Len Lawson The Real Life Comic Book Bad Guy Part Two
This article is a compilation of several articles previously written on Leonard Lawson all focusing on different aspects of his life, whether it be his time as a popular comic book artist, the censorship in the comic book industry of the era or the resulting criminal cases arising from Lawson terrible deeds. I have arranged and edited them to give a more encompassing story of the man who could’ve been Australia’s greatest comic artist to a man who died in prison of old age.
The articles are listed here for reference.
CRAZY OR CRIMINAL?
Lawson cut a quiet and lonely figure at Long Bay Jail as he awaited Cabinet’s decision on whether to commute his death sentence. It was very doubtful that Lawson would receive the death sentence as a groundswell of social activist was lobbying the Governments of the time as the punishment’s relevance in these more modern times. Regardless, one question had to be answered:
Was he sane? A government-appointed psychiatrist found that he was but even so Lawson’s death sentence was commuted to not life but 14 years’ imprisonment.
Was he sane? A government-appointed psychiatrist found that he was but even so Lawson’s death sentence was commuted to not life but 14 years’ imprisonment.
Leonard Lawson was a model prisoner at Goulburn Jail. He found religion, painted religious images, taught a younger prisoner to read, write and draw. His exemplary conduct led to him being released on parole after serving just half his sentence. It would take only six months for Lawson to do unspeakable act and end up in jail again, this time it would a life sentence for certain.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? -A sidebar. Lawson and Censorship in comics in the 1950s
At trial, the fact that Lawson made comic books were highlighted and one newspaper even described Lawson as “the artist of violent comics, which frequently depicted bosomy heroines.” On June 25, 1954, Lawson received the death penalty. The court also denied Lawson’s request to be allowed to continue to draw The Lone Avenger while in prison to support his family.
As a result of the trial, the media’s attention, and claims that Lawson’s comics contained graphic violence, there was a severe backlash against comic books and their creators in Australia. Lawmakers began to publicly scrutinize the Australian comic industry in a way that paralleled the public backlash against horror comics in the United States that was taking place around the same time. Comic publishers were denounced as pornographers and peddlers of escapist, dehumanizing mass culture that promoted sadism, violence, or militarism.
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| SMH 27-08-1955 |
In response and as a further parallel to what was going on in the United States during the same period, the Australian industry attempted to self censor. Several publishers set up internal censorship committees to alleviate the public’s concern. Others adopted modified versions of the American Comics Code Authority. Still, others reacted by establishing a Committee of Parents to sign off on each book. In addition, Gordon & Gotch (the largest distributors in Australia) created its own censorship panel to further review what had gotten passed the publishers’ censors.
Like the Comics Code Authority, some of the rules passed by these companies bordered on the absurd. For example, the Code of Ethics of Horowitz, Inc., provided that a character’s speech must be “free from slang, ungrammatical idiom and dialect.” The Code of Ethics also provided that “Even husband and wife should not normally be shown together in the bedroom. Plots involving divorce should be avoided, as they point towards a lack of family stability and are complicated and unsettling to the teenage mind.”
Despite these protective measures, the Australian States went ahead with their censorship legislation. The most aggressive of the new laws were in Queensland, where the government passed the Objectionable Literature Act. The Act established a Board of six to examine books (especially comic books) to determine whether they should be banned. The Board did not follow any uniform procedures and described that their decisions were made based on intuition. In the first nine months alone, the Queensland Literature Board of Review managed to ban 45 books, a third of which were comics).
Not surprisingly, The Lone Avenger was one of the first of these banned books and was officially listed on August 27, 1954. In an attempt to appease the other Australian States and continue the book, which had been taken over by Len Such after Lawson went to prison, publisher Edwards, along with it distributor, Gordon & Gotch, self-sanitized The Lone Avenger. Despite these efforts, The Lone Avenger soon rode off into the sunset, a victim of his creator’s crime. Indeed, the comic backlash was so bad that it would take thirty years for Australia to develop another local comic book industry. (It didn’t help that the embargo against the importing of American comics was lifted and the local comic creators again faced competition from America.)
Justice eventually found the Queensland Literature Board of Review in the form of a decision from Australia’s High Court. In December, 1954, the Literature Board of Review banned a set of teenage romance comics, including some that had passed the strict (if not ridiculous) Horwitz Code of Ethics. In response, three publishers sued the Board in Australia’s High Court, which found the actions of the Literature Board of Review laughable. In ruling for the comics industry, the court found that comics “may be an affront to readers’ intelligence or even eyesight, but certainly not a threat to their morals.” The Court also pointed to the fact that the Board did not outline what was excusable to standards and what wasn’t and was so arbitrary that it suppressed giveaway (free speech)
