Comics History
Dr. Fredric Wertham
Fredric Wertham in a posed photograph, reading the first issue of EC Comics' Shock Illustrated (October 1955). Credit: E.B. Boatner.
Among comic fans, Dr. Fredric Wertham is a man who still evokes feelings of hatred, irritation and ridicule. In the 1950s, this German-American psychiatrist claimed to have found a correlation between violent comics and juvenile delinquency, which he documented in his book 'The Seduction of the Innocent' (1954). In a time when many parents, teachers and moral guardians already looked down on comics, his books, essays and speeches only accelerated witch hunts against the medium. Within one year a censorship brigade with its own Comics Code was established by the comic book industry, which set up a list of very strict rules regarding what comics were allowed to show and what not. As a result, many publishers were forced to close down and numerous comic writers and artists were severely hindered in their creativity. The Comics Code remained in effect for decades, while comics kept a pejorative reputation that they could never quite shake off. As such, it's not strange to see why Wertham's name is not greeted with much respect in comics history. However, at the same time, Wertham was far more complicated than his zealous reputation suggests. In fact, he didn't actually support much of the censorship evoked by his writings. In the last years of his life, he even supported comics fandom, although he seemed as out-of-touch as he had always been.
Early life and academic career
Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer was born on 20 March 1895 in Munich, Germany. He studied at Kings College in London, followed by educations at the Universities of Munich and Erlangen. In 1921 he graduated from the University of Würzburg. He was strongly influenced by Dr. Emile Kraepelin, a psychiatrist who emphasized the effects of environment and social background on psychological development - a novel idea at the time. Wertheimer also corresponded with Sigmund Freud for a while, which inspired him to become a psychiatrist himself. In 1922, Wertheimer emigrated to the USA, where he became a respected psychiatrist and director of several New York psychiatric hospitals. After his naturalization as a U.S. citizen in 1927, he anglicized his last name from "Wertheimer" to "Wertham". In 1934, Wertham published his first book, 'The Brain as an Organ'. During the trial against notorious cannibal and serial killer Albert Fish, Wertham was one of three psychiatrists who investigated the criminal and testified, declaring him "legally insane", which would mean he would be hospitalized for life. Still, Fish was declared sane by the jury and sentenced to the electric chair.
Theories about comics
In his studies, Wertham focused on the influence of culture and environment on criminal behavior, resulting in the book 'Dark Legend' (1941), about the true story of a 17-year-old who killed his mother. Dr. Wertham noted how the boy lived in a fantasy world, influenced by movies, radio plays and comic books. This was the first time Wertham linked comics to crime, and in his following works he developed this thought even further. In his follow-up book 'The Show of Violence' (1949), Wertham described a couple of the crime cases he was involved with. Ironically, the book reads as an almost sensationalist true crime story instead of a psychological study, making it almost the type of work Wertham was agitating against.
Wertham's theories parallelled a rise of more violent comic books. Since the 1930s several detective comics, war comics and superhero comics had become bestsellers, often featuring graphic scenes of violence and even death. One of the most notable titles was Charles Biro's 'Crime Does Not Pay' comic book. By the late 1940s, EC Comics specialized in very gruesome horror, fantasy and thriller comics with disturbing imagery that few other media offered at the time. Hollywood still suffered under the Hays Code, which censored anything too violent or sexual. In the relatively new comics industry, particularly publishers of independent comic book lines, there was no such general censorship commission yet, and so allowing more creative freedom.
Wertham's main concern was always the psychological well-being of children. Though by talking with juvenile criminals who all read the most horrific comic titles the industry had to offer, the psychiatrist took the wrong conclusions. Even worse, most of his "facts" and "proofs" later turned out to be fabricated or twisted to justify his own viewpoints. In the 2010s, Carol L. Tilley discovered that Wertham, for instance, exaggerated the number of youths he had interviewed for his research. He took certain quotes from different individuals and presented them as the opinion/experience of one individual. In other cases, they were generalized as if "thousands" of other youngsters had had similar experiences. Wertham also deliberately ignored the problematic family and social backgrounds of these delinquents and often lowered the ages of certain teens to make their claims more shocking.
Book cover of 'Seduction of the Innocent'.
Seduction of the Innocent
In 1948, Dr. Wertham's crusade against comic books took off with the symposium 'The Psychopathology of Comic Books', in which he underlined how social influences played a determanitive role in children's behavior. In that same year, his findings also appeared in an article in Collier's Magazine, stating that the crime and violence depicted in comics were an important factor in leading kids to the criminal path. But it wasn't until the publication of 'Seduction of the Innocent' (19 April 1954) that his ideas took flight. The book offered graphic examples of how comic book titles like 'Terror', 'Weird Science' and 'The Vault of Horror' depicted sex, crime, murder, sadism and drugs. Wertham often mispresented certain facts. For instance, he cited a seven year-old boy who "had nightmares" after reading 'Blue Beetle' comics, because of a scene where the superhero turns into a beetle. Yet in his original writings Wertham wrote: "Boy says he does not remember anything about the nightmares." In fact, 'Blue Beetle' never even featured an insect transformation scene. It's fairly obvious that Wertham just looked at the title, without actually knowing what the series was all about. He claimed that Batman and Robin advocated homosexuality and cited a "young boy" who phantasized about being Robin in a relation with "the Dark Knight". Yet this "young boy" was in reality a sixteen year-old. When addressing a torture image from a crime comic by Paul Gattuso, Werham wrote that "children told me what the man was going to do with the red-hot poker", implying that he didn't even read the full story.
Oddly enough, sometimes Wertham objected to certain scenes while completely overlooking others. For instance, his main problem with William Moulton Marston's superhero comic 'Wonder Woman' was that it seemingly "promoted lesbianism", since Wonder Woman lives together with many young females on an Amazone island. He seemed blissfully unaware of the actual questionable content, namely that the superheroine was frequently subjected to bondage.
Excerpts from 'Seduction of the Innocent' appeared in the influential magazines Reader's Digest and The Ladies' Home Journal. On 21 April 1954, while testifying before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Deliquency, Wertham felt 'Superman' was "particularly injurious, because it encouraged children to experience sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again.". He went as far to say: "Well, I hate to say (...) but, I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry. They get the children much younger." F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover jumped on the same bandwagon: "A comic book which is replete with the lurid and the macabra and which ridicules decency and honesty may corrupt suspectible children."
In June 1954, a series of erotic comic books named 'Nights of Horror' (1954) were published by Macla, a publisher from Queens, New York. The comics were anonymously illustrated by Joe Shuster, the co-creator of 'Superman'. 'Nights of Horror' aimed at people who were into certain fetishes, particularly sado-masochism, though had little actual nudity in them. On 10 September 1954, the State of New York banned 'Nights of Horror' for violating obscenity laws. In November 1954, a group of juvenile delinquents, named the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, were arrested and sentenced for sadistic violence and murder. Wertham examined and interviewed the criminals and discovered that one of them, Jack Koslow, had read 'Nights of Horror', which had sexually aroused him and motivated him to copycat behavior. The interview convinced many people that there was indeed a correlation between comics and violence. The fact that only one of the four criminals had read 'Nights of Horror' was ignored, let alone the teenagers' upbringing or their social context.
Anti-comics witch hunt (late 1940s, 1950s) in a broader context
Wertham was not the first, nor the only person to stigmatize comics. Anti-comic movements and measurements rose in North America, Europe and Australia from the late 1940s on, reaching a climax during the 1950s, and should be understood in the context of the times. The Cold War was in full effect and in the USA, senator Joseph McCarthy led an active witch hunt against supposed Communist infiltrations and anything vaguely left-wing. During the same era, teenagers emerged as a subculture, misunderstood by older generations. Many teens became less obedient and more self-willed. They were attracted by gangs, underage smoking, drinking and, from the mid-1950s on, a new musical genre called rock 'n' roll. All these evolutions seemed to confirm moral guardians' worst fears that society and particularly "the youth of today" were being corrupted by devious new forces.
Comics were one of the scapegoats held up by concerned parents, educators, religious leaders and certain sociologists. The stigma was comparable to the way jazz and blues music were deemed "suspicious" during the 1920s and 1930s and how rock 'n' roll was called "the devil's music" in the 1950s. From this perspective, comics were just another innovation tarred-and-feathered by people who, in reality, didn't know much about it and didn't understand its appeal, as would happen again in the 1960s with hippies, in the 1970s with punk rock, the 1980s with heavy metal, in the 1990s and beyond with video games, and in the 21st century with the internet and social media.
Some objections to comics were merely snobbish, like the fear that they would make the youth "too lazy" to read "proper literature". Others felt many action-packed comics were far too violent for young readers. Part of the problem was that older generations associated comics with light-hearted family entertainment in newspapers and children's magazines. The comics they objected to were often published in monthly book series, aimed at young adults, not children. Some offered thrills that newspaper comics wouldn't publish. A subcategory included very cheap comic books that bluntly could be described as mere pulp entertainment. These black-and-white comics had a stronger emphasis on fights, scares and eroticism than actual plot and were often sold under the counter, to avoid trouble with obscenity laws.
As early as 1948, the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers established a censorship code against comics, though not very strict and very far-reaching. But it was a flame that spread to other countries like wildfire. On 25 October 1948, Dutch Minister of Education Theo Rutten published an open letter in the newspaper Het Parool, demanding a ban on comics. On 16 July 1949, a censorship law regarding "children's literature" came in effect in France, to "prevent the youth". Comics were naturally targeted too. However, this law was also a prevention measure to protect the French publishing industry being overflooded and outrun by publications from the United States, the United Kingdom and Belgium. It came with an actual censorship commission ("Commission de Surveillance et de Contrôle des Publications Destinées à l'Enfance et à l'Adolescence"), which mostly targeted foreign import and not so much the local production of comics. In West Germany, a similar prevention law came in effect on 9 June 1953, with a government-led censorship commission ("Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien").
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, certain U.S. states already banned comics or organized book burnings. In September 1954, the Comics Magazine Association of America was founded by Charles F. Murphy, an expert in juvenile crime. They established the infamous Comics Code (1954), which stated exactly what comics couldn't depict. Contrary to popular thought, the Code wasn't implemented by an outside force, it was actually established by the comic industry itself in the hope of saving their business. In 1954, the moral panic also led to an anti-comics commission in Australia, fueled by the recent arrest of comic artist Len Lawson for rape, which "confirmed" all of the prejudices about "depraved" cartoonists. By 1960, the U.S. Comics Code rules also came into effect in Brazil, as the "Código de Ética Brasileiro".
In the USA, Dr. Wertham became the main spokesperson for the anti-comics movement. Since he was a licensed psychiatrist, he brought a certain degree of prestige and authority. Most adults, utterly unfamiliar with most of the comics Wertham discussed, simply took his opinions and many rumors for granted. Although there were also many psychiatrists who disagreed with his deductions and challenged them, Wertham's status remained untouched. As often happens, hysterical masses are more willing to believe someone who supports their prejudices with simple-minded explanations and a clear scapegoat than somebody who challenges it with a more complex, nuanced viewpoint.
Created to clean up the medium's public image, the American Comics Code eventually had the opposite effect. Its censorship was so strong that it limited publishers, writers and artists on what they could depict. Many distributors got cold feet and rejected even the comics that carried the Comics Code seal of approval, out of fear of prosecution. By 1955-1956, the numerous boycots, bad press and increasingly low sales drove many publishers out of business. EC Comics, for whom gruesome horror, fantasy, war and crime comics had been one of the major selling points for the past years, were forced to drop all of their titles. They were only saved from complete bankruptcy by changing their best-selling title, MAD, from a comic book into a magazine. As a humor magazine, it was not subjected to the Comics Code and allowed to stay on the market.
The Comics Code kept U.S. comics into a stronghold for decades. But by the early 1970s, its influence started to decline. The turning point was 'The Amazing Spider-Man' issues #96-98 (May-July 1971), which depicted drug abuse, but were still released by Marvel writer Stan Lee and publisher Martin Goodman by just removing the Comics Code seal of approval. Since the book still sold well and was even well-received by critics and moral guardians, more publishers followed Marvel's example by bringing out more contested stories without the Comics Code seal. Eventually, this made the Code lose much of its credibility and importance. On the same token, several independent comic publishers were perfectly able to sell their books to a more mature target audience without ever needing the Code's approval.
Marvel dropped the Comics Code in 2001, leaving only Bongo Comics, Archie Comics and DC Comics behind as companies that still prominently posed the code sign on their publications. In 2010, Bongo no longer used the Comics Code label either, with DC and Archie even publically announcing the end of their association with the Code on respectively 20 and 21 January 2011.
'A Sign for Cain'.
Satirical portrayals
At the height of the comic book witch hunts, several cartoonists satirized the moral panic. In a 2 February 1949 episode of Will Eisner's 'The Spirit', a school psychiatrist named "Dr. Wolfgang Worry" organizes a comic book burning. Some people in the comic industry defended their profession. Timely Comics (nowadays Marvel Comics) devoted an entire editorial to Wertham in a March 1949 issue. They tackled all his disproportional statements and reassured readers: "Comics are good for you!". From 22 June until 13 September 1949, Dutch comic artist Marten Toonder serialized a 'Tom Poes' story, 'Horror, De Ademloze' (1949), in which the duck Wammes Waggel is manipulated by an "evil" comic artist. Another critic of Wertham was Al Capp. The creator of 'Li'l' Abner' debated with him on the live radio show 'The Author Meets The Critics', broadcast on 10 October 1948. In the show, Wertham linked Capp's Shmoo creature to a Nazi criminal Ilse Koch. Nearly a decade later, between 21 July and 14 August 1955, 'Li'l Abner' featured a storyline in which a caricature of Wertham makes a cameo. The final comedy film with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, 'Artists & Models' (1955), also satirized the comic book witch hunts. The movie's director - former Looney Tunes animator Frank Tashlin - even created a fake comic book for this picture. Wallace Wood lampooned Wertham in Mad Magazine (issue #34, August 1957) as "Frederick Werthless" in 'Baseball Is Ruining Our Children', printed in Mad Magazine issue #34, August 1957. The article depicted the batshit insane psychiatrist making ludicrous claims about the dangers of "baseball".
Art Spiegelman addresses Dr. Wertham in his 2004 comics essay 'No Kidding, Kids…. Remember Childhood? Well.. forget it!'
Wertham: reputation vs. reality
While Wertham's writings led to a moral panic that hurt comics both on an artistic and a commercial level, he didn't support all activity against comics. What he actually favored was a rating system to prevent certain comics being sold to minors. But instead, many adults just banned comics altogether and discouraged young people from reading them. Wertham also disliked the entire Comics Code, because it wanted to avoid any scenes of sex of violence, which even he felt "wasn't realistic anymore". In 1956, Wertham's book 'Circle of Guilt' came out, again centering on a murder case. After his retirement, his book 'A Sign for Cain' (1966), criticized comics and movies for influencing criminal behavior.
Not all of Wertham's work condemned comics, either. He was equally concerned about the effects of television on children, which he expressed in his book 'The War on Children' (1959). Interestingly enough, publishers weren't half as willing to release this manuscript and, as such, it never saw print. Wertham also wrote an article about the psychological influence of racial segregation in schools. This article was used as evidence in a landmark court case (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) which ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. It would therefore be unfair to just scorn Wertham as a censor-crazy lunatic.
During the 1970s, a milder Wertham got interested in the new subculture of comic fandom and the fanzines they published. To defend his earlier position on comics he wrote:
"My main interest is not in comic books or even mass media, but in children and young people. Over the years I have been director of large mental hygiene clinics... And I have done a great deal of work - sometimes with great difficulty - to prevent young people from being sent to reformatories where they are often very badly treated. I have also helped a number of young people, so they were not sent to the electric chair. Seeing that so many immature people have troubles and get into trouble, I tried to find out all the sources that contributed to their difficulties. In the course of that work I came across crime comic books. I had nothing whatever to do directly with the Comics Code. Nor have I ever endorsed it. Nor do I believe in it. My scientific findings had something to do with it only because the crime comic book publishers, some of them multi-millionaires, were afraid laws or statutes would be passed against their worst productions. To guard against that, the Code was established. Controlling the excess of brutality in crime comic books has nothing to do with censorship. Protecting children is not censorship. I was the first American psychiatrist admitted in a Federal Court in a book censorship case - and I testified against censorship."
In 1973, Wertham published his last book, 'The World of Fanzines: A Special Form of Communication'. In this work, which was poorly researched and somewhat out of touch with reality, he praised comic fandom as a nice subculture of youngsters, peacefully communicating through fanzines. According to legend, Wertham was subsequently invited to the New York Comic Art Convention, where he was greeted with suspicion and hostility. The story goes that the disgraced psychiatrist left the convention earlier than planned, but in fact there seems to be little proof that the convention story is true. Nonetheless, Wertham never wrote anything about comics again and died on 29 November 1981.
Legacy and influence
While Dr. Wertham was a more complex individual than his reputation suggests and didn't support all of the actions undertaken by anti-comics activists, he still unwillingly opened the gates for fanatic censorship, bans and book burnings. The comic industry underwent a serious blow in the 1950s, with the creativity and finances of many comic authors being gutted. In the 1960s, comics slowly but surely received more positive press, being studied by academics, scholars, critics and, in the eyes of some, acknowledged as an actual form of artistic expression. Many young people who had lived through the moral panic against comics during the previous decade, started drawing their own taboo- and boundary breaking comics. The so-called underground comix movement was a direct compensation for all these years of creative suppression. Since the mainstream would never publish it, artists founded their own independent publishing imprints or distributed their books through "head shops" across the country. This eventually led to more creative freedom, the creation of an open market for adult comics and proof that one didn't need the mainstream in order to publish their own work. It also created a genuine market for purely adult comics, which helped the genre to become more commonplace. Nevertheless, in some circles comics are still regarded as a depraved form of literature.
As the first post-war generation of young comic book readers grew up, Wertham was frequently satirized by professional comic artists. In the story 'Attack of the Reptile Men' (The Brute, issue #2, Seaboard Comics, April 1975), scriptwriter Michael Fleischer and artist Mike Sekowsky presented a certain "Dr. Frederic Bertham" who is a reptile man-creation by a mad scientist. Publisher Clifford Neal founded an underground comic book series titled 'Dr. Wirtham's Comix' (1976-1987), featuring stories deliberately made as offensive and still tongue-in-cheek funny as possible. Even decades after Wertham's influence had waned, he is still kicked beyond the grave by many comic artists, as the medium's worst enemy. In the first issue of Radioactive Man (scripted by Steve & Cindy Vance, drawn by Bill Morrison, Simpsons Comics, January 1994), Radioactive Man is informed by child psychiatrist Dr. "Hedrick Hertzmann" that comics are used by Communists to turn children into juvenile delinquents. From 2015 on, Dynamite Entertainment released a series of crime comics under the title Seduction of the Innocent. Dan Pilkey created a satirical comic book, 'I Am Dr. Fredric Wertham' (2024), depicting Wertham as part of his "Irritating People Who Ruin the World' series.
In July 2025, Dark Horse Comics released 'Dr. Werthless', a more thorough, well-documented and non-sensationalist graphic biography of Wertham's life by true crime writer Harold Schechter and cartoonist Eric Powell.
'Dr. Wirtham's Comix & Stories', 1979.