Capsule Book Review (?): Four books, three titles, two authors-update

[daglob]

A book review in the comics section? Well, there are books out there that concern or feature comics. A few might be worth picking up. Some aren't.

Part 1:

Seduction of the Innocent
Fredrick Wertham

Everyone reading this should know about this book. I found a copy online, so I decided that I would read it and see what it was really about.

First up, let's be fair (and get it over with); there were some atrocious comic being published in the late '40s and early '50s. There are places on the internet where you can download some of these comics and see for yourself. The publishers only cared about a fast buck, and quality was not any consideration whatsoever. Also, people who point out that younger children seldom read the more mature comics ignore the fact that, if there is an older sibling, these comics will be available for the younger child to see.

Parents were disturbed by the increase of juvenile crime that apparently followed WW II, and were looking for a scapego... um... explanation.

Enter Dr. Wertham. By the time he wrote (if he actually did) Seduction of the Innocent, he was a recognized authority on juvenile psychology, and often testified (for the prosecution and the defense at different times) in court. He was an intelligent man (and isn't shy about letting you know) and seems to have actually been concerned about the mental health of children in the United States and the world at large.

The book itself is clearly written, easy to understand, and one needs no great medical or psychological knowledge to understand. This book is written for the average citizen, and is intended to scare the crap out of him. It is not a fair and even handed discussion, nor is it an analysis of data, it is a long drawn out "BOO!"

There are sites that will tell you what is wrong with the book, so I'll just mention a few things. One is that Dr. W divides comics into two groups: crime comics and what we would call humor books. Jungle comics? Crime in the jungle. Science Fiction? Crime in space. Western? Crime in the old west. Super-heroes? Crime with Super heroes. This allows him to make sweeping comments about what we would consider crime comics (Crime Does Not Pay, Crime Must pay the Penalty, Crime and Punishment, etc.) and let it be construed that it applies to all comics. The better to scare you with, my child. He hasn't much to say about horror comics, which were coming into their own as he was compiling the book (Crime with monsters), and he feels that romance comics give a girl a false impression of the world and the advertisements are bad for her self-image. By the way, he's not terribly happy with the humor books, either.

Another is that he picks and chooses statements from several interviews with his clients and puts them together like they are connected. I suspected this, and one of these sites confirmed it. He would have a child say something like "I read comics. I read a lot of comics. I read comics all the time. My favorites are crime comics, I like the adventure. My favorite characters are Superman and Batman. I don't do well in school. I have nightmares, I have nightmares that someone is trying to shoot me." Now, no one talks like this. And I doubt that the child that made a similar comment would have called the comics "crime comics", and that he would find adventure in them if they were. I believe the good doctor "fixed" the comments of similar interviews to make them more "correct".

At first, Dr, Wertham says that his colleagues, who say that comics are not harmful, or at least not very harmful, are misled or misinformed. He knows better, because he has done the research (he says over and over and over again). Then, in a later chapter, he says that no psychologist will say anything favorable about comics unless they are in the pay of the comic companies, and he provides a list of these people. Once upon a time, some of the publishers had advisory boards to advise them about the content of their comics. I've seen them listed on the inside covers of some Golden Age comics, sometimes in the middle someplace, Fawcett sometimes had them on the front page along with a kind of preview of what was in the comic. Wertham seems to be angry at these people.

Wertham also says that it's impossible to find out who owns these "crime comics"; and says they are a money laundering scheme linked to organized crime. I guess he never heard of Irwin Donnefield, A.A. Wynn, Victor Fox, Martin Goodman, W.H. Fawcett Jr. or Lev Gleason. I guess he never read one of the statements of ownership that appeared every once in awhile in a comic either. I won't hazard a guess about the organized crime aspect.

The funniest chapter is the one where Wertham complains about the trouble he has convincing some people that comics are a vile poison, he takes Superman as a symbol of this opposition, and complains bitterly whenever he fails, and blames Supes. I guess it's hard to convince someone that a character is an anti-American fascist when the character's avowed mission in life is to wage a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way. He also criticizes the director of "Superman vs. the Mole Men" for getting ideas from comic books. Go figure.

So, you say, the whole idea behind crime comics was that crime didn't pay. No, Dr. Wertham says, it's teaching children that crime doesn't pay if you get caught. He went on at length about this every few pages it seemed like. I got to wondering what he thought of a murder mystery, where the murderer gets away with it until the last chapter (or five minutes of a TV show), and sure enough, before the end of the book he says that murder mysteries also teach kids not to get caught.

I almost feel sorry for him.

But not quite.

If I was the cynical type, I might wonder... Wertham was not stupid. He had to know how much the environment was affecting his patients. Patients that went to a free clinic operated on donations. I wonder how the publicity affected those donations. After all, here was the good doctor fighting the good fight on a shoestring; how could any concerned parent NOT help him? It could be that he saw comics as an appropriate scapegoat, one that did not have the means to retaliate (and, of course, he stated that anyone who disagreed with him was naive, misinformed, or taking payola from the comic book companies), so a cynical person might think that it was all part of a ploy to publicize his clinic and increase the donations to keep the evil comics from contaminating the morals of the children of our great country.

If I was the cynical type.

Thoughts? Opinions?

[JeyNyce]

I was always tempted to read that book, but didn't because he bashes comics and such, but now I might just sit down and read it just to see his way of thinking and to see if there was a "hidden message" behind the book

[daglob]

A Killing in Comics
Strip for Murder
Seduction of the Innocent

The Jake and Maggie Starr series by Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins should be a familiar name to all who frequent this forum, having been involved in comics for years (writing Ms. Tree, Batman, and the graphic novel “Road to Perdition”), but he has been a top mystery novel writer also. During his career, he has written several series, many of which have a historical basis, and the Jake and Maggie Starr series is one of those.
   Set in the late ‘40s through the early to mid ‘50s, Collins has said that it is his kind of tribute to Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (no relation). Jake is the chief troubleshooter for the Starr Syndicate, a business that distributes properties to an assortment of newspapers. This includes various columns, games and puzzles, and newspaper versions of certain comic book characters. Primarily, these are Wonderguy, Bat-Wing, and Amazona, the headliners for the Americana Comics Group.

   The first book, “A Killing in Comics” concerns the death of the head of the Americana group, and how suspicion falls on the two young men (Harry Spiegel and Moe Schulman) who invented Wonderguy, and are in the process of suing the company for the rights to their character. Seems vaguely familiar…

   “Strip for Murder” has Jake looking into the murder of Sam Fizer (creator of the comic strip Mug O’Malley), and trying to decide if Fizer’s former assistant, Hal Rapp, is guilty or not. Jake’s stepmother, Maggie Starr, has a part in the Broadway play based on Rapp’s hillbilly spoof “Tall Paul”, and this, along with a possible syndication contract, gets Jake in the action. Fizer and Rapp have been having a feud for years, with a lot of bad blood between them.

   “Seduction of the Innocent” has Jake looking into the murder of Dr. Werner Fredricks, whose book “Ravage the Lambs” blames juvenile delinquency on comic books (all of which are “crime comics”, as far as he is concerned). Jake does this to help his childhood friend Bob Price, who’s horror comics sell well and frighten more adults than children.

   Collins says that these are the only ones he had planned, basing them on the Siegel and Schuster suit, Ham Fisher and Al Capp’s feud, and Fredric Wertham and the Kefauver Committee (although he kind of sets up one other story, either consciously or sub-consciously). Unlike his other historical mysteries (of which I’ve read “The Hindenburg Murders” with Leslie Charteris and “The War of the Worlds Murders” with Walter B. Gibson [aka Maxwell Grant] and Orson Welles, along with a couple of Nathan Heller books-all good stories), the names were changed to protect the innocent, and not so innocent: Rod Krane (Bob Kane), Will Handler (Bill Finger), Will Allison (Al Williamson), Bob Price (Bill Gaines), Hal Feldman (Al Feldstein), Charles Bardwell (Charles Biro), Lyla Lamont (Tarpe Mills), and others.

   These are fun, and Terry Beatty does chapter headings, repeated with additions in the “You have all the clues- who did it?” section near the ends of each story. Collins also gives an opening narration by Jake to set the time, and an afterword by Mr. Starr that tells what happened “after the story”.

   Just about everyone has heard about the whole Siegel and Schuster business, and I’d heard a little about Sam Fisher and Al Capp. I looked up and learned some more. “Seduction of the Innocent” was part of the reason I looked up another book of that title and read it


My favorite Collins series is his Quarry series, the adventures of an… anti-hitman.

[daglob]

Dover Books is reprinting "A Killing in Comics".

[daglob]

Dover has also reprinted "Strip for Murder".