & Kirby's response to Marvel Comics (then called Atlas) revamping of the Captain America title in 1954. It was a way to show Atlas how the character was supposed to be done. Fighting American and his young sidekick Speedboy (because all fightin' heroes had young sidekicks in the Golden Age) were a two-man anti-communist army with no superhero powers ... per se. F.A. did have enhanced abilities, much like that "other" star-spangled hero the team had invented 13 years earlier, and he would use this prowess to beguile communist forces in America. But by issue #2, Simon and Kirby were disgusted by the tenor of anti-communist sentiment in the McCarthy hearings, especially once the House Select Committee started targeting comic books. From that point forward Fighting American became a parody.

The first story in this issue, "Deadly Doolittle" is a fast moving crime caper. A well-put-together blonde named Marilyn Biltrite approaches Johnny Flagg aka Fighting American in his civilian guise, plants a wet one on him ... and also a handful of stolen diamonds. When a pair of crooks catch up with her to retrieve the diamonds, Fighting American shows up to punch some face and save the damsel. It turns out Ms. Biltrite is a maid at old man Munneybelt's mansion and took the diamonds before the crooks could. It's a fun story with little social commentary.

I mentioned earlier that Fighting American was Simon & Kirby's response to Atlas Comics revamping of Captain America, well that's not speculation. The middle story of this issue is a reprint of Fighting American's origin from issue 1 which was basically a re-telling of Captain America's origin, right down to a scrawny soldier volunteering to be used as a guinea pig for an experimental serum. One can't help but think that in today's heartless, corporate world, the company would have sued Simon & Kirby for plagiarising their own idea.

The third story in this issue however, is a different animal altogether (before Justice League of America debuted in 1960, it was rare for comic books to feature single full-length stories). In "Super-Khakalovitch ... Boy 'Has-Been'!" we're introduced to the raggedy titular villain of the piece. We first encounter him posed in a Russian cossack dance while leaping through the air, big toe protruding through a hole in his smelly sock. He shouts, "Fools! I am inwincible!" as he bounds over the heads of Fighting American and Speedboy who plug their noses in olfactory disgust as Speedboy says, "Boy! Is he strong!!" In the 10-page story Super-Khakalovitch is sent to America by his Soviet handlers for reasons unspecified and falls in love with American cars. He is defeated when soviet spies (who are "everywhere! Watch everybody ... even Super-Khakalovitch") sensing his betrayal decide to give him a bath with a fire hose, thus eliminating his super-smelliness. The now de-powered Khakalovitch decides to settle in the U.S., with the blessing of Fighting American, of course. Low-brow stuff, and buckets of fun. And not just fun, it holds up as a parody of funnybook heroes and propaganda techniques in media to this day.

This was the penultimate issue of the original Fighting American series. When Kirby returned to the company that would be known as Marvel Comics, he would go on to bigger things, Joe Simon died in 2011 at the age of 98 and remains relatively obscure outside the cloistered world of comic book fanaticism, although his legendary status within that world is assured. The creative team would revive Fighting American for a single issue published by Harvey Comics in October 1966. The giant-size edition featured new stories and reprints.

WHAT ELSE WERE THE KIDS UP TO BACK THEN?
After reading this issue and having a good snicker, the anti-communist youth of America no doubt hit the jukebox at the local malt shoppe and spun this little record:


Or maybe not. Rock & Roll wouldn't enter the American consciousness on a large scale until at least a month later. Elvis released five flop singles on Sun Records before breaking through on RCA a year after Rock & Roll hit the big time. Ask me his best stuff was recorded for Sun. It was raw, rugged jive music with a country flair, just the way Rock & Roll was intended. Hell, Elvis was Punk Rock in February 1955.

After they were all hopped up on Fighting American comics, Elvis and sodas, those now restless teen-agers almost certainly went to the local movie house and caught this barn-burner of a film:



The original The Fast and The Furious was one of director/producer Roger Corman's earliest successes and it only encouraged him to keep going. He's still going strong to this day!