This is a feature called "A Political World," where we spotlight 20th Century comic book stories that came out back when comic books were not political at all, unlike comic books nowadays.

I have written about this comic book story a number of times over the years, but it is one of those stories where you can really never talk ENOUGH about it, that's how good of a story it is and how important it is as a story.

In 1953's Weird Fantasy #18, Al Feldstein and Joe Orlando produced the story "Judgment Day," about an astronaut observer being sent from a Galactic Alliance to see if a robot planet is ready to be admitted into their alliance. However, the astronaut is disappointed to learn that the robots differentiate among each other based on the color of their outer sheathing...

Ultimately, he has to turn the planet down, since it is exhibiting behavior that had become outdated and prohibited by the Galactic Alliance in the future.

Then we get the twist at the end of the story, where we see that the astronaut is a black man...

Obviously, it loses a bit of its power due to it being 2019, but you can imagine the power such a story had in 1953.

No less than the great Ray Bradbury wrote in to EC Comics to congratulate them on the excellent story...

So that's it, right? Great story, political content, that's about all we need for this column. However, in this instance, there is another twist beyond the twist ending of the comic book itself and it involved the Comics Code Authority and some ill-considered decisions on the part of that group.

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By the end of the 1955, EC Comics was in pretty rough shape as a result of the 1954 creation of the Comics Code Authority.

The company's head, Bill Gaines, firmly believed that the Code was at least partially designed by the other members of the authority (including DC Comics) to put his company out of business, as the Code had rules against titles with the words "horror" and "terror" in them, and rules about how large the word "crime" could be in a comic book title. All of those things were trademarks of EC Comics.

Within a year of the Code's implementation, sales of EC Comics had slumped dramatically.

The last traditional comic book produced by EC Comics was 1955's Incredible Science Fiction (a series that had just begun a few months earlier, taking over the numbering from Weird-Science Fantasy) #33.

The last story in the issue, "Eye for an Eye," had to be pulled at the last minute due to objections by the Comics Code Authority.

So Gaines and editor Al Feldstein decided to reprint "Judgment Day" in its place.

However, Gaines and Feldstein were then told that this replacement story ALSO violated the Comics Code.

Judge Charles Murphy (administrator of the Code) said that they would have to change the astronaut from black to white if they wanted it to be included. This was not part of the Code at the time. Feldstein and Gaines felt that Murphy was just deliberately messing with them.

After being told that, clearly, the color of the astronaut's skin was practically the whole point of the story, Murphy backed down a bit, but said that they would at least have to get rid of the perspiration on his skin. It could possibly be that Murphy felt that it was exploitative. I do not know, and neither did Feldstein nor Gaines, who only had their suspicions that they were being screwed with.

Feldstein and Gaines both refused to comply (I believe the terms they used included at least one use of the word "fuck"), and Gaines threatened a lawsuit and/or a press conference to shine a light on why exactly the story was objected to.

The story ran as is.

However, it was, as I mentioned, the last traditional comic book published by EC Comics, who just folded up their comic book line and concentrated on their hit parody magazine, Mad (which luckily was not Comics Code approved). So it is probably a stretch to say that they had won the battle with the Comics Code only to lose the war, since Mad was a big success, but it is was still a shame to see their comic book line fold.

Thanks to Digby Diehl's excellent book on EC Comics, Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives for the information for this piece!

Okay, folks, I'm sure you have suggestions for good political storylines from the "good old days when comic books weren't political," so drop me suggestions at brianc@cbr.com!