Richard Nixon gets a lot of abuse, but even the most rabid liberals and Democrats can concede he did do some good things. Like creating the Environmental Protection Agency, Title IX, lowering the voting age to 18 and eliminating the draft. He also got Spider-Man involved in the War on Drugs.
In 1971, comic books were monitored by the Comics Code Authority, which functioned sort of like the old Motion Picture Production Code. That is, they prohibited the depiction of certain things, most involving sex and graphic violence, including drug use. If approved, they got the CCA seal on their covers.
The CCA dated back to the 1950s when Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent detailed the more extreme abuses of decency standards by the horror and crime comics published by EC (Tales from the Crypt and the like) as well as what he saw as hidden homosexual propaganda in more mainstream comic charcaters (prominently Batman and Robin and Wonder Woman). The comics companies self-imposed the CCA on themselves to fend off congressional hearings and parents’ groups.
In 1971 however the White House asked Marvel Comics’ editor/writer Stan Lee to write an anti-drug storyline in The Amazing Spider-Man, one of its most popular titles to aid in the War on Drugs. He agreed. The White House apparently didn’t inform the CCA however, and when the first issue of the three-story arc came before them, it was not approved. (In it, Spider-Man rescues a drug addict on a rooftop who thinks he can fly.) Marvel published it anyway, figuring they were protected since they had White House approval.
The storyline featured Spider-Man’s alter ego Peter Parker as he confronted The Green Goblin, in reality Norman Osborn, the father of Peter’s friend and roommate Harry Osborn. At the same time, Harry is distraught because his girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson, is more attracted to Peter. This leads him to start taking drugs. Over the three issues, Harry ends up in the hospital from an overdose, Peter beats up the drug dealer, and the Green Goblin/Norman is so distraught at his son’s condition that he temporarily repents of his criminal tendencies.
The drug use is universally negative, and the drug dealers are evil. (They approach Peter, not knowing that Harry is in the hospital. When Peter realizes they in effect put Harry there and reacts angrily, they attempt to beat him up.) Spider-Man’s only involvement is to condemn the drugs. That didn’t matter to the CCA. All three issues were published without the CCA stamp.
Marvel’s decision to ignore the CCA and publish the arc generated a lot of publicity, mostly positive for Marvel and negative for the CCA, and resulted in a modification of the prohibition on drug use. Marvel got credit, too, for not going crazy and violating the CCA just for the sake of violating it. They continued to use the CCA stamp and follow its dictates until they were changed.
The White House seemed happy, too. I don’t know how many teens stayed off drugs because Spider-Man didn’t like them, but it couldn’t have hurt. Maybe it even encouraged those already using drugs to stop or seek rehab.
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