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Gaines didn’t tell the Senator he had rejected the bloodier version of the cover when it was presented to him earlier. KEFAUVER: “You’ve got blood coming out of her mouth” A cover in bad taste might be defined as holding the head higher so that the blood could be seen dripping from it.” GAINES: “Yes sir, I do for the cover of a horror comic. KEFAUVER (holding up an especially gory EC Comic title): “This seems to be a man with a bloody ax holding a woman’s head up, which has been severed from her body. The following testimony between Senator Estes Kefauver and Gaines was especially damaging: The subcommittee investigation was a disaster for the comic book industry. The only representative of the comics industry to testify was Gaines. When Congress again took an interest in his critique in 1954, Wertham was the star witness, appearing before the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. Wertham was a media darling, writing for popular magazines and speaking around the country. They would be considered extremely bloody even by today’s standards.

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Gaines through his EC Comics had created a series of horror comics with titles like “Tales of the Crypt” and “The Vault of Horror”. He was critical of Superman for giving kids the idea that they could fly.īut Wertham’s real attack came against a new generation of crime and horror comics, especially the gruesome creations of William Gaines. In the book Wertham claimed that Batman and Robin were “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together” and that Wonder Woman was a “lesbian counterpart of Batman”. The cry against comics became a fury when Wertham published his bestselling book Seduction of the Innocent. Comics were often blamed for crime as delinquent teenagers would claim that comics had influenced them. Senate became involved in 1950 when a special committee was formed to investigate the link between comic books and organized crime. Canadian lawmakers banned the publication of “crime comics”. There were towns that staged mass comic book burnings and others enacted laws to control and censor comic books. In the late 40’s magazines like Time and Look were criticizing comics for their “degeneration”.

In 1948 he addressed a psychiatric convention and claimed that comics were creating a new and large group of juvenile delinquents. Upon looking into the books he was deeply troubled by their content of gory violence and lurid sex. Wertham worked with troubled teenagers and noticed that many of them were avid readers of comic books. The Board of Education” Supreme Court case that helped to end segregation. His article, “Psychological Effects of School Segregation” was submitted as evidence in the historic “Brown vs. He also did a series of lectures and testimonies before state legislates about the evils of school segregation. Wertham had been helpful in the 1920’s of proving the then novel idea that a patient’s environment should be taken in consideration before diagnosing treatment. Frederic Wertham, a German immigrant psychiatrist. But one man was about to bring the old criticisms of comic books back to life. With the likes of Batman, Superman and Captain America, comics were selling 60 million copies a month. Still comics continued to explode in popularity through out and beyond World War 2. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the comic magazine.” Their crude blacks and reds spoil a child’s natural sense of color their hypodermic injection of sex and murder make the child impatient with better, though quieter, stories.

“Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed – a strain on the young eyes and young nervous systems – the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. An editorial by renowned Chicago Daily News literary editor Sterling North said the following about comics on May 8, 1940: And to some they were getting steamy and way too rough.Ī charge was leveled against comic books that would be repeated decades later against television, movies, music and video games. With the arrival of Superman in 1939 the funny papers just weren’t funny anymore. But by the mid-1930’s new comics with characters like Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon which were filled with adventure and a little violence started to appear. There was a time when comic books were just that – comic – with the likes of Mutt and Jeff and Mickey Mouse.

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