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If you grew up reading American co*ic books during the second half of the twentieth century, you’ll be familiar with the seal of the co*ics Code Authority. I remember seeing it stamped onto the upper-right corner of issues of titles from The Amazing Spider-Man to reprints of Carl Barks’ Scrooge McDuck stories to Jughead Double Digest, but I can’t say I paid it much mind at the time. This was in the nineteen-nineties, by which time the co*ics Code itself has lost much of its force. But back when it was created, in 1954, it had as much restrictive power over the content of co*ic books as the “Hays Code” once had over motion pictures.

According to the video from Youtuber matttt above, the co*ics Code was implemented in response to one publisher above all: EC co*ics, whose grim and graphic titles like Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror made both a big impact on popular culture and a dent in the reputation of the co*ics industry. Closing ranks, that industry formed the co*ics Code Authority to enforce a regime of self-censorship, mangling EC in its gears just as it was about to publish one of the most innovative stories in its form: “Master Race,” the tale of an ex-SS officer in modern-day New York, by an artist named Bernard Krigstein.

At its height, EC was a veritable co*ics factory, with a set of procedures in place that ensured the efficient production of cheap thrills — often at considerable cost to the potential of the medium. Krigstein, who’d always harbored higher artistic aspirations, chafed at these limitations, finding such workarounds as subdividing rigidly defined panel spaces into sets of sequential images, the better to convey movement and action. Nowhere did this technique prove more effective than in “Master Race,” with its practically cinematic tour de force sequence in which the haunted Carl Reissman slips under the wheels of a passing subway train.

Quality takes time, and Krigstein missed the story’s deadline just before the co*ics Code went into force. “Master Race” was published a few months later, albeit in one of EC’s new, sanitized, and thus much less popular titles. The methods of visual storytelling he refined have now beco*e standard elements of co*ic art, but the medium’s enthusiasts can sense how far Krigstein could have gone, if not for the frustration that ultimately caused him to abandon co*ics for a career as a high-school teacher: “Something tremendous could have been done,” he said, “if only they’d let me do it.” With the co*ics Code long since defunct — and now that EC’s most disturbing co*ics look tame — content has beco*e a free-for-all. But what artist dares to be as bold as Krigstein in pushing forward the form?

Related content:

The Disney Artist Who Developed Donald Duck & Remained Anonymous for Years, Despite Being “the Most Popular and Widely Read Artist-Writer in the World”

1950s Pulp co*ic Adaptations of Ray Bradbury Stories Getting Republished

Why the Short-Lived Calvin and Hobbes Is Still One of the Most Beloved & Influential co*ic Strips

How Art Spiegelman Designs co*ic Books: A Breakdown of His Masterpiece, Maus

George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Praised as the Greatest co*ic Strip of All Time, Gets Digitized as Early Installments Enter the Public Domain

“Thou Shalt Not”: A 1940 Photo Satirically Mocks Every Vice & Sin Censored by the Hays Movie Censorship Code

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.