And the scary doctor was the author of the most notorious anti-comic book book ever written, 1954’s Seduction of the Innocent. Fredric Wertham!” The “Code” was the Comics Code Authority, an industry self-regulatory agency. And Craig Yoe zoomed into the 1950s with a presentation titled “Pre-Code Comics’ Worst Horror: Dr. Charles Brownstein conducted a full series over all four days, which culminated with a “Banned Comics Jam” to raise money for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, for which he is Executive Director. The various efforts to ban comics over the decades was a hot topic at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. And so, our nation’s youth was just a dime’s purchase away from juvenile delinquency, mental illness and much, much worse. Thus goes the scapegoating just as it always has.īack in the early 1950s, comic books were the Grand Theft Auto of the day, a “fall guy” along with rock ‘n’ roll for a nation looking for simplistic explanations for complex societal problems. We’d all be so much better if only they didn’t have access to those video games and that nasty music and those awful movies and blah blah blah. Kids these days, with their violence and gunplay and perverse sex.
