Number 1304: Headlights on full beam

With the 1948 cover of Phantom Lady #17, artist Matt Baker helped give us comic book fans a code word we've used now for decades: “headlights”. It happened when Dr. Fredric Wertham, M.D., published his book, Seduction of the Innocent, which pointed out how murder, crime and sexual perversion were all part of the comic books kids loved. Wertham used the cover to point out that children called big breasts on comic book women “headlights”. (This page has been razored out of some of copies of SOTI I've seen. By headlights fans, no doubt.)

I've pointed out before that Wertham’s book is a good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was used at the time to condemn comic books, but is used now to identify comics that belong on a special list of desirable collectibles. Interior art on this story is also by Matt Baker, and the whole issue was prepared by the Jerry Iger comic book shop, where Baker was a star. The publisher was Victor Fox, and the blobby printing was by some fast and dirty web press printing company of the 1940s, which didn't care that they were printing one of the most iconic covers and collectible comic books of all time.

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Number 1219: Baseball by moonlight

Ty Cobb (1886-1961) was an awfully great baseball player and a greatly awful person. There are many stories of his nastiness. Despite the records he set and his accomplishments on the field he's just as well known for his bad temperment, his aggression and intimidation of opposing players. The story is that Cobb filed his steel cleats to be razor sharp, and when he stole bases he slid into base “with his feet up and steel showing.”

I'm sure that Ty Cobb was the inspiration for “Foul Play” in Haunt of Fear #19 (1953). The story, with its gory ending, was fairly typical EC-revenge. But it was brought before a stunned public of non-comics readers with a page in Seduction of the Innocent (1954) by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

The caption reads, “A comic-book baseball game. Notice the chest protector and other details in the text and pictures.”

In 1986 I attended a panel with Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis at the San Diego Con. Davis made mention of the horror comics and the trouble they caused. Speaking of the Senate hearings and uproar over them Davis said, “I'd lie awake at night and think, did I cause this?”

This is the infamous baseball story, drawn by Jack Davis, and written by editor Al Feldstein.

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Number 1039


Fredric Wertham, George Washington and the Boy of Steel


I'm showing this Superboy story because it was mentioned in the infamous Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, M.D. When you've read the story I have a couple of pages from SOTI scanned with pertinent paragraphs highlighted. Then I have my own opinion of what Wertham said.

I continue to be fascinated by Wertham. He'd be an interesting person to study even if he hadn't gotten into the business of condemning comic books. Click on the Fredric Wertham link in the box below for more of what I've had to say about Dr. W.

"George Washington's Drum" is drawn by John Sikela and Ed Dobrotka, and is from Superboy #2, 1949:

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What did Fredric Wertham have against Superboy?

It's safe to say that Dr. Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent, never met a comic book he didn't hate. He found fault with Superman, who reminded him (a German emigré) of the Nazi superman. Wonder Woman was frightening to boys, Batman and Robin were a homosexual wish dream. The list goes on. Wertham slandered them all.

He also had ways of exciting emotions of his core audience, parents, teachers, even government officials, in his battle against comic books. In the two pages I've scanned from SOTI he used the universal propagandist's tool, turning his enemies' own words against them. He quoted an article from the Child Study Association of America, and quickly established it was written by a writer who worked for the publisher of Superman.* He ridiculed the writer's choice of comic books as being unrepresentative of comic books sold to kids. He gave the writer's words to number 10, Jungle Comics, a twist. As quoted by the article writer, "sometimes women are featured in these stories as captives or intended victims." At the bottom of his paragraph scoffing at this writer's claims he inserted this zinger, ". . .and she tries to make parents believe that the sexy wenches in the jungle books are just "fair maidens"!) The article writer didn't say anything about sexy wenches or fair maidens. Those are Wertham's words, poisoning the well with a negative buzzword ("wenches") and sarcasm ("fair maidens").

Wertham went into the argument against comics with his guns firing, and had the comic book publishers ducking for cover. The industry as a whole knew there were a lot of things in comic books that kids probably shouldn't see.** But kids also went to movies, listened to the radio, and presumably read other material that may have things they shouldn't hear or see. What kid hasn't? (By the way, it's called growing up.) By zeroing in on comics Wertham kept the hatred focused, even if he went askew at times with his arguments. To him the Superboy story focused on a "uniformed superman-youth" rather than "the father of American democracy [George Washington]." But of course it did. It's not a history lesson. It is entertainment, a fantasy like other fantasies of time travel. It used historical characters and events for its own purposes, which is what fiction does. This was his answer to the article writer's claim that "History is often a dull subject. . . .Through comics it could be made a fascinating study." He used the Superboy story as an example of kids getting the wrong historical information from comics. I think the kids who were old enough to read the story had heard of George Washington*** and knew that Superboy going back in time was just fantasy, an extension of the whole concept of a Superboy.

Wertham caps off this paragraph by throwing something in that blindsides the reader: "Similarly, it must be admitted that a lesson about anthropoid apes is less 'dull' when accompanied by a picture of the animal about to rape a girl." Where were we talking about apes raping girls? What does that have to do with George Washington or Superboy or American history? Well, nothing, but in Wertham's mind they must have had equal value: Superboy helping George Washington=ape raping girl. He threw everything into his argument: ridicule, slander, misquotes, non sequiturs and conclusions coming from...where? Of course, he was a prominent psychiatrist, a social reformer, the de facto leader of the anti-comics movement, and if he threw things into his argument that didn't make sense to you, well, maybe you just read too many damn comic books!

*The writer he refers to is presumably Josette Frank, a consultant on children's literature to the Child Study Association of America, as listed in comics published by DC.

**Some self-righteous publishers would say it was the "irresponsible publishers" who put out the disreputable comics. That usually meant EC and its imitators.

***Kids my age during the 1950s and '60s had access to wonderful books like the Landmark series of history books for young readers, when we could tear ourselves away from our historically inaccurate comic books, that is:

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Number 986


The friendless killer and the killer goriller


"Kid Melton" would be just another anonymous crime story from an average issue of Lawbreakers Always Lose, which came out of the Timely/Marvel/Atlas bullpen of the late 1940s, but it achieved some notoriety when the splash panel was included in the infamous Seduction Of The Innocent by Fredric Wertham, M.D. I've had several postings featuring this book, and if you want more information click on Fredric Wertham in the labels below this posting.

Seduction Of The Innocent affected the comic fan world, and books with SOTI panels are highly valued. I'm always interested to see the stories behind the panels and usually wonder why the panel was singled out. Lawbreakers Always Lose #7 was published in 1948, several years before the 1954 publication of SOTI, and probably unavailable to most comic book readers when it came out.





Like "Kid Melton," "The Killer Who Walked Like A Man," from Lawbreakers Always Lose #10, also has artwork unidentified by Atlas Tales. It's footnoted on the listing as being very like "Murders In The Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe. It wasn't included in SOTI, and I have no idea how Wertham would have reacted. Would he have recognized the influence and did he consider Poe's work, even with its macabre subject matter and violence, an important part of American literature?

Poe aside, it has a gorilla, which Pappy's readers know is one of my personal non-guilty pleasures in comic books. A murderous gorilla in a suit, top hat and opera cape...that's all it needs to make the story stand out for me.

The New Yorker of April 11, 2011, explains Pappy's gorilla fetish.

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