With Great Chutzpah Comes Great Responsibility: DC COMICS’s Socialist Gangster Past

Schmuggling Booze for Gangsters! Printing Socialist Literature! Distributing Contraceptives AND Soft-Core Porn! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  There are many controversial facts that most comic fans do not know about original DC Comics publisher Harry Donenfeld.

Information of Donenfeld’s early childhood is sketchy at best, but it is believed that he was born on October 16, 1983 in Romania before his family moved to America and settled in the Lower East Side.  He was a street Yid who became one of the biggest publishers in America. 

Donenfeld became a salesman and the fourth partner of his brothers’ printing company, Martin Press.  He could schmooze people from all walks of life and seal deals his brothers never could.  After helping the family business reach a new level of success, Donenfeld became the majority owner of the company.

Donenfeld may not have created DC Comics, but after its creator became indebted to him and then declared bankruptcy, Donenfeld bought the entire shebang. 

Prior to entering the comic business, Donenfeld was involved in many risky business endeavors, including:

Printing Socialist Literature!

Donenfeld was the main printer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.  This is how Donenfeld met the man who would control DC’s finances and later become a co-owner, Jack Liebowitz (also a Jewish immigrant who moved to the Lower East Side).  That is right, the co-owner of DC was a former raging socialist whose father was actually the main organizer of the union!

Schmuggling Booze for Gangsters!

Donenfeld always loved the fast life- booze, woman and gambling.  He looked up to mobsters and modeled himself after their flashy lifestyle.  He also loved that they crossed class lines.  Like him, they were poor folk who defied the odds and found success amidst the old impenetrable upper class.  During prohibition, Donenfeld was able to work with the mobsters as part of the booze distribution network.  His paper trucks would smuggle booze from Canadian paper mills into America.  He would use his printing warehouses to store the liquor and then distributed it to newsstands where the alcohol was sold under-the-counter.

Distributing Contraceptives and Pro-Contraceptive Literature!

In the 1920s, Donenfeld‘s company illegally dispersed birth control and pro-contraceptive periodicals, along with the booze.  Donenfeld actually worked for Margaret Sanger– the radical leader who lead the birth control movement and created the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood.

Distributing Soft-Core Porn!

At one point, Donenfeld printed sex pulps, which were known by funny names like “nudies” or “smooshes.”  At first, the mags featured models wearing underwear, but the clothes became sparser until Donenfeld had topless women on the covers.  Apart from the pictures, they also featured sexual stories.  Donenfeld printed the mags for other publishers, but when they would go into debt to him, he would buy their companies.

When censors attacked Donenfeld for the nudity, he made promises he wouldn’t keep.  Donenfeld was indicted for publishing obscene materials on March 21^st 1934 after publishing an issue with frontal nudity on the cover, complete with pubic hair.  In a total gangster-like move, he paid an employee, Herbie Siegel, to take the fall and go to jail for him. In return, Siegel was promised a job for the rest of his life.

After narrowly avoiding disaster, Donenfeld finally started censoring the “smooshes”.  He then replaced them with the “Spicies”, such as Spicy Adventure Stories and Spicy Mystery.  While the covers and the content did not feature nudity, they were just as controversial.  Donenfeld would taunt censors by using covers with incredibly racist images of sexual perversion. Of course, America loved it and sales skyrocketed, but Jack Liebowitz was shitting his pants.  He knew that even though Donenfeld was getting away with this brazen activity now, the censors were eventually going to come for them.

All hell broke loose in 1937- prohibition ended and the US government went after the mob.  Since Americans no longer needed mobsters for booze, they turned on them wanted them jailed.  The public now saw them as evil immigrant hoodlums and the government made many high profile arrests.  Racketeers tried to get out while they could and most Jews with mob ties quickly invested their money into legal assets.  The Mayor of NY, Mayor LaGuardia, targeted indecent publications as part of his re-election campaign.  Donenfeld knew it was only a matter of time before LaGuardia targeted him either for mob relations or porn, so he had to invest in safer moneymakers.  This was when he decided to invest in comics, and soon after, DC Comics published the Man of Steel. 

DC Comics grew bigger than ever.  Eventually, Jack Liebowitz became co-owner of DC and distanced the company from Donenfeld.  Donenfeld was no longer used as the figure-head of the company and was removed from the board of directors.  Liebowitz knew Donenfeld’s past was too controversial to be affiliated with such wholesome heroes like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.  When Donenfeld passed away in February 1965, DC comic did not even acknowledge it.

Want to read more about the birth of DC comics?  Sure you do!  Be sure to pick up a copy of Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerald Jones.

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Jay Deitcher, LMSW(@mrdeitcher) is an educator on comic history and runs successful Free Comic Book Day events yearly.  You can see a listing of his incredible articles at JayDeitcher.com.