The Path to Delinquency
Fifty Years Ago, Juvenile Crime
Was Linked to Comic Books

By Cynthia Crossen
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

'The subcommittee wishes to reiterate its belief that this country cannot afford the calculated risk involved in feeding its children a concentrated diet of crime, horror and violence." So proclaimed the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, convened in 1954. The object of the panel's anxiety: comic books.

Fifty years ago, American parents and educators were deeply troubled. Young children could go to their local candy store for a soda and find comic books with such titles as "Rica Rita: Pantie Model,""Lawbreakers Suspense Stories" or "Sexie Tessie Up North." There were also wholesome comics, such as "What's New in Transistors," "Bingo the Monkey Doodle Boy" and "Bouncy Bunny in the Friendly Forest." But the focus then was on periodicals leading juveniles down the path to delinquency.

How Crime Pays

In the early '50s, teens were stealing hubcaps, joining gangs, breaking windows and getting into fights. They were also reading comic books-an average of about 68 million a month in 1953. A psychiatrist, Frederic Wertham, put one and one together: Comic books were seductive illustrations of how crime pays, good doesn't necessarily triumph over evil, and authority figures can be nitwits.

A senior psychiatrist for New York City's Department of Hospitals, Dr. Wertham specialized in treating children with behavior problems. Without exception, every troubled child he had encountered loved comic books, reading as many as 20 a week. Without these graphic examples, he wondered, would young people really carry switchblades and have rumbles?

Dr. Wertham, a dynamic rabble-rouser and skillful exploiter of the press, soon built a following of librarians, teachers, parents and churches. After writing essays for several magazines, in 1954 he published a book called "Seduction of the Innocent."

Comic books were a "correspondence course in crime," he wrote. The comic-book world "is a distillation of viciousness. ... It is the world of the strong, the ruthless, the bluffer, the shrewd deceiver, the torturer and the thief." Dr. Wertham even denounced superhero comics, such as Superman and Batman, because they aroused "fantasies of sadistic joy in seeing other people repeatedly punished while the hero remains immune."

Local governments began passing laws against what one literary critic denounced as "marijuana in the nursery." Retailers were pressured to stop displaying horror and crime comics. In the spring of 1954, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings to consider if, and how, comics might be controlled.

In the early years of comic books-the 1930s and 1940s-the main characters were either superheroes or talking animals (Mickey Mouse, Pogo, Willie the Worm). Most comic books were aimed at children, but adults read them, too. Thousands of American soldiers who fought in World War II carried comics overseas. After the war, the rapidly growing industry expanded its audience further by offering more mature fare, especially crime and horror.

Some comic writers and artists were given loose guidelines on matters of taste: DC Comics told its authors, "Don't chop the limbs off anybody," and "Never show a hypodermic needle."

Others, most notably William Gaines of EC Comics, felt the only limit was human imagination. In EC comics, characters might be "devoured by rats, pecked by pigeons, stuffed down disposals, skewered on swords, buried alive, dismembered, dissolved, southern-fried or hacked up by maniacs in Santa Claus suits," according to E.B. Boatner, a historian of comics.

Mr. Gaines defended his comic books to the subcommittee, arguing that even young readers know the difference between fiction and real life. Referring to one story the subcommittee had examined, in which a child murders his parents, Mr. Gaines said, "None of the captions said anything like, 'If you are unhappy with your [mother], shoot her.'"

Code of Decency

Although the committee recommended no federal regulation of comic books, publishers felt the chill of potential censorship. They banded together and devised their own code of decency. For example: "If crime is depicted, it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity." "Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as desirable." "Passion shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions."

Some comic-book fans blame Dr. Wertham for ending what is considered the golden age of comics. In a 1974 interview, however, Dr. Wertham said his goal was simply to make comic books less accessible to children.

When the code took effect in late 1954, the vast majority of crime and horror comic books disappeared from newsstands. But by then America's children were becoming addicted to a new and far more sinister medium: television.