Set Description:
“Parade of Pleasure” (POP), written by Geoffrey Wagner, is an examination of the harmful effects that movies, comic books, pin-up magazines and, to a lesser degree, television have on American society. The book was originally published in Great Britain in 1954 and joined the growing comic book censorship movement of the 1950s with the most notable being Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI). POP is sometimes referred to as the British version of the SOTI. In his forward to the book, Wagner notes that he selected to study the influences of American popular iconography because “They are influences that exist in all countries and peoples, but which I have studied in America because they have found rather more expression there of late due to the generosity of the American economy and its exemplary love of freedom of the press.” Part two of POP deals with comics and is entitled “Comics: The Curse of Kids”. In this section, Wagner details the negative effects that comics have on children directly and American society in general. The comics that are contained in this registry set are all the comics that Overstreet currently lists as being referenced in POP.
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| Slot: |
Action Comics 168 |
| Item: |
Action Comics 168 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0153940009
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Owner Comments
Action Comics #168 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on page 90. In this section of the POP, Wagner dissects the character flaws of various superheroes and the worlds in which they inhabit. He notes the absence, or incompetence, of police in many of the superhero comics and uses Action Comics issues #168 and #176 to illustrate his point. In addition to Superman, he references excerpts from storylines starring the character Vigilante (the alter ego of Greg Sanders a western singer and songwriter that takes up guns to avenge his father’s death by the hand of bandits) that are contained in Action Comics.
He describes Vigilante as follows: “The last story in Action Comics number 176, by the way, is called ‘Vigilante’ and features a hero of this name and type in the usual Western extravaganza. With lariat and pistol ‘Vig’ accounts for literally scores of villains in the bloodbath of each issue, and in these stories the police seldom put in an appearance at all. Recently, however, Sup’ has been toning down his activities somewhat and Vig has followed suit; in Action Comics no 168 the former dealt solely with animals, while the latter did his shooting on a target-range.”
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| Slot: |
Action Comics 176 |
| Item: |
Action Comics 176 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
1296303007
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Owner Comments
Action Comics #176 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on page 90.
Wagner uses the story “Muscles for Money”, contained in Action Comics #176, to describe Superman’s powers “To give some idea of Superman’s abilities, one need only glance at a typical story in Action Comics no 176; here Superman-Kent (his name always printed in a reverently heavy type) flies, dislodges huge rocks with his ‘X-Ray’ vision, whisks men through the air, converts the carbon in a pencil into a diamond by the pressure of his hands, flies to South Africa and back in a few seconds, burrows through a mountain to rescue a man trapped in a mine, lifts a children’s carnival into the stratosphere, carves a vault out of a hillside with his fists, brings a carload of fleeing crooks back by rubbing a bar ‘at SUPER-SPEED’ and thus converting it into a magnet, hauls more men off through the air, and so on. All this takes Superman eleven pages.
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| Slot: |
Adventure Comics 189 |
| Item: |
Adventure Comics 189 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
1053578004
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Owner Comments
The cover of Adventure Comics #189 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) as a full page black and white illustration. In addition, the cover is referenced in full color on the POP dust jacket (more specifically 4th row from the top, 4th comic in from the left). For additional reference, I have included a scan of the interior black and white cover illustration of Adventure Comics #189 contained in POP. Please note Wagner’s incorrect captioning of the illustration as he refers to Superboy being Superman’s brother.
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| Slot: |
All-True Crime 49 |
| Item: |
All True Crime 49 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
2035228010
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Owner Comments
All-True Crime #49 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on page 79.
On page 79 Wagner describes the violet nature of crime comics and summarizes All-True Crime #49 as follows “All-True Crime no 49 contains 13 killings by criminals (excluding the ‘group slaughter’ of an exploded aircraft) as against four by the police, two of which are indirect – nor does this allow for the numerous cracks to the skull that would certainly put most normal human beings to sleep for good”.
The multiple killings are distributed throughout the comic however the exploded aircraft “group slaughter” reference comes from the story “Prisoners” contained in All-True Crime #49.
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| Slot: |
Atomic War! 4 |
| Item: |
Atomic War! 4 |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
1014102003
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Owner Comments
Atomic War! #4 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on page 96 and as a color picture on the dust jacket cover (bottom row, 2nd from the left).
On pages 95-96 Wagner, in context to how Russians are portrayed in war comics, describes Atomic War #4 as follows “Total war is assumed. Geneva Conventions go by the board. No prisoners are taken by either side, unless to be tortured (only by Russians, in this case). Poison gas, flame-throwers, and atomic bombs are frequently employed by both sides. One war-comic I have before me is called Atomic War and shows a jet plane delivering a bomb, marked ‘New Year Greeting 1961’ while from the cockpit emerges the balloon ‘When this NEW guided missile hits the Kremlin, those Russkies will really have a hot time!’
I have included a scan of the title page from the “Arctic Assault” story to give a flavor of how atomic war is depicted in war comics from the early 1950s.
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| Slot: |
Batman 74 |
| Item: |
Batman 74 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
1171558008
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Owner Comments
Batman #74 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) on page 90.
On page 90, Wagner describes Batman as follows “Batman is another of these Fuhrer incarnations, hooded, begauntleted with a strong right in place of the normal processes of the law. However, I did notice that in his swank Gotham City apartment he is undemocratic enough to employ a butler. He has a young and adoring help, called Robin, and his enemy is again often the intellectual. In Batman no 74 he has three villains to cope with, all of them brainy, and the first, called ‘The Joker’, ends up in a padded cell, the proper place, presumably, in the universe for those who think. As Batman dives on his second victim in the final act of ‘justice’, he tells him that none may escape Batman’s law – and delivers a haymaker with his left.
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| Slot: |
Battle Action 5 |
| Item: |
Battle Action 5 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0274780005
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Owner Comments
Battle Action #5 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) on pages 93-94.
One of Wagner’s chief complaints with war comics is the way they misrepresent how modern warfare is conducted and he uses Battle Action #5 to provide several examples - “In my experience the Army is a corporate affair, achieving its major successes through obedience to discipline. The war-comic, however, shows the individual running the war, generals accepting plasy-walsy advice from enlisted men, and it concentrates on the more awful moments of combat in well-nigh hilarious terms. So Battle Brady, an heroic G.I., the central figure in Battle Action, continually wins the Korean war alone. More, he virtually created the war – ‘The fighting in Korea was just a police action… but when Battle Brady and Sgt. Socko Swenski got there it became a Real War!’ ‘BRAC! CAK! CAK! VOOM! WA-BRUM-BA!’ are the opening ‘words’ of Battle Action no 5 with Pvt ‘Battle’ Brady rain’ to go. Battle, in fact, dotes on action, in a way I have seldom, in real life, been privileged to observe in a human being, who usually rather enjoys hanging on the existence. ‘Hooray for the Brooklyn Dodgers!’ he yells as he plunges his bayonet hilt-deep in het another red.’
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| Slot: |
Battle Action 12 |
| Item: |
Battle Action 12 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0274780006
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Owner Comments
Battle Action #12 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) as a full color illustration on the dust jacket. The upper left corner of the comic can be seen on the front cover of the dust jacket on the bottom row of comics to the far right.
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| Slot: |
Battle Brady 11 |
| Item: |
Battle Brady 11 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0274780007
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Owner Comments
Battle Brady #11 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) on page 95 and both color and black and white illustrations.
The cover of Battle Brady #11 is printed in black and white as an interior illustration and in full color on the POP dust jacket (more specifically 3rd row from the top, 1st comic in from the left).
On page 95, Wagner describes a story from Battle Brady #11 as follows “Short-skirted women, like the recurrent Yalu River Rosie, constantly appear, usually as commie agents. Battle Brady no 11, decorated with a cover of a GI bayoneting two reds at a time (‘Heads up, commies! It’ll only hurt a minute!’), has a concluding yarn in which six girls, all reds, appear, all showing their knees, and most of them most of their thighs. This story involves the search for an enemy ‘intelligence’ agent call Manchuria Mary. She is caught, but only after she has KO’ed two GIs and been seen bathing nude in a pool.”
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| Slot: |
Battlefront 11 |
| Item: |
Battlefront 11 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0997524008
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Owner Comments
The cover of Battlefront #11 is shown in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) with a color picture on the dust jacket (2nd row up from the bottom, 5th in from the left).
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| Slot: |
Beyond 18 |
| Item: |
Beyond 18 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
1264921008
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Owner Comments
Beyond #18 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on pages 81-82.
Wagner describes Beyond #18 as follows “These crime-terror booklets, seemingly on the increase, show a monstrous reiteration of the morbid, of tombs, electric chairs, mortuaries, surgeries, and so forth. Take The BEYOND no 18: its first story tells of a girl who tries to murder her husband, only to find him turn into a phoenix which finally burns her in its embrace… The second is a welter of murders committed by a ‘ghost’. The third concerns a man who finds a severed hand in a Ming dynasty box. This hand steals his girl-friend in a fine scene and eventually strangles the man himself while he is in a strait-jacket in a lunatic asylum… The fourth story starts off with a man dying in the electric chair, but he proves unkillable and returns to life to run a gang of crooks in a city where the police are powerless to stop him with mere bullets. In the end his body decays, rather contradictorily, and ‘Jules Scholler dragged his rotting body to the dump. There, amidst the burning garbage, he committed his tortured soul to the flames.’
As described by Wagner, I have included a scan of the panel of Jules Scholler committing his rotting body to the dump.
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| Slot: |
Blackhawk 61 |
| Item: |
Blackhawk 61 |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
0213110004
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Owner Comments
Blackhawk #61 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on pages 91-92.
Wagner identifies Blackhawk as a form of politically extreme comic book and, while not named, references the story “Stalin’s Ambassador of Murder”, contained in Blackhawk #61, to illustrate his point. He describes the story as follows “A typical issue, then, no 61, finds the gang up against ‘a horror so simple, so fiendishly ingenious that it walks besides you and me on the street, and we cannot recognize it’. What else could this be but American Communism? The first picture sets the tone; it shows the boys busting in the platform of commie speakers … and Blackhawk himself smacking open the jaw of one of the offenders concerned”. Wagner goes on to describe additional story elements from Blackhawk 61 that he views as politically extreme.
I have provided a scan of the title page to “Stalin’s Ambassador of Murder” for additional reference.
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| Slot: |
Blackhawk 62 |
| Item: |
Blackhawk 62 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
4092776002
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Owner Comments
Blackhawk #62 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on page 91 and a color illustration of the cover of the comic is shown on the dust jacket located on the top row 1st in from the left.
On page 91, Wagner describes Blackhawk 62 “The cover of this comic, incidentally, is easily recognizable. Blackhawk no 62 shows the leaders slitting open the jaw of a Russian soldier, and so on”.
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| Slot: |
Blackhawk 66 |
| Item: |
Blackhawk 66 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
3777931003
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Owner Comments
Blackhawk #66 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) with black and white, and color pictures of the cover.
The cover of Blackhawk #66 is shown in a full page black and white photo, along with three other books, in the interior of POP with the caption “Crime and politics go side by side in some typical crime and super-man comics”. In addition to this photo, a portion of the cover of Blackhawk #66 is shown on the color dust jacket. It’s the comic located on the bottom row, 6 in from the left.
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| Slot: |
Captain Marvel Adventures 142 |
| Item: |
Captain Marvel Adventures 142 Universal |
| Grade: |
CGC |
| Cert #: |
4270620002
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Owner Comments
Captain Marvel Adventures #142 is referenced in Geoffrey Wagner’s “Parade of Pleasure” (POP) in the text on pages 92 and 96.
On page 92, Wagner describes comics that feature stories of superheroes “interfering” in the Korean War and uses an example of Captain Marvel battling the “Red Crusher” in issue #142.
On page 96, Wagner describes comic book weapons “In Captain Marvel no 142 the Captain uses a flame-thrower against troops as a matter of course”.
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