Carol L. Tilley - Children and The Comics Young Readers Take On The Critics

Children and the Comics:
Young Readers Take on the Critics
[Uncorrected final version. Please quote / cite from published version in Protest on the
Page: Essays on Print and the Culture of Dissent, James P. Danky, James L. Baughman, and
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, eds.. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 2015.]
Abstract: In the late 1940s and culminating in 1954 with the publication of psychiatrist Fredric
Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent along with televised hearings on comics held by a
United States Senate subcommittee, comic books were the most contested form of print culture
for young readers. Yet these readers could not get enough of comics, purchasing more than a
billion new comic books a year in the early 1950s. This chapter offers a microhistory of young
people’s critiques of comics’ critics by analyzing some of the letters they sent in protest to
psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and to the United States Senate subcommittee. It situates their
ideas within broader social and historical contexts. In doing so, it serves to highlight the
intersection of print culture and political geography, both of which are scholarly arenas that tend
to neglect youth, especially in ways that allow their unmediated voices and lived experiences to
speak for themselves.

Carol L. Tilley (ctilley@illinois.edu) 2

Children and the Comics:

Young Readers Take on the Critics
The whole argument over comic magazines is very silly and needless. The kids
know what they want. They are individuals with minds of their own, and very
definite tastes in everything…It is time that society woke up to the fact that
children are human beings with opinions of their own, instead of brainless robots
to be ordered hither and yon without even so much as asking them their ideas
about anything.
David Pace Wigransky, Cain Before Comics [letter],
Saturday Review of Literature, 24 July 1948, p. 20
In the years following the end of World War II, American youth’s love for all things
comics boomed. Comic books, originally conceived in the early 1930s as promotional pamphlets
that repackaged newspaper comic strips, captured the imaginations of young readers, especially
after the introduction of superheroes and other original adventure, humor, and science fiction
content in the late 1930s. Surveys of comics readership by both marketers and reading
researchers found nearly all children—boys and girls—read comic books regularly. New comics
sales rose grew ten-fold in a little more than a decade, rocketing from 10 million copies monthly
in 1940 to nearly 100 million copies monthly by 1954,1 the equivalent of thirty comic books a
year sold to every living person in the United States. This pervasive readership spurred some
adults to action, as they feared comics would seduce child readers to lives of illiteracy and
violence. Literary critic and author Sterling North issued one of the first salvos in the campaign
against comics in 1940, warning that comics’ “hypodermic injection of sex and murder” would

1Cf., Carl H. Melinat, Magazine Best Sellers, Wilson Library Bulletin 21 (1946); 540 Million
Comics Published During 1946, Publisher’s Weekly 152 (1947); The Hundred Million Dollar
Market for Comics, Publisher’s Weekly 165 (1954).

lead to “a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one.”2 In the immediate post-
War years comics publishers sought to hold on to more mature readers, so they expanded comics
titles to include stories with criminal, romantic, and macabre themes in the post-War years.
North’s warning early gained urgency, and teachers, librarians, and other adults renewed their
fight against comics. Throughout the country, rallies, legislation, speeches, and bonfires
accompanied adults’ concerns. The apex came in 1954 with the publication of psychiatrist
Fredric Wertham’s anti-comics study Seduction of the Innocent and televised hearings from the
United States Senate on the relationship between comics reading and juvenile delinquency.3
The 1948 letter excerpted for this chapter’s epigram provided a stringent counter-
narrative and argument to this era’s ubiquitous anti-comics rhetoric. In it, David Pace
Wigransky dissected, countered, and probed the assertions made by psychiatrist Wertham in a
May 1948 article for The Saturday Review, “The Comics…Very Funny.” Wigransky deplored
what he believed to be Wertham’s overly protectionist stance toward children, believing it to be
based on misconstrued data. He dismantled Wertham’s claims, marshaling evidence such as the
case of pre-comic book era teenaged murderers Leopold and Loeb and early twentieth century
criticism of comic strips. In the lengthy letter—which the magazine edited only for length and

2 Sterling North, A National Disgrace, Chicago Daily News, May 8, 1940, 56
3 For more about the anti-comics movement, see, James B. Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage:
America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York: Oxford, 1986), David
Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (New
York: Macmillan, 2009), and Amy Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics
Code (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998). For more on Wertham’s book and
questions about his presentation of evidence, see Carol L. Tilley, “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric
Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics,” Information & Culture: A
Journal of History 47 (2012).

not for content— Wigransky leveraged his youthful experiences and perspective. As the owner
(and reader) of more than five thousand comics, Wigransky issued a call to arms for young
people and comics producers to fight back against those forces who had comics in their
crosshairs. “Let any who starts to raise his voice in protest to this generation,” he wrote, “first
compare it with any preceding one. I am certain that he will discover the cards are stacked in
favor of the comic-book readers of the present age.”4 David Pace Wigransky, who mounted this
forceful attack on one of America’s eminent forensic psychiatrists in the pages of a national
magazine of ideas, was a fourteen-year old rising high school junior.
Although Wigransky’s letter was perhaps an anomaly for The Saturday Review, he was
not the only young person to speak back to the adult critics of comic books. In the early 1950s,
several dozen young people from across the United States wrote to Fredric Wertham as well as to
the United States Senate’s subcommittee that was investigating the relationship between comic
books and juvenile delinquency. Few of these letters’ authors wrote as cogently as Wigransky
and none of the authors submitted their missives for mass scrutiny, preferring instead to write
directly to the sources of their discontents and fears. Yet through their ‘civic writing’5 these
young people questioned adults’ at times spurious claims about comics reading and raised salient
points about issues such as intellectual freedom. While Wigransky’s letter surfaces occasionally
in histories of comics, the voices, ideas, and stories of other young people who wrote in protest
have remained obscured in archival collections. This essay documents a selection of these letters,
written by children and teenagers more than a half century ago, and situates their ideas within

4
David Pace Wigransky, “Cain Before Comics” [letter], Saturday Review of Literature,
July 1948, 20
5 Sandra Stotsky, “Writing in a Political Context: The Value of Letters to Legislators,” Written
Communication 4 (1987).

broader social and historical contexts. Where possible the letters are contextualized by interviews
I have conducted with their authors, who are now adults in their 70s and 80s. This essay, then,
serves to highlight the intersection of print culture and political geography, both of which are
scholarly arenas that tend to neglect youth, especially in ways that allow their unmediated voices
and lived experiences to speak for themselves.6
The Anti-Comics Apex
The Saturday Review of Literature, a weekly magazine of ideas and a forum for prosaic
cultural criticism, joined the comics scrum in 1948. The magazine’s resident theatre critic John
Mason Brown spoke about the medium in a March 1948 radio forum that was partially
transcribed and published in the magazine. In the radio conversation with cartoonist Al Capp and
others, Brown described comic books as, “the marijuana of the nursery…the curse of the kids,
and a threat to the future.”7 Two weeks later, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham presided over a
symposium on comics under the auspices of the Association for the Advancement of
Psychotherapy. Psychoanalyst Paula Elkisch and folklorist Gershon Legman counted among the
event’s speakers. Judith Crist, who had yet to make a name for herself as a film critic,

6
For political geography’s historical neglect of children, see, for instance, Chris Philo and Fiona
M. Smith, “Guest Editorial: Political Geographies of Children and Young People,” Space and
Polity 7 (2003).
7
John Mason Brown, “What’s Wrong with the Comics (America’s Town Meeting of the Air),”
ABC Radio Broadcast, March 2, 1948. Digitized audio for this program is available online at
www.historicalvoices.org. Brown and Capp’s opening statements are available in print here,
“The Case Against the Comics,” The Saturday Review of Literature, March 20, 1948. For more
on Capp’s critique of Brown, see Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen, Al Capp; A Life to the
Contrary (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 133-35.

highlighted the symposium in the New York Herald-Tribune. Soon afterwards Crist brought
Wertham’s clinical research on comic books to broader public attention in an article for Collier’s
Weekly. The combined publicity spurred Norman Cousins, Saturday Review of Literature’s
esteemed editor, to invite Wertham to publish a version of his symposium remarks in that
publication.
When the Saturday Review of Literature printed Fredric Wertham’s article “The
Comics…Very Funny” in May 1948, the psychiatrist had only recently begun the campaign
against comic books that would—for better or worse—come to define his professional life.
Wertham, who had studied under the eminent Adolf Meyer at Johns Hopkins University, was
then director of the mental hygiene clinics at both Bellevue and Queens General Hospitals in
New York. He had enjoyed popular success as the author of the forensic study, Dark Legend: A
Study in Murder (1941) and would soon again for A Show of Violence (1949). Beginning in
1946, he had also received favorable attention in the national press for helping found and operate
the LaFargue Clinic, Harlem’s first social welfare and psychiatric clinic. Yet in early 1948
Wertham’s attention shifted somewhat inexplicably from issues such as forensics, psychoses,
and racial prejudice to comic books.
“The Comics…Very Funny” outlined Wertham’s arguments on comics that are familiar
to readers of his later book Seduction of the Innocent (1954). Wertham proposed that comic
books are products of a deceitful industry, luring young readers with colorful pages, ubiquitous
placement, and inexpensive cover prices. To Wertham’s mind, the industry and its sycophants
claimed that comics had educational value or promoted harmless fantasy, while peddling lurid
and sadistic stories, which primed readers for lives of crime and neuroses. He hinted in this
article at his idea for restricting the sales of crime comic books to readers aged fifteen and over, a

proposal he explicated in later interviews and texts. He undergirded his arguments with examples
of the mischief and depravity of various young people he examined in his psychiatric practice or
read about in news reports; some, but not all of them, read comics. In defining crime comics—
something Wertham does best in Seduction of the Innocent—he cast his net broadly so that a
superhero fighting a villain, a cartoonish anthropomorphized animal smacking its pal, and visual
depictions of true crimes all exemplified crime comics. Reader’s Digest condensed his Saturday
Review article, as it also did with his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, which helped extend
his ideas further in the popular media. Wertham’s book sold well-enough, moving more than
16,000 copies in the United States in less than six months.8
The month following Seduction’s release, Senators Robert Hendrickson, Estes Kefauver,
and Thomas Hennings presided over televised comic book hearings that featured testimony from
more than a dozen people including Helen Meyer, vice-president of Dell Publications; Walt
Kelly, the creator of the Pogo comic strip and president of the National Cartoonists Society; and
William Gaines, publisher of Entertaining Comics Groups (EC). During the preceding year, the
Subcommittee under the direction of Richard Clendenen, canvassed social workers, juvenile
court judges, law enforcement officials, and comics industry professionals to assess the extent to
which crime and other comic books encouraged juvenile delinquency.9 The Subcommittee was

8 Rene de Chocor, Letter to Fredric Wertham, August 5, 1954, Box 124, Folder 3, Fredric
Wertham Papers. Manuscripts Division. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. [Hereafter,

Wertham Papers].
9 WNYC (radio) broadcast these hearings live. Digitized recordings are available at
http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/neh-preservation-project/2012/aug/24/senate-subcommittee-juvenile-
delinquency/ At least one day of the hearings (April 22) was televised on WPIX, the Tribune
News-owned independent station in New York, but the ongoing Army-McCarthy hearings
clearly were the bigger media draw. See, for instance, the discussion in James L. Baughman,

tasked with investigating not only comic books but also other forms of mass communication
such as television; it held separate hearings for each medium. For the comics portion of its
charge, the Subcommittee built on an earlier Senate investigation into the publication and
distribution of comic books, as in 1950 a different Senate committee had probed the impact of
crime comic books on delinquency as part of its investigation into organized crime. Senator
Estes Kefauver commissioned Wertham to serve as a consultant for the 1950 investigation,
which the psychiatrist eagerly did at first. Ultimately Wertham grew frustrated with Kefauver
and the committee as its report concluded there was little evidence to connect comic book
reading with criminal behavior.
Despite his disapproval of the outcome of the 1950 investigation, Fredric Wertham
testified in the 1954 hearings, representing what Clendenen’s staff deemed “the extreme
[conservative] position among the psychiatrists.”10 As such his testimony balanced the more
moderate position offered by Dr. Harris Peck, Director of the Bureau of Mental Health Services
for the Children’s Court of New York, and the liberal position held by Dr. Lauretta Bender, a
senior psychiatrist at Bellevue and a consultant for DC Comics. The testimony of these latter two
psychiatrists is seldom cited in the scholarly or popular record. Instead Wertham emerged
alongside William Gaines as the hearings’ star witnesses. Testifying immediately following
Wertham in the afternoon of April 21, 1954, Gaines heard Wertham recapitulate the views on
comics he had rehearsed in speeches and writing over the past six years. Gaines seemed eager to

Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-1961 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2007): 225-229.
10 Background Statement – Dr. Fredric Wertham, Box 171, “Witness Lists & Backgrounds,”
Records of the United States Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee on Juvenile Delinquency
[10E3/16/11/2]. National Archives. Washington, D.C. [Hereafter, Subcommittee Papers.]

offer a retort to the psychiatrist’s position and the panel of Senators and their counsel seemed
eager to spar with Gaines.
In the seven years since his father Max Gaines’ unexpected death, Bill Gaines had
transformed EC from a publisher of innocuous and sometimes educational children’s comics to
one of the vanguard.11 EC’s titles including Shock SuspenStories, Frontline Combat, and Weird
Fantasy featured fresh artwork and riveting stories filled with black humor, surprise twists, and
authentic details. Aimed at an audience of more mature readers, EC’s lineup also featured plenty
of gore as well as challenges to prevailing social norms. All told, these comics found immense
popularity among teen and adult readers, eager for something different. Moreover, the company
responded to readers’ ideas by printing letters from fans and foes in the pages of its comics,
sponsoring the EC Fan Addicts Club that facilitated the development of a visible network of
readers, and inspiring some of the first comics-related fanzines.12 The Subcommittee took issue
with the contents and presentation of EC’s stories as well as its publisher’s brashness. Bill
Gaines had printed both a satirical take on the whole comics conflagration, “Are You a Red
Dupe?,” which proposed that that any restrictions on comics were a Communist conspiracy, and
an editorial urging EC’s readers to share their views on comics with the Subcommittee.

11
Two useful sources for information on Gaines and EC are Maria Reidelbach, Completely Mad:
A History of the Comic Book and the Magazine (New York: Little Brown, 1992) and Frank
Jacobs, The Mad World of William M. Gaines (New York: Bantam Paperbacks, 1972).
12 Bob “Bhob” Stewart was instrumental in two of the original EC fanzines. When he wrote to
Wertham in 1954, he enclosed a copy of POTRZEBIE, one of the fanzines he edited. In a
telephone interview with the author (conducted by Carol L. Tilley, November 12, 2012) Stewart
reported that he never received a response from Wertham although to his memory he sent the
psychiatrist other issues as well.

The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency issued its report on comic books in
March 1955, concluding that there was no certain proof of the relationship between the reading
of crime and horror comics and the incidence of juvenile delinquency. The report recommended
that parents, social welfare professionals, educational and psychological researchers, comic book
publishers and others cooperate to investigate “the exact kind and degree of influence exerted by
comic books on children’s behavior.”13 In addition, the Subcommittee urged as a national aim,
the elimination “of all materials that potentially exert detrimental effects. ”14 The
Subcommittee’s proposals meant little, as comics publishers banded together to form the Comics
Magazine Association of America (CMAA) in September 1954. The CMAA created a self-
regulating editorial practice, the Comics Code Authority (CCA), initially headed by Judge
Charles Murphy, thus successfully avoiding federal intervention. Like the Motion Picture
Production Code, the CCA carried no legal authority and publishers were not required to
participate in the CCA. Yet few publishers could get their comics onto newsstands without the
CCA’s “Seal of Approval.” Scores of comic book titles ceased publication, including the EC
titles that resonated with so many young fans, as many publishers found it untenable financially
or creatively to meet the CCA’s requirements. The Comics Code did not tolerate lust and gore,
unsavory illustrations, attacks on authority figures, stories featuring vampires, werewolves, or
curvy women, or myriad other elements that had helped comics resonate with a generation of
children and teenagers.
The Letters

13
US Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency.
Interim Report. 84rd Congress, 1st Session, Report No. 62, p. 32.
14
Ibid.

Most young people living in the United States in 1954 had never known lives without the
presence of comic books. Although comics have never been solely a child’s medium, children
consumed comics insatiably during the 1940s and 1950s, as more than 90% of elementary
school-aged children and 80% of secondary school-aged children read comics regularly. Comics
were also the defining cultural product of young people’s lives during these decades. The
phenomenal sales of new comic books and the equally pervasive trading and resale of those
comics serve as partial testament to this truth. The variety of comics related media tie-ins such
as radio serials along with the abundant consumer products from lunchboxes to bed sheets,
decoder rings to ray guns that were also available in these decades give further evidence. It
should come as no surprise, then, that some youth were moved to defend comics in letters to the
medium’s biggest bogeymen: Fredric Wertham and members of the Senate Subcommittee. This
section highlights some of these letters and three themes evident in them: generational divides,
reading experiences, and civic participation.
Only a Child: Generational Divides
Dear Sir:
I have read your item “Comic Books – Blueprints for Delinquency” in the current
issue of Reader’s Digest. I agree with you that crime and horror comics must go,
or delinquency will grow. But when you say that all comic books must go, I say
you’re deadly wrong.
I am an eleven-year old boy. I read about a dozen comics every day, and I don’t
see how you can say that crime comics total 4/5 of all comic books…
Anybody that goes out and kills someone because he read a comic book is a
simple-minded idiot. Sound silly? So does your item…
I sincerely wish that you could understand comic books as I do, and I hope that
someday in the future people will know their goods and their evils.

Sincerely yours,
Brian Arthur McLaughlin15
In late-1954, Time carried a brief article highlighting psychoanalyst Robert Lindner’s
theories on teenagers. Lindner, more popularly known as the author of Rebel Without a Cause:
The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath, on which the iconic 1955 film starring James
Dean is based, shared with Wertham and other contemporaries a fear that teenagers were
unnaturally debauched, perverse, and sadistic. Lindner opined that, “The youth of the world
today is touched with madness, literally sick with an aberrant condition of mind formerly
confined to a few distressed souls but now epidemic over the earth.”16 Undoubtedly the young
people who wrote to Wertham and to the Subcommittee were aware of this wider societal
perception of their behaviors and (lack of) competence. As Thomas Hine proposed in his popular
history of teenagers in the United States, despite the growing middle-class acculturation
accompanying the rising percentage of young people attending high school, “adults looked at
their children and saw not a blossoming bourgeoisie, but rather an alien culture in their midst.”17
Thus for these young writers, situating themselves as competent, respectable teens above the
influence of comic books was an essential rhetorical strategy.
McLaughlin’s closing words—“ I sincerely wish that you could understand comic books
as I do”— reflected more than simple frustration. Indeed they give evidence of a perceived gulf

15 Brian Arthur McLaughlin, Letter to Fredric Wertham, April 23, 1953 [sic], Box 123, Folder 7,
Wertham Papers. Although the letter is dated 1953, the writer indicated he had read Wertham’s
“Blueprints for Delinquency,” which was not published until 1954, leading me to conclude the
letter writer misstated the date.
16 “Rebels or Psychopaths,” Time, December 6, 1954), 71.
17 Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (New York: Avon Books, 1999),
243.

in understanding between child and adult, one that spurred a longing by young people to be
heard and respected. Yet some writers seemed dubious that adults would either listen to or value
their insights. For instance, thirteen-year old Lyn Crawford bluntly stated that belief in her letter
to Wertham: “My opinion probably doesn’t mean a thing to you because I’m only a child.”18
Similarly John Hegarty of Attica, Kansas, and a fan of Classics Illustrated told Wertham, “I am
only sixteen years old, so I don’t know what I’m talking about.”19 From available evidence, it
seems that the children were justified in their fears of being—at best–ignored or—less
charitably—viewed as incompetent by the adults. For example, only one of the handful of letter
writers to the Senate with whom I have spoken recall receiving any acknowledgement of their
correspondence; the one who did have some memory of having a reply believed it to be nothing
more than a formulaic response on a postcard that thanked him for writing to the Subcommittee.
Wertham seldom responded to the young people who wrote him, especially if they disagreed
with his views. Moreover, he had a habit of red-penciling their letters, marking the spelling and
grammar errors he found, ostensibly to confirm the debilitating effects of comics reading on their
formal communication skills. As this was not his common practice in correspondence from
adults, it has the appearance of petty-mindedness and disdain.
As a means to demonstrate their competence and distinguish themselves from the
stereotyping of comics readers as juvenile delinquents, some writers asserted their normalcy and
decency. At a basic and subtler proleptic level, writers such as Harley Elliott and Josephine
Campiglia described themselves respectively as a “normal American boy” and “an average

18
Lyn Crawford, Letter to Fredric Wertham, May 4, 1954, Box 124, Folder 1, Wertham Papers.
19
John Hegarty, Letter to Fredric Wertham, April 17, 1954, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers.

seventeen year old girl.”20 Brian Mulholland sought to build greater rapport with the Senators,
telling the Subcommittee that, he was “as honest and as clean as you would want your own son
to be.”21 Other young people such as Brian McLaughlin engaged in more explicit prolepsis. His
statement that only “a simple-minded idiot” would kill someone because of having read a comic
placed him as a member of a small chorus arguing that only someone predisposed to violence
would be spurred to action through comics. For example, Donald Lowry of Evansville, Indiana,
wrote the Subcommittee that, “If a child’s mind is weak enough to be driven to crime by comic
books he was on the verge of delinquency to start with.”22 Some writers spoke about
predisposition and influence in more personal ways. Harry Levy III, a freshman at Southern
Methodist University, wrote to Wertham: “Possibly little boys are sadistic, but, where I could
laugh at the ‘poor innocent maiden getting her teeth kicked in,’ I never got the impression that I
should try the same thing on any of my acquaintances.”23 Bob “Bhob” Stewart, aged sixteen and
living in Kirbyville, Texas, likewise implored Wertham:
You criticize drug addiction depicted in comics. Did you read THE MONKEY
(SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES #12)? I don’t see how any adolescent could ‘start
popping’ after reading it. All curiosity I ever had about whether or not I would try

20 Harley Elliott, Letter to the Subcommittee, received August 10, 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-
Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers; Josephine Campiglia, Letter to the Subcommittee,

September 17, 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers.
21
Brian Mulholland, Letter to the Subcommittee, received September 28, 1954, Box 169,
“Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers.
22
Donald Lowry, Letter to the Subcommittee, received June 18,1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-
Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers.
23
Harry Levy III, Letter to Fredric Wertham, April 21, 1954, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham
Papers.

marijuana just for fun if I had the chance was totally dispersed after I finished that
story.24
Some writers provided credentials of various kinds—their academic grade averages or the
numbers of comic books they owned—to demonstrate their competence to the adults whom they
wrote. For instance, high school junior Dick Cashwell told Wertham in his letter that he was of
“fairly high intelligence” and “a defensive linebacker on an unbeaten championship team.”25
Ron Baumgardner opened his correspondence to the Subcommittee with his credentials: “I
ranked very close to the top of a class of 206. I am a member of the National Honor Society and
have received a four-year matriculation fee scholarship to Illinois State University.”26 Other
writers refused to see their youth as limiting their competence, especially with regard to comics
and juvenile delinquency. Ople Noble asserted in her letter to Wertham: “We are all teen-
agers…We think we know more about the causes of delinquency than do some of our elders.”27
Noble wrote to Wertham on behalf of her eighth grade class in Bisbee, Arizona.28 Her
correspondence with the psychiatrist is unique in that he responded, asking to learn more about
her classmates’ thoughts on comics. He even sent them a box of chocolates from Macy’s, which
Sorich remembers as a distinctive treat, as some of her classmates had never seen chocolates
quite like those. Her confident tone likely resulted in part from the attitude of her teacher Mrs.
Bledsoe, who strived to create a democratic classroom in which each student’s contributions

24
Bob Stewart, Letter to Fredric Wertham, June 5 1954, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers.
25
Dick Cashwell, Letter to Wertham, April 22, 1954. Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers.
26
Ron Baumgardner, Letter to the Subcommittee, June 11, 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic
Letters,” Subcommittee Papers.
27
Ople Noble, Letter to Fredric Wertham, November 25, 1953, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham
Papers.
28
Ople Noble Sorich, interview by Carol L. Tilley, telephone, October 31, 2012.

were valued. An older woman with graying hair, she even allowed the students to vote on her
choice of hair dyes; the students favored one of the purple tones over the yellow. Perhaps Louis
Abate of Lawrence, Massachusetts, had his own version of Mrs. Bledsoe, as he was even more
direct than Noble [Sorich] in his letter to the Subcommittee. “I am fourteen,” he wrote, “and I
know what I am talking about.”29
We Buy Them for the Stories: The Reading Experience
I am thirteen years of age and a normal American boy. I read comics every day
and also collect them. Many war comics have historical stories in them. Thus I
learn more about the world. Science-Fiction stories boost my dreams for the
future. Horror stories increase my imagination. Humorous comics make me forget
my worries and troubles.
Harley Elliott30
Young comics readers were also frustrated by a different sort of gap between them and
many adults, one pertaining to the role that reading comics played in their lives. Adults,
especially librarians and teachers, frequently dismissed comics as frivolous junk, a passing fad or
stepping stone on the way to more meaningful reading. As librarian Helen Armstrong decreed,
“Children don’t confuse comics with real reading.”31 Likewise some adults expressed outright
hostility toward comics. In an often-cited article by former librarian Jean Gray Harker, she

29
Louis Abate, Letter to the Subcommittee, received September 28, 1954, Box 169, “Corres
Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers.
30 Elliott , Letter.
31 Helen Armstrong, “Reading Is for Delight,” ALA Bulletin 49 (1955): 273. See, Carol L. Tilley,
Of Nightingales and Supermen: How Youth Services Librarians Responded to Comics between
the Years 1938 and 1955 (PhD diss, Indiana University, 2007) for a full discussion of comics as
discussed in library professional literature during this era.

declared, “Youth’s Librarians Can Defeat Comic Books,” and urged librarians to assist in
drafting state and national legislation to restrict comics sales.32 Many adults from beyond the
realm of education and librarianship had similar feelings about comics. Thus, America’s
newspapers and airwaves carried reportage and debates on young people’s comics reading,
legislative bodies proposed regulations for comics, and in a few handfuls of locales, adults
successfully encouraged young people to gather up and burn their comics in communal
bonfires.33 The adults who condemned comics had in many cases been weaned on comic strips,
dime novels, and series books, all of which had caused their own elders similar consternation,
but that experience seemed lost to time. In an effort, though, to sway the views of adults who had
the potential to be effective censors of comics, the young letter writers attempted to describe
their own reading responses to comics.
Tommy Tudor, Clarence Flynn, and Gene Walker were graduating high school seniors in
Wilson, Oklahoma, when they typed their letter to Wertham in late-April 1954.34 They
acknowledged that the psychiatrist was not the only person trying to restrict comics, stating, “We
have noted for some time…the articles…on the harm caused by these degrading and generally
harmful pieces of reading.” Their choice to describe comics in negative terms was a sarcastic
one, as the next sentence makes clears. Slipping from plural to singular tense, the letter

32
Jean Gray Harker, “Youth's Librarians Can Defeat Comics,” Library Journal 73 (1948).
Harker sent an early draft of her article to Wertham for his comment. Although he kept the copy
and borrowed from it for his work, Wertham does not seem to have replied. See, Jean Gray
Harker, Letter to Fredric Wertham, August 4, 1948, Box 112, Folder 3, Wertham Papers.
33
For the most comprehensive accounting of these ideas and activities, see Hajdu, The Ten-Cent
Plague.
34 Tommy Tudor, Clarence Flynn, and Gene Walker, Letter to Fredric Wertham, April 22, 1954,
Box 124, Folder 1, Wertham Papers.

continued: “Well, I think that I could give as much on your precious old literature that is
supposed to be a great help to the human race…than you…could hope to give on the comic book
question.” The remainder of the letter argued that classic literature—such as the kind that
Wertham favored quoting and alluding to in his texts—along with pocket paperbacks35 and
contemporary fiction were at least as degrading as Wertham claimed comics were. Notably these
three teens had enough familiarity with ‘classic’ literature to recognize that comics creators
sometimes drew from it in shaping their own stories. Reading comics was not done at the
expense and exclusion of other reading; instead it supplemented and extended other reading. This
familiarity with non-comics literature is evident in the protest letters written by other young
people including C.J. Smith, who invoked fairy and folk tales, and Barry Cherin, who referenced
numerous contemporary novels including Douglas’ The Silver Chalice.36
One of Wertham’s assertions was that comics readers seldom read anything beyond
comics, especially where Classics Illustrated was concerned. This series, which originated in the
early 1940s, adapted works of literature such as The Count of Monte Cristo and Julius Caesar
into comics form. In many respects Classics performed functions similar to the condensed texts
(including Wertham’s own Seduction of the Innocent) published by Reader’s Digest: they
provided readers with a working knowledge and highlights of a text. A number of the young
people who wrote to Wertham were offended by his attacks on Classics Illustrated and sought to

35 Pocket paperbacks were also widely contested as appropriate reading for both adults and
children during this era. For more information see, Kenneth C. Davis, Two-Bit Culture: The
Paperbacking of America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1984).
36
C.J. Smith, Letter to the Subcommittee, received September 24, 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-
Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers; Barry Cherin, Letter to the Subcommittee, September 23,
1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers.

counter his arguments against the series. For instance, John Hegarty’s letter mentions seven
different books including Verne’s Michel Strogoff and Eliot’s Silas Marner that he was either
inspired to read or that had been made more intellectually accessible because he had read the
comics versions.37 Sixteen-year old Jack Osborne noted in his letter that Classics Illustrated not
only made Shakespeare’s works more understandable to him, but that these adaptations allowed
people short on time to “have some contact with good literature.”38 Linda Faye Scalia explained
to Wertham that she owned more than one hundred Classics Illustrated and they had lead her to
read the original texts in most instances. She said in her letter that she would have preferred to
own the original texts but that the comics were more affordable.39
The EC titles published by Bill Gaines inspired special devotion among readers. Harley
Carol Tilley 9/16/2013 2:31 PM
Formatted: Font:Not Italic
Elliott, whose letter opens this section, was an EC fan, particularly enjoyed Two-Fisted Tales and
Frontline Combat, which both had a military focus. Although his letter to the Subcommittee did
not mention specific titles or offer rich details about his reading experiences, Elliott found in
these comics an honesty and candidness about the world in which he was growing up that he was
unable to find in the other media available to him. For instance, comics published by EC helped
him understand the war in Korea and race relations in the United States.40 Bob “Bhob” Stewart
got at this issue directly in his letter to Wertham, stating, “EC is the only comics house that
respects the readers’ desires, and is the only comics house that ‘writes up’ to its audience. They

37 Hegarty, Letter.
38 Jack Osborne, Letter to Fredric Wertham, April 19, 1954, Box 124, Folder 1, Wertham Papers.
39 Linda Faye Scalia, Letter to Fredric Wertham, July 2, 1954, Box 124, Folder 1, Wertham
Papers. In a telephone interview I conducted with Scalia (November 19, 2012), she mentioned
that she still had her comics collection. She also mentioned that she had gone on to earn two
masters degrees including one in English.
40 Harley Elliott, interview by Carol L. Tilley, telephone, May 10, 2012.

see a reader as someone to be pleased, not an ‘innocent kid with a dime.’”41 Philip Proctor’s
letter to the Senate in June 1954 offered a bit more insight into his reading experiences . Aged
fourteen and a student at Manhattan’s prestigious Allen-Stevenson School, Proctor did his best to
uphold his school’s aim of training scholars and gentlemen. “Dear Sirs,” he wrote,
I am disgusted with your ridiculous claims about comics…I assure you that I am
not, and do not want to be, a juvenile delinquent…We don’t buy these mags
because we have a thirst for blood, we buy them for the stories, the snap endings,
the artwork, and because they deal with the unknown.42
A Fine US: Civic Participation
To Whom It May Concern
I have, for the past few months, been urged by the editors of E.C. comics to write
to you about the recent comic book investigation. I had failed to do so because I
thought it absurd that the United States government would or could abolish
harmless literature. But just yesterday I read that E.C. comics is being forced to
drop five of its publications because wholesalers and retailers throughout the
country have been intimidated into refusing to handle crime and horror type
comic books. That is the type of thing that goes on in Russia but not in America.
Of course I realize that the reason for the stopping of this type of literature is to
prevent juvenile delinquency. I have a collection of 85 E.C.'s which are supposed
to be detrimental to the morals of the American youth and yet I am as honest and
as clean as you would want your own son to be. I am speaking for the majority,
the comic book readers, as opposed to the minority who have been so successful,
the few disturbed parents.
Sincerely
Brian E. Mulholland43

41 Stewart, Letter.
42 Philip Proctor, Letter to the Subcommittee, received June 9 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-
Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. Proctor’s disappointment in the demise of EC’s comics
title following the Senate hearings helped propel him to his career as a satirist and founding
member of the Firesign Theater; as Proctor recounted in a telephone interview with me (May 6
2012), he wanted to ridicule the “blue-nosed, tight-assed censors.”
43 Mulholland, Letter.

The nation’s voting age was still set at twenty-one, meaning that the teenagers who wrote
to the Subcommittee and to Wertham had several years before they could officially enter the
public conversation through casting ballots. Yet through their letters, these writers made political
statements that challenged prevailing assumptions about comics reading and readers. In some
instances, the writers directly critiqued adults in authority positions and advocated for
democratic ideals, a stark contrast to the future conjured a decade earlier by Stanley Kunitz, who
warned that “comics can spawn only a generation of Storm Troopers, Gauleiter, and coarse,
audacious Supermen.”44 Some of the letters may have been imbued with youthful naiveté and
passion, but there was also a core of truth. More than half a century later and recently retired as a
district attorney, Brian Mulholland commented about his letter, which opens this section: “I was
surprised at the maturity of thought and expression...I don’t know if I could have done a better
job now.”45
The young people who wrote to the Senate Subcommittee often broached the subjects of
democracy, free communication, and market regulation, topics within the purview of the
Senators. In contrast, many of the teens who wrote Wertham focused more on issues of imitative
behaviors, a topic within the realm of a psychiatrist’s purview, so clearly the writers had some
understanding of audience. For instance, in his letter to the Subcommittee Harley Elliott
referenced freedom of the press and the differences between democratic and fascist societies:
“This is America where man has freedom of the press. The less freedom the people of America

44 Stanley J. Kunitz, “Libraries, to Arms!,” Wilson Library Bulletin 15 (1941): 670-671. When
he wrote this article, Kunitz, who was later appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States, was
editor for Wilson Library Bulletin.
45 Brian Mulholland, interview by Carol L. Tilley, telephone, May 25, 2012.

get the more our country will become a dictatorship and the people as its slaves.”46 Other letters
to the Subcommittee urged clear actions or envisioned specific outcomes. “Leave the comic book
publishers alone,” exclaimed Donald Lowry in his letter.47 Josephine Campiglia wrote, “I hope
that in the future forever and always I and a million other people like me, will still be able to buy
and read [comics].”48 Charles Funicello even proposed that the Senators themselves had “read
[comics] at some time and enjoyed them” and implored the “men of the Congress…[to] please
let them stay on the stands.”49 With little political capital, Isidor Saslav, a sixteen-year old from
Detroit, pleaded his message to the Senators. “You are the custodians of my constitutional rights
until I reach the age of 21,” he wrote. “Please don’t send them down the drain for the interests of
a small, but vocal minority.”50
Of course some young people did address their political concerns to Wertham. For
instance, the oppressive political climate of the early 1950s was captured in part by Ray
Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. Bob Stewart, an avid science fiction reader,
invoked this book and its message in his letter to Wertham: “once comics are outlawed out of
existence it’ll only be a short step to the book-burnings Bradbury science-fictionizes [sic] in
FAHRENHEIT 451.”51 In a letter to Wertham from thirteen year-old Lyn Crawford, the writer

46
Elliott, Letter.
47
Lowry, Letter.
48
Campiglia, Letter.
49 Charles Funicello, Letter to the Subcommittee, received October 27, 1954, Box 169, “Corres
Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers.
50
Isidor Saslav, Letter to the Subcommittee, received June 10, 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-
Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers.
51
Stewart, Letter.

plays with issues of causality and regulation.52 “I have at least 25 friends who read the same kind
of comics as I do and of which you speak in your article,” Crawford wrote. She went on to
counter Wertham’s causative argument for juvenile delinquency: “I sincerely believe we are all
sound of mind and I very sincerely seriously doubt that comic books will injure us.” She even
asked pointedly for specific data on the number of comics readers who commit murder. The
bulk of her letter featured a series of rhetorical questions that drew parallels between comics and
what she termed “adult amusement,” suggesting that adults imperiled themselves in ways that
outstripped any harm that might befall young comic book readers. In particular she wanted to
know whether Wertham proposed any controls for lewd adult literature, tobacco, and alcohol.
Humorously, she advised that children could quit reading comics and instead turn to “cigarettes,
adult crime and sex books, and liquor…If we did wouldn’t we have a fine U.S. in a few years?”
Other writers including Dick Cashwell and Bob Stewart proposed that regulation was less
needed than improvements in children’s home environments, as poor family conditions were
more apt to lead to juvenile delinquency than comics reading.
Comics, Print Culture, Political Geography
Millions of young comics readers did not write Wertham or the Subcommittee, but a few
hundred did.53 Yet the story of these comics readers is worth telling in greater detail because it
gives evidence of young people’s agency, of their willingness to engage adults in dialogue about
matters of material, intellectual, and social importance, and of their ability to craft messages that

52 Crawford, Letter.
53 In Seal of Approval, Nyberg discusses the Senate letters, but she reduces several hundred
letters to two paragraphs (pp. 121-122), one that summarized key themes and one that provided a
handful of examples

both built on personal experiences and responded to the particular needs of their audiences. This
story is, then, in its truest sense a microhistory, examining the outliers and documenting the
individual interactions that comprise larger social structures.54
It might be tempting to propose that teenagers in the 1950s were simply more civically
engaged than today’s youth, but that would be a nostalgic trap. During this era less than twenty
percent of adults engaged in civic writing, either in the form of letters to the editor or letters to
politicians.55 Although youth at mid-century had the benefit of increased attention given to civic
education in schools, it seems unlikely that they would have participated in civic writing in
greater numbers than did adults. In perhaps the largest study of youth civic writing, Robert
Cohen’s examination of children’s letters to Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great Depression, the
numbers of letters Roosevelt received from young people appeared to be proportionally
significantly smaller than those from adults.56 Despite the affection which children and teens had
for comics, it seems reasonable that there was even less sense of urgency to preserve comics in
their lives than for youth to acquire the types of material assistance such as food and money that
they requested from Mrs. Roosevelt. Young people who chose to write to Wertham or the
Subcommittee were protesting an idea—that comics might be regulated, that comics might cause
harm to readers—rather than some material change. Writing these letters required them in part to

54 Cf. Carlo Ginzberg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things I Know about It” trans. John and
Anne C. Tedeschi, Critical Inquiry 20 (1993).

55 Leila A. Sussmann, “Mass Political Letter Writing in America: The Growth of an Institution,”
Public Opinion Quarterly 23 (1959): 203-212.
56 Robert Cohen, ed. Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from the Children of the Great Depression.
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

overcome their age-based predisposition to idealize political authority.57 It demanded of them as
well that they assert their own agency and legitimacy. That they did all of these things in an era
of such profound conformity in which they lacked suffrage must change our understanding of
young people’s civic engagement.
The letters from comics fans are also important because they preserve the voices of
young readers, unmediated by adults. For instance, library historian Kate McDowell described
the paucity of both primary sources relevant to children’s reading as well as scholarship that
analyzes those sources. Her work documented young people’s reading interests and habits in the
early twentieth century by examining librarians’ accounts of children’s experiences.
Consequently she had to rely on evidence reconstituted by adults who had professional interests
in shaping those same children’s literary experiences; her analysis added yet another layer of
mediation.58 With the letters from comics fans, young people’s voices remain intact, offering
insights into their reading experiences and allowing for the possibility of closing Darnton’s
communication circuit—or at least filling in some gaps—for comics in the mid-twentieth
century.59 Worth noting, as well, is that this history of reading must be constructed in large
measure from ethnographic and archival resources in the same tradition as Jonathan Rose’s work
to document the cultural and intellectual milieu of several generations of Britons.60 But such
resources for unmediated youth responses are rare. Despite its general promise, for example,

57 Cf. Fred I. Greenstein, Children and Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).
58 Kate McDowell, “Understanding Children as Readers: Librarians’ Anecdotes and Surveys in

the USA, 1890-1930,” in The History of Reading, Vol. 1: International Perspectives, c. 1500-
1900, ed. W.R. Owen and Shafquat Towheed (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011).
59 Robert C. Darnton, What is the History of Books, Daedalus 111 (1982): 65 – 83.
60 Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2nd edition) (Cambridge,
MA: Yale University Press, 2010).

Christine Pawley’s vision of the library as a locus for studying readers’ experiences is inadequate
for considering the relationship between children and comic books, as the latter were notably
absent from most library collections until the waning years of the twentieth century.61
A Postscript
In June 1954, Robert Warshow, an associate editor at Commentary magazine, published a
personal reflection on the comics controversy, invoking the recent Subcommittee hearings as
well as Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent. Titled “Paul, the Horror Comics, and Dr.
Wertham,” Warshow’s article focused on his eleven-year old son Paul, who was an EC Fan-
Addict Club member, preferring that company’s more mature titles like The Vault of Horror to
other publishers’ more innocuous superhero and gag comics. Paul seemed to show no ill effects
of his comics reading, yet the elder Warshow still longed for “Senator Kefauver and Dr.
Wertham [to] find some way to make it impossible for Paul to get any comic books.”62 The
article attracted Wertham’s attention and he wrote to Paul Warshow. “You may not agree with
everything [your father] says, but I assure you…you will be proud that your father wrote one of

61 Christine Pawley, “Retrieving Readers: Library Experiences,” The Library Quarterly 76
(2006).
62 Robert Warshow, “Paul, the Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham,” Commentary, June 1954: 604.
Unlike many of his contemporaries and in spite of his critique in this particular article of EC’s
selections, Warshow was not comics-averse. For instance, he wrote lovingly about George
Herriman’s comic strip “Krazy Kat.” See, Warshow, “Woofed with Dreams,” The Partisan
Review, November 1946.

the most thoughtful articles about comics books.”63 A few days later, Paul responded, displaying
good manners, but refuting Wertham’s argument on comics as other young writers had.
Dear Dr. Wertham:
Thank you very much for your letter. I have read my father’s article and I think it
is very good. I don’t agree with all the things in it. I don’t think comics do much
harm to children. I don’t think they are all good though. Most children learn
enough to know if a comic is sensible. Only a few would take an unlikely story
seriously. I don’t take them seriously but I enjoy some of them. Thank you again
for your letter.
Best wishes,
Paul Warshow
P.S. I would very much like to meet you.64
There is no indication that Wertham and Paul Warshow ever met.

63 Fredric Wertham, Letter to Paul Warshow, June 5, 1954, Box 159, Folder 13, Wertham
Papers.
64 Paul Warshow, Letter to Fredric Wertham, June 10, 1954, Box 159, Folder 13, Wertham
Papers.

References
“540 Million Comics Published During 1946.” Publisher’s Weekly 152 (1947): 1030
Armstrong, Helen. “Reading Is for Delight.” ALA Bulletin 49 (1955): 271-75, 308.
Baughman, James L. Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-1961.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007
Brown, John Mason. “What’s Wrong with the Comics (America’s Town Meeting of the Air).”
ABC Radio Broadcast, March 2, 1948.
Cohen, Robert, ed. Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from the Children of the Great Depression.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Darnton, Robert C. “What is the History of Books.” Daedalus 111 (1982): 65 – 83.
Davis, Kenneth C. Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America. New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1984.
Gabilliet, Jean-Paul. Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books, trans.
Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.
Gilbert, James B. A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the
1950s. New York: Oxford, 1986.
Ginzburg, Carlo. “Microhistory: Two or Three Things I Know about It” John and Anne C.
Tedeschi, trans. Critical Inquiry 20 (1993): 10-35.
Greenstein, Fred I.. Children and Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.
Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed
America, New York: Macmillan, 2009.
Harker, Jean Gray. “Youth's Librarians Can Defeat Comics.” Library Journal 73 (1948): 1705 -
1707.
Hine, Thomas. The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, New York: Avon Books, 1999.

“The Hundred Million Dollar Market for Comics.” Publisher’s Weekly 165 (1954): 1906.
Jacobs, Frank. The Mad World of William M. Gaines (New York: Bantam Paperbacks, 1972)
Kunitz, Stanley J. “Libraries, to Arms!” Wilson Library Bulletin 15 (1941): 670-671.
McDowell, Kate. “Understanding Children as Readers: Librarians’ Anecdotes and Surveys in the
USA, 1890-1930,” in The History of Reading, Vol. 1: International Perspectives, c. 1500-
1900, edited by W.R. Owen and Shafquat Towheed, 147-162. London: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2011.
Melinat, Carl H. “Magazine Best Sellers.” Wilson Library Bulletin 21 (1946): 171-172
North, Sterling. “A National Disgrace.” Chicago Daily News, May 8 1940: 56.
Nyberg, Amy Kiste. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code, Jackson: University of
Mississippi Press, 1998
Pawley, Christine. “Retrieving Readers: Library Experiences.” The Library Quarterly 76 (2006):
379-387.
Philo, Chris, and Fiona M. Smith. “Guest Editorial: Political Geographies of Children and Young
People.” Space and Polity 7 (2003): 99-115.
“Rebels or Psychopaths? “Time. December 6, 1954: 70-71.
Reidelbach, Marie. Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and the Magazine. New
York: Little Brown, 1992.
Rose, Jonathan. The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2nd edition). Cambridge:
Yale University Press, 2010.
Schumacher, Michael and Denis Kitchen. Al Capp; A Life to the Contrary. New York:
Bloomsbury, 2013.

Stotsky, Sandra. “Writing in a Political Context: The Value of Letters to Legislators.” Written
Communication 4 (1987): 394-410.
Sussmann, Leila A. “Mass Political Letter Writing in America: The Growth of an Institution.”
Public Opinion Quarterly 23 (1959): 203-212.
Tilley, Carol L. Of Nightingales and Supermen: How Youth Services Librarians Responded to
Comics between the Years 1938 and 1955. PhD diss, Indiana University, 2007.
Tilley, Carol L. “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped
Condemn Comics.” Information & Culture: A Journal of History 47 (2012): 383-413.
US Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency.
Interim Report. 84rd Congress, 1st Session, Report No. 62.
Warshow, Robert. “Paul, the Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham.” Commentary, June 1954, 596-
604.
Warshow, Robert. “Woofed with Dreams.” The Partisan Review, November 1946: 587-590.
Wertham, Fredric. “Blueprints for Delinquency.” Reader’s Digest, May 1954: 24-29.
Wertham, Fredric. “The Comics…Very Funny!” Saturday Review of Literature, May 29, 1948: 6
– 7, 27-29.
Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart, 1954.
Wigransky, David Pace. “Cain Before Comics [letter].” Saturday Review of Literature, July 29,
1948: 19 - 20.
Wright, Bradford. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Wyant, Rowena, and Herta Herzog. “Voting Via the Senate Mailbag.” Public Opinion Quarterly
5 (1941): 590-624.

The Letter Writers Mentioned Herein
Louis Abate (Lawrence, Massachusetts)
Ron Baumgardner (Bloomington, Illinois)
Josephine Campiglia (Brooklyn, New York)
Dick Cashwell (Albemarle, North Carolina)
Barry Cherin (Miami, Florida)
Lyn Crawford (Atlanta, Georgia)
Harley Elliott (Salinas, Kansas)
Clarence Flynn (Wilson, Oklahoma)
Charles Funicello (Yonkers, New York)
John Hegarty (Attica, Kansas)
Donald Lowry (Evansville, Indiana)
Brian McLaughlin (Cresskill, New Jersey)
Brian Mulholland (Erlton, New Jersey)
Ople Noble (Bisbee, Arizona)
Jack Osborne (Gary, Indiana)
Philip Proctor (New York, New York)
Linda Faye Scalia (Monroe, Louisiana)
C.J. Smith (Albany, New York)
Bob Stewart (Kirbyville, Texas)
Tommy Tudor (Wilson, Oklahoma)
Gene Walker (Wilson, Oklahoma)


Paul Warshow (New York, NY)
David Pace Wigransky (Washington, DC)

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Children and the Comics:

Young Readers Take on the Critics

speak for themselves.

Children and the Comics:

what he believed to be Wertham’s overly protectionist stance toward children, believing it to be

magazine of ideas, was a fourteen-year old rising high school junior.

and lived experiences to speak for themselves.6

The Anti-Comics Apex

and racial prejudice to comic books.

16,000 copies in the United States in less than six months.8

Wertham Papers. Manuscripts Division. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. [Hereafter,

reading with criminal behavior.

eager to spar with Gaines.

transformed EC from a publisher of innocuous and sometimes educational children’s comics to

unsavory illustrations, attacks on authority figures, stories featuring vampires, werewolves, or

children and teenagers.

reading experiences, and civic participation.

Only a Child: Generational Divides

In late-1954, Time carried a brief article highlighting psychoanalyst Robert Lindner’s

influence of comic books was an essential rhetorical strategy.

adults, it has the appearance of petty-mindedness and disdain.

As a means to demonstrate their competence and distinguish themselves from the

living in Kirbyville, Texas, likewise implored Wertham:

Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers; Josephine Campiglia, Letter to the Subcommittee,

“fairly high intelligence” and “a defensive linebacker on an unbeaten championship team.”25

know what I am talking about.”29

We Buy Them for the Stories: The Reading Experience

their own reading responses to comics.

numerous contemporary novels including Douglas’ The Silver Chalice.36

A Fine US: Civic Participation

To Whom It May Concern

a small, but vocal minority.”50

more apt to lead to juvenile delinquency than comics reading.

Comics, Print Culture, Political Geography

individual interactions that comprise larger social structures.54

numbers of letters Roosevelt received from young people appeared to be proportionally

Anne C. Tedeschi, Critical Inquiry 20 (1993).

young people’s civic engagement.

early twentieth century by examining librarians’ accounts of children’s experiences.

communication circuit—or at least filling in some gaps—for comics in the mid-twentieth

58 Kate McDowell, “Understanding Children as Readers: Librarians’ Anecdotes and Surveys in

In June 1954, Robert Warshow, an associate editor at Commentary magazine, published a

Dear Dr. Wertham:

P.S. I would very much like to meet you.64

There is no indication that Wertham and Paul Warshow ever met.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007

ABC Radio Broadcast, March 2, 1948.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

1950s. New York: Oxford, 1986.

Tedeschi, trans. Critical Inquiry 20 (1993): 10-35.

America, New York: Macmillan, 2009.

Kunitz, Stanley J. “Libraries, to Arms!” Wilson Library Bulletin 15 (1941): 670-671.

USA, 1890-1930,” in The History of Reading, Vol. 1: International Perspectives, c. 1500-

Mississippi Press, 1998

People.” Space and Polity 7 (2003): 99-115.

“Rebels or Psychopaths? “Time. December 6, 1954: 70-71.

York: Little Brown, 1992.

Yale University Press, 2010.

Communication 4 (1987): 394-410.

Public Opinion Quarterly 23 (1959): 203-212.

Condemn Comics.” Information & Culture: A Journal of History 47 (2012): 383-413.

Interim Report. 84rd Congress, 1st Session, Report No. 62.

Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart, 1954.