Rather than use this space to vent about whatever industry ills are vexing me on my particular week in the editorial rotation, I will try to showcase a particular comic or publisher doing something interesting in the wonderful ghetto of comics. Probably. Unless something comes up.

Certain comics - well, most comics - fall prey to routine. "How many times," cried one Savage Sword of Conan letter writer circa the late '70s, "Can Conan be suckered by a pretty face? All these women keep leading him into dark alleys to be ambushed!" Well, of course. In his heyday Roy Thomas understood the value of ritual in reading (and writing) comics, and the long-lived popularity of that title speaks to the validity of his work. Conan offers various guilty pleasures (not the least of which is "Big" John Buscema's pencilwork, remarkably balanced between visual storytelling and spectacle), such as the almost inevitable familiarity the reader has with the way each of the Cimmerian's tales must end. This is not a weakness: like James Bond films or Coyote/Roadrunner cartoons, the reader/viewer knows the destination; it's the journey that is important.

With this criterion in mind, re-read EC's post-code-establishment flagship "New Direction" title Psychoanalysis. What work! Jack Kamen's art is as polished as comics art ever was, setting a standard for future neo-realists like Neal Adams which would be difficult to equal. Many EC titles featured text-heavy pages, but none so weighted by prose as those in Psychoanalysis. Some pages are better than 50% text, allowing just enough room for Kamen's various angles of figures, heads and eyes from panel to panel. There is little action in this book: those readers who find Dilbert so incredibly bad due to its "talking heads" format would do well to avoid Psychoanalysis, but for those willing to sacrifice fisticuffs (or even a change of scenery), this book is a pip.

The premise is also novel: unlike other narrator-based EC titles (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, etc.) "The Psychiatrist Without A Name" does not speak directly to the reader, but rather interacts with the three featured players: Freddy Carter (teen-aged kleptomaniac), Ellen Lyman (repressed, passive aggressive office worker) and Mark Stone (psychosomatically ill, porcine sitcom-scribe). The three characters seek treatment for their "illnesses," and the Psychiatrist is there, doling out advice.

Structurally, the comic's narrative is trisected: each of the three characters has a "session" with the doctor, comprised mainly of his browbeating and their tear-stained confessions. More often than not, these confessions are hardly convincing:

PSYCHIATRIST: YOU WERE TRYING TO ELIMINATE A DEAD MAN, WEREN'T YOU? YOU WERE TRYING DESPERATELY TO FREE YOURSELF OF DIFFICULTIES THAT STILL EXISTED, EVEN THOUGH [YOUR FATHER] HAD PASSED ON! IT WAS FUTILE, WASN'T IT?

MARK: I... I GUESS SO.

The psychiatrist is often pictured in extreme close-up, nothing more than a pair of eyes leering at the helpless patient reclining across the obligatory office couch - especially in the case of poor Ellen. The doctor is often smiling at her apparent agony, leading her issue by issue into further declarations of shame and degradation. Despite her claims to the contrary, the doctor can sense there is some pent-up frustration, a veiled hostility masking itself in nightmare:

PSYCHIATRIST: YOU HATE YOUR SISTER, DON'T YOU, ELLEN? YOU FEEL THAT SHE STANDS IN THE WAY OF YOUR HAPPINESS... AND YOU WISH HER DEAD!

ELLEN: NO! NO! I WON'T LISTEN TO THIS! IT'S NOT TRUE! [She turns to leave.]

PSYCHIATRIST: COME BACK, ELLEN! YOU KNOW BETTER THAN TO THINK YOU CAN RUN AWAY FROM THE TRUTH! YOU'VE BEEN DOING IT LONG ENOUGH!

ELLEN: ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT! I HATE HER! I'VE ALWAYS HATED HER! I'VE ALWAYS ENVIED HER! BUT I NEVER WISHED HER DEAD!

It takes no great insight to see that this comic itself carries some veiled hostility toward the psychoanalytic fervor that contributed to the creation of the comics code that choked the bulge-your -eyes-out-of-their-sockets glee that possessed the best of the EC horror books. The psychiatrist, though drawn by Kamen as a handsome wavy-haired pipe-smoking patriarchal everyman, is - as one letter-writer lamented - "dictatorial," passing judgment on entire families within minutes of meeting them. Poor Freddy Carter hadn't begun his first session when the good doctor berated his parents:

PSYCHIATRIST: I'LL BE BLUNT WITH YOU BOTH! THE TROUBLE WITH FREDDY IS YOU! YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN HIS TROUBLE! YOU ALWAYS WILL BE. WHAT HE IS TODAY... WHAT HE'LL BE TOMORROW... IS YOUR DOING, EXCLUSIVELY!

FREDDY'S DAD: THAT'S ABSURD! THEY SAY THE SINS OF THE PARENTS ARE ON THE CHILD! YOU'RE REVERSING THE PROVERB! YOU'RE MAKING FRED'S SINS OURS!

PSYCHIATRIST: THEY ARE! THERE ARE NO DELINQUENT CHILDREN... ONLY DELINQUENT PARENTS!

I can only begin to imagine how satisfying it was to put these words in the mouth of a "professional psychoanalyst" following the Wertham hearings and all the talk of comics corrupting and stultifying the minds of America's youth. Freddy is "a boy of about 15," probably the average age of the EC horror-book audience; Ellen is a "tense, bespectacled woman of 19." Two teenagers with psychological problems stemming not from comics, but rather from parental smothering or neglect. Imagine. Would this book have seen print if it weren't for the Wertham witch hunt? Who says the Comics Code never did anything for you?

Let me elaborate: this is no phony book produced only to gall Werthamites (although that certainly must have been a component), but a fully-realized (if limited) concept which remains, to my knowledge, unique in comics. Although there are horrific elements in some of the dreams related to the doctor (Ellen Lyman's, natch) it is not a horror book by any stretch; although there are romantic interludes (the tribulations of the hapless Mark Stone), it would be a disservice to label this a romance book. It is a beast without a genre, an example of what the EC crew was capable of when limited to even the most mundane subject matter. Issue after issue of the same three patients laying on a psychiatrist's couch - Crom! - and yet it works.

I don't have the sales figures in front of me, but a best guess is that Psychoanalysis didn't sell like hotcakes. (One fan whose correspondence was published in Psychoanalysis's letter column "Id Bits" flatly stated, "... I bought it... I read it... I don't like it"; another wrote "Now I must go on record as saying that Psychoanalysis is the most loathsome thing I have ever seen.") There are only four issues in the series, and all three patients are "cured" (the doctor writes "therapy completed" in longhand with a flourish on each of their files after three or four sessions) by the end of that fourth issue. Had Psychoanalysis caught on with little Bobbys all over America, would there have been additional sessions with Freddy, Ellen and Mark, or would there have been a new batch of delinquent youths sprawled on the couch, waiting for a berating from the psychoanalyst? It's criminal that we are deprived of further analyses. The possibilities are astounding: picture a '90s Psychoanalysis one-shot with "sessions" by Clowes, Brunetti, Woodring and Sala... Holy Cats. Of course, my disgust at Psychoanalysis's cancellation and my enthusiasm at its potential might be considered emotional extremes, and the Psychoanalist tells us (via a tirade aimed at Freddy's father) "EXTREMES OF ANY KIND ARE NEUROTIC! " Y-yes, doctor! I... I know!

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