the psychiatrist whose 222 boxes of papers the Library of Congress has opened to the public. In comics lore, Dr. Wertham has become something of a cryptic figure himself. But long before Tipper Gore, Edwin Meese, Andrea Dworkin, and our current crop of anti-video game crusaders took their turns at policing the national palette, Wertham was on the job, insisting that comics turned America’s kids into crooks and worse.

He laid it all out in his 1954 best seller, The Seduction of the Innocent.

via Papers of anti-comic book crusader now open to scholars.

In the 50’s comics were often sold along with racy detective and true confessions kind of pulp fiction. The comics were often very good stories, and some of them were sort of political in a sci-fi kind of way. The one where an helmeted astronauts need to save the world, and when one of them does, he takes off his helmet — and DRUM ROLL — he is a black guy, got Mad Magazine’s William Gaines an invitation to appear in front of Joe McCarthy’s HUAC committee.

While calmer educators who were in touch with reality believed that reading was reading, and thus, reading comics would build reading skills, there were many who feared that comics might make kids …. think?

I just remember hours of intense reading pleasure, reading my comic books over and over. Oh, and then Grandpa cleaned out his attic and without asking, threw my collection away.

Thanks to my pal Len Strazewski, for re-introducing me to comics via his own and stuff like Watchman, Vendetta, and Sandman. Oh, and I don’t go with the Wonder Woman, “Lesbian counterpart of Batman” either.

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