The Seduction of Two Innocents: Comic Book Readers and Policy Makers
Heather Cox Richardson In 1938 Superman sped into this galaxy from the planet Krypton to save humanity. He and his superhero friends oversaw the chaos of the late 1940s, as America first fought World War II and then struggled to adjust to demobilization. Superman and his friends then swept through the skies as the U.S. armed for the Cold War. While Superman matured, the late 1940s and early 1950s brought chilling fear to Americans that the nation was slipping, losing ground to the Russians, falling apart. So many children—and adults—were reading comics that critics carped that comics themselves were part of America’s moral decline. In 1953, 6.5 comics were sold for every one person in the country. More than 90% of children admitted to reading them. In 1954 the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published The Seduction of the Innocent , detailing how comic books dragged impressionable youths into crime, violence, and homosexuality. The book used anecdotes to prove that Batman, for exampl...