Wertham was right in that kids shouldn't read violent/deranged material. The thing he overlooked was that many adults read comics too, especially those who picked up the habit during military service. And these war-scarred men wanted their comics raw and bloody. Publishers like EC gave them what they wanted. Perhaps Wertham was misunderstood, but the crusade against comics he helped to start did damage this unique American art form, stunting its development. That's why the French and the Italians do it better now; they weren't artifically forced to limit their artistic expression.
Yeah, my guess is that like animation, comics were locked in the mental picture of Americans as being 'for the kids'. The tandem effect was that comics for adults might be peddled to kids, or mistaken for being peddled to kids, distracting from the weird shit embedded in stuff that is campy enough to be thought to be 'for kids', failing to set off "cursing, violence and nudity" sensors.
This is the same issue with Anime. People will whinge about violence, fanservice and nihilism -- all topics essentially present in adult works, and miss that like Wonder Woman's creator, Sailor Moon's creator was a weird pervert with a deviant intention -- to make girls into lesbians. Sailor Moon, as published in the USA, has none of the red flags that the moral censors would catch, which is exactly the point.
Wertham was right in that kids shouldn't read violent/deranged material. The thing he overlooked was that many adults read comics too, especially those who picked up the habit during military service. And these war-scarred men wanted their comics raw and bloody. Publishers like EC gave them what they wanted. Perhaps Wertham was misunderstood, but the crusade against comics he helped to start did damage this unique American art form, stunting its development. That's why the French and the Italians do it better now; they weren't artifically forced to limit their artistic expression.
Yeah, my guess is that like animation, comics were locked in the mental picture of Americans as being 'for the kids'. The tandem effect was that comics for adults might be peddled to kids, or mistaken for being peddled to kids, distracting from the weird shit embedded in stuff that is campy enough to be thought to be 'for kids', failing to set off "cursing, violence and nudity" sensors.
This is the same issue with Anime. People will whinge about violence, fanservice and nihilism -- all topics essentially present in adult works, and miss that like Wonder Woman's creator, Sailor Moon's creator was a weird pervert with a deviant intention -- to make girls into lesbians. Sailor Moon, as published in the USA, has none of the red flags that the moral censors would catch, which is exactly the point.
Excellent piece. We should have listened.