SOTIcollector

And my final entry from 1953, until I find some more, is Aggression, Hostility and Anxiety in Children. This book comes from a series of the Bellevue Studies of Child Psychiatry. Take note that there's a fraction of a page devoted to comic books. In one of my 1954 posts, you'll see why.

By November, 1953, SOTI was complete or nearly so. An excerpt of the upcoming book was published in Ladies' Home Journal, giving it extensive exposure. If comic books are really that dangerous, then wasn't it irresponsible, perhaps even criminal, of the photographer to pose children with issues of Justice Traps the Guilty and Haunt of Fear? Note that Wertham's favorite image, the needle-to-the-eye, makes an prominent appearance here. Some of these panels were reproduced in SOTI, but some were not.

In May, 1952, Picture Post magazine had this anti-comics article. "Should US comics be banned?" "Do parents realize the effect [comics] can have?" The article takes as its starting point the "fact" that comic books are inherently dangerous and something must be done about them.

By 1952, the anti-comics hysteria had jumped the pond. Here's "The Lure of the Comics", from April of that year.

Newsweek, January 29, 1951. "New York Wakes up to Find 15,000 Teen-Age Dope Addicts" What does this have to do with comics? Absolutely nothing. Unless, of course, you're Dr. Wertham. In discussing the problem of drug use among teens, he cited this specific headline on page 25 of Seduction of the Innocent.

In 1950, Saturday Review of Literature published a "Best of..." magazine. Featured prominently is a reprint of Wertham's "The Comics, Very Funny" from 1948.

From 1950, Our Rejected Children, by Albert Deutsch, was cited by Wertham in SOTI.

Throughout the decade of the 1950's, Parents' Magazine published semi-annually the comic book ratings provided by the Committe on Evaluation of Comic Books, a Cincinnati group of anti-comics crusaders. Here's the first one, from February, 1950. It's great to see what they chose to put in the margins to illustrate the story. They had "no objection" to Classics Illustrated, although Wertham found plenty to dislike in that series.

Love & Death, by Gerson Legman, 1949. This book took some of Legman's work for Neurotica, reworked it and published it as a book with a significant anti-comics section. This is the first of the "big three" anti-comics books that are mentioned in the Overstreet guide, Seduction of the Innocent and Parade of Pleasure being the other two Pictured here is the impossible-to-find hardcover of L&D. Over the years, I've probably had a dozen copies of SOTI with the bibliography and a dozen copies of POP. But this is the only hardcover L&D I've ever seen.

Wertham's article "Fathers Are People" from Vassar Alumnae Magazine, December, 1949. Here Wertham barely mentions comic books, but he does acknowledge that comics are but one of many influences on kids.

In May, 1949, Art Digest reported on an "exhibit" at the Charles-Fourth Gallery in New York City called "School for Sadism: Folk Art in the Atomic Age". The exhibit was anti-comics propaganda based on Wertham's work. The photos on display were meant to be provocative, such as (if I recall correctly) a photo of young children staring in shock at the True Crime v1#2 image of the needle to the eye (If you're reading this, you know the image.. it's my avatar).

Also from March, 1949. Household magazine article on "The Truth About Comics." this is a pre-publication condensation of the pamphlet I posted just before this ("Comics, Radio, Movies and Children").

From March, 1949. Comics, Radio, Movies and Children. Pictured is a first printing, but there were other printings. Offhand, I recall seeing a 25 cent price tag, and "Television" being added to the title.

Family Circle, February, 1949. This one would have had a significantly larger circulation than the Saturday Review of Literature or Commentary. "What Can YOU Do About Comic Books?" The title presumes that the parent is already aware of the "problem" with comics and knows that something must be done about them. I always love pics of stacks of minty-fresh golden-age books. Superman #49, anybody?

Commenary magazine, January, 1949. Comic books are just lessons in fascism.

And my last entry for 1948, at least until I find something more, is this. Saturday Review of Literature, October 16, 1948. A reader urges the woman who was pushing for a comic book ban to use her brain.

Here's the September 25, 1948 issue of SRL. One reader doubts the authenticity of David Pace Wigransky's letter, and is presented with evidence by the editors of SRL that Wigransky did indeed author the letter that was attributed to him. Another reader points to a newspaper story of torture committed by children, and concludes that this proves the need to ban comic books.

The August 21 issue contains responses to David Pace Wigransky's article.

In the July 31 issue, Dr. Wertham corrects his previous assertion about Classics Illustrated #44 (Mysteries of Paris).

In the July 24, 1948 issue of Saturday Review of Literature, you'll find numerous readers' responses to Wertham's May 29 article. The most eloquent of them was written by fourteen year old David Pace Wigransky.

Next we have July 17, 1948, with responses to Wertham's May 29 article..

Earlier in the thread I posted the May 29, 1948 SRL with Dr. Wertham's "The Comics... Very Funy." So right now, let's skip to June 19, 1948. Four readers' responses to Wertham's article appeared in the letters to the editor.

May 1, 1948: A reader pokes fun at Al Capp's "The Case For The Comics."

The April 10, 1948 issue didn't have anything directly related to comic books, but this letter to the editor would apply to many of the comic books of 1948 and frankly, to about 99.9% of the comic books since then.

1948 was the year the anti-comics rhetoric really heated up. Nowhere is that more evident than in the pages of the Saturday Review of Literature. We'll start with March 20. There are a couple comics-related bits here. There's a review of Coulton Waugh's "The Comics". Plus, in the regular feature "Seeing Things," there's "The Case Against The Comics", by John Mason Brown, and "The Case For The Comics," a rebuttal by Al Capp