Editing Fredric Wertham (section)

===''Seduction of the Innocent'' and Senate hearings===
''Seduction of the Innocent'' described overt or covert depictions of violence, sex, drug use, and other adult fare within "crime comics"—a term Wertham used to describe not only the popular gangster/murder-oriented titles of the time but also [[superhero]] and horror comics as well—and asserted, based largely on undocumented anecdotes, that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children.
[[File:Fredric Wertham.png|thumb|Wertham reading a comic book. Photo by E.B. Boatner.]]
Comics, especially the crime/horror titles pioneered by [[EC Comics]], were not lacking in gruesome images; Wertham reproduced these extensively, pointing out what he saw as recurring morbid themes such as "injury to the eye" (as depicted in ''[[Plastic Man]]'' creator [[Jack Cole (artist)|Jack Cole]]'s "Murder, Morphine and Me", which he illustrated and probably wrote for publisher Magazine Village's ''True Crime Comics'' No. 2 (May 1947); it involved drug dealing protagonist Mary Kennedy nearly getting stabbed in the eye "by a junkie with a hypodermic needle" in her dream sequence<ref>{{cite book|first1=Art|last1=Spiegelman|authorlink1=Art Spiegelman|first2=Chip|last2=Kidd|date=2001|title=Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to their Limits|publisher=[[Chronicle Books]]|location=San Francisco, California|asin=B013ROSW0U|page=91}}</ref>). 

Many of his other conjectures, particularly about hidden sexual themes (e.g. images of female nudity concealed in drawings of muscles and tree bark, or [[Batman]] and [[Robin (comics)|Robin]] as gay lovers), were met with skepticism from his fellow mental health professionals, but found an audience in those concerned with "public morals", such as Senator [[Estes Kefauver]], who had Wertham testify before the [[Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency]], which he led.<ref name="Itzkoff">{{cite news|first=Dave|last=Itzkoff|authorlink=Dave Itzkoff|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/books/flaws-found-in-fredric-werthams-comic-book-studies.html|title=Scholar Finds Flaws in Work by Archenemy of Comics|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=February 19, 2013|access-date=August 21, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|first=Glen|last=Weldon|url=https://slate.com/culture/2016/04/the-history-of-the-gay-subtext-of-batman-and-robin.html|title=A Brief History of Dick|website=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]|date=April 3, 2016|accessdate=August 21, 2023}}</ref>

In extensive testimony before the committee, Wertham restated arguments from his book and pointed to comics as a major cause of juvenile crime. Beaty notes "Wertham repeated his call ... [for] national legislation based on the public health ideal that would prohibit the circulation and display of comic books to children under the age of fifteen."{{r|beaty|page=157}} The committee's questioning of their next witness, EC publisher [[William Gaines]], focused on violent scenes of the type Wertham had decried. Though the committee's final report did not blame comics for crime, it recommended that the comics industry tone down its content voluntarily; possibly taking this as a veiled threat of potential censorship, publishers developed the [[Comics Code Authority]] to censor their own content. The Code banned not only violent images but also entire words and concepts (e.g. "terror" and "[[zombie]]s") and dictated that criminals must always be punished—thus destroying most EC-style titles, and leaving a sanitized subset of [[superhero]] comics as the chief remaining genre.

Citing one of Wertham's arguments, that 95% of children in reform school read comics proves that comics cause juvenile delinquency (an example of the well-known [[logical fallacy]] [[Correlation implies causation (logical fallacy)|correlation implies causation]]), [[Stan Lee]] recounted that Wertham "said things that impressed the public, and it was like [[shouting fire in a crowded theater|shouting fire in a theater]], but there was little scientific validity to it. And yet because he had the name doctor people took what he said seriously, and it started a whole crusade against comics."<ref>{{cite news | last = Boatz | first = Darrel L. | date = December 1988 | title = Stan Lee | work = [[Comics Interview]] | issue = 64 | page = 17 | publisher = [[Fictioneer Books]]}}</ref>

''Seduction of the Innocent'' also analyzed the advertisements that appeared in 1950s comic books and the commercial context in which these publications existed. Wertham objected to not only the violence in the stories but also the fact that air rifles and knives were advertised alongside them. Wertham claimed that retailers who did not want to sell material with which they were uncomfortable, such as [[horror comics]], were essentially held to ransom by the distributors. According to Wertham, news vendors were told by the distributors that if they did not sell the objectionable comic books, they would not be allowed to sell any of the other publications being distributed.{{citation needed|date=January 2013}} Also in 1954, Wertham was the Court's appointed psychiatric expert in the trial of the [[Brooklyn Thrill Killers]]. When the gang's 18-year-old leader admitted that he had read simply comic books, Wertham concluded that the books were to blame for his crimes.<ref name="cbldf">[http://cbldf.org/2012/10/the-incredible-true-story-of-joe-shusters-nights-of-horror/ The Incredible True Story of Joe Shuster's NIGHTS OF HORROR], ''Comic book legal defense'', October 3, 2012</ref>