The Innocence of the Seducer

Fredric Wertham lives on in Joe Lieberman and Bill Bennett

This reform-school girl was staring out from spinning comic racks in the early 1950s, when such future cultural crusaders as Joe Lieberman and Bill Bennett were boys at risk. But unlike the other cover models for Realistic Comics, or the stars of the trashy sub-Hollywood programmers that filled the drive-ins, this co-ed achieved immortality. She owes it to Fredric Wertham, M.D., the anti-pop culture crusader of the day, who used Reform School Girl! to illustrate his preposterous anti-comics bestseller of 1954, Seduction of the Innocent.

The 1950s are often remembered as tranquil, if not stupefying. But people then were in a state of frenzy over a succession of cultural changes: the impact of TV, of suburbanization, of newborn rock 'n' roll, etc. Wertham's contribution was to link comic books to worries about "juvenile delinquency," arguing that comics turned good kids into killers.

Wertham inspired a congressional witch-hunt that killed EC's famous horror series. He's also responsible for the "code" adopted by the comics industry that infantilized the medium for years to come.

The good doctor lives. The current debate over "cultural pollution" and the baneful effect of the Internet and video games is the same moral panic over new media. Indeed, Wertham was himself a replay of a social script that had earlier involved penny dreadfuls, pulp novels, and bobbed hair. Moral panic is the last refuge of the left behind, and turns good people into Bowdlers.

The good doctor lives. The current debate over "cultural pollution" and the baneful effect of the Internet and video games is the same moral panic over new media. Indeed, Wertham was himself a replay of a social script that had earlier involved penny dreadfuls, pulp novels, and bobbed hair. Moral panic is the last refuge of the left behind, and turns good people into Bowdlers.