Talk:Seduction of the Innocent

Hidden Images
I will admit, although I now quite a bit about this page in comic book history, I have not read Seduction of the Innocent and with regards to the phrase 'images of female nudity concealed in drawings of muscles and tree bark', this is the first I have noticed this statement. Are there examples available anywhere to illustrate what Wertham was attesting to?--RedKnight 13:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't know of any examples, but I've heard in several sources that Wertham made these claims. I believe they were all ludicrous accusations, though, mere coincidences of shape. Elijya 17:39, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've read SOTI, and the scientific merit of its hidden images are on the level of Wilson Bryan Key's books; that is, sensational nonsense, the fearmonger's equivalent of a Droodle. I recall that Wertham reproduces a panel with a drawing of some muscular guy or superhero, next to a close up of the same drawing, showing the deltoid muscle (front shoulder), which the artist or inker feathered to add contour. FW seemed to think that it was either a deliberate or subconscious attempt at drawing a female pelvis and pubes.  FW's caption went something like "There are pictures within pictures for those who know how to look".  --AC 20:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I own several copies of SOTI. The specific case you're discussing comes from the illustrations on the sixteen unnumbered pages in the center of the book, between numbered pages 212 and 213. An entire panel from Jungle Comics #98 was reprinted, and then a close-up of the deltoid muscle was pictured, as you mentioned.  The caption reads, "In ordinary comic books, there are pictures within pictures for children who know how to look." PopeElvis (talk) 02:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * In the article, I have removed the reference to images hidden in tree bark. I have a digital copy of SOTI (as well as most printed editions).  I searched my digital copy for all references to "bark", "tree", "muscles", "how to look", "pubic" and "nude".  I also re-read page 185, where Wertham discusses hidden images.  There was no reference to an image hidden in tree bark.  The most notorious hidden image was pictured in the illustrations section of SOTI.  In Jungle Comics #98, Wertham saw what appears to be a female's pubic region in the deltoid muscle, as noted above.  Here is what Wertham wrote on page 185: "Some of the ordinary comic books have illustrations revealing crude sexual details if you look at them in a certain way. The shoulder of a man with a red scarf around his neck shows a girl's nude body. This is so clear that it can induce the immature reader to look for such things and stir him up sexually."   PopeElvis (talk) 15:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Publishing History?
Does anyone have any information on the publishing history of SotI? How many printings did it go through, in what years, through what publishers? There's also a line about the book being a small bestseller. Does anyone have any actual figures about the number of copies the book sold? Elijya 17:39, 24 April 2006 (UTC) I have collected SOTI for years, and I maintain the SOTI website. There were two 1954 printings in the US. I have owned numerous copies of both the first and second prints. The first printing has an R colophon on the page of publication data. The second printing has no such colophon, and the inside front dust jacket flap contains the words "SECOND PRINTING." The publication page of the first and second printings in the US says "Published simultaneously in Canada by Clarke, Irwin & Company, Toronto" but I have never seen a copy of SOTI that indicates it was published in Canada. There was UK edition, published in 1955 by Museum Press. It is the dust jacket of this version that is pictured along with the SOTI entry on Wikipedia. The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide claims that the 1954 English version was published by Kennikat Press (not true), and it also indicates that there is a 1972 printing by Kennikat Press (true). I have seen sellers offering a 1996 reprint published by Ameron Limited, ISBN 0848816579. However, I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to purchase a copy of this 1996 printing, which is supposed to have been a print run of 220 copies. I do, however, own four additional copies of SOTI with a publication date of 2004. 1) A copy with a green cover and gilt lettering. The spine reads "Ameron House", and the publication page indicates that it's a 2004 reprint by Main Road Books, one of a limited edition of 220 copies.  2)  A copy with a light blue cover and gilt lettering. The spine reads "Main Road Books, Inc." and the interior is identical in every way to the previously-mentioned green-covered copy, including the indication that it is one of 220 copies. 3) A copy with a brown cover and gilt lettering. The spine also reads "Main Road Books, Inc." and the interior is also identical to the green-covered copy.  4)  A copy with a dark blue cover and white lettering. This last copy was actually printed in 2010, and became available on Amazon.com on June 1, 2010. Photos of various versions are available at SeductionOfTheInnocent.org. —Preceding unsigned comment added by PopeElvis (talk • contribs) 02:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC) I apologize for the error in failing to sign the above post. The words above are mine. The 1972 U.S. verson published by Kennikat Press does exist. I have seen it at the Library of Congress. PopeElvis (talk) 14:34, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Evidence
Is any evidence available for his claims about the effects of comic books?


 * None whatsoever, except as mentioned in the article (Wonder Woman and bondage). Most of his claims are profoundly silly - comic books cause juvenile delinquency because most delinquents read comic books.  Of course, most juvenile delinquents also chewed gum or drank milk, but he fails to mention those "causes" of their behavior.  --Chancemichaels 20:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)Chancemichaels
 * Carol Tilley's article (currently listed under "Further Reading" but not used as a reference anywhere) goes into how poor his evidence was. I plan to add content based upon the article in the coming weeks. Would it be appropriate to add a "Criticism" section? Phette23 (talk) 23:28, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Voluntary establishment of Comics Code?
The current article now says:

the Comics Code Authority was voluntarily established by publishers to self-censor their titles.

...and:

publishers developed the Comics Code Authority to censor their own content.

I believe both statements are misleadingly general in that they suggest that all publishers volunteered to form the CC. Rather the case seems to have been that some publishers saw the code as a way of competing with other publishers.

As I understand it William M. Gaines proposed that publishers band together to FIGHT censorship, as Frank Jacobs writes, p. 112 of 'The Mad World of William M. Gaines':

A few weeks after the hearings, Gaines tried to rally his fellow publishers. The plan was to start a new comic association that would be an action group. It would work with educators and psychologists to find out if there really was a link between horror and crime and juvenile delinquency. It would employ a public relations staff to reclaim the public's shattered faith in comic books. Finally it would protect publishers against the spectre of censorship.

Gaines hired Wendell Willkie Hall for the first meeting. He was happily surprised when nine publishers showed up. However, their first action was to vote to outlaw the words "crime", "horror", and "terror" in comics. Gaines rose from his seat. "This isn't what I had in mind," he said, and walked out of the hall.

Wikipedia's own Gaines article goes on:

In 1955, EC was effectively driven out of business by the backlash, and by the Comics Magazine Association of America, an industry group that Gaines himself had suggested, but soon lost control of to John Goldwater, publisher of the innocuous Archie teenage comics.

Summing up: the relatively liberal WMG rents a hall and tries to get his fellow publishers to form something like the ACLU or Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, but the meeting is taken over by conservative John L. Goldwater who must of prefered the Hayes Code as his model. JLG may have done this out of altruism, (if he thought horror comics were evil), or as a ruthless business strategy, (he wasn't publishing horror comics), or for both reasons.

The article should be clearer how publishers were divided about whether to fight or capitulate to political pressure, that the majority who favored caving in prevailed, and that some of that majority (perhaps coincidentally) had something to gain by it. --AC 21:27, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Table d'hôte, or distributors holding retailers to ransom?
Current text:

Also rarely mentioned in summaries or reviews of Seduction of the Innocent are Wertham's claims 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.

The fact interpreted is that magazine distributors sold their fare to retailers table d'hôte or buffet style, and some retailers didn't like horror comics. Good enough.

From that FW argued (not claimed, or else the above quote uses 'claim' in an equivocal sense meaning first 'to report' and later 'to argue') that table d'hôte is the moral equivalent of ransom, a radical claim.

Many readers of magazines and journals don't like every feature, they too subsidize unwanted material; ransomees all. Only in a la carte or menu style does freedom lie? Yet it's unlikely that newspaper comics strips could have come about under an a la carte system, nor the comic books that followed. That same general dreckiness despised by comics harshest critics also provided easily entered corners and cracks for new talent to sprout from, from which grew the art form.

To improve the article the text should have proper qualifications added to distinguish between the claim that some retailers complained and FW's argument that it was just like ransom. It'd also help if some editor might shed some light on the question of exactly what sort of economic system, if any, was FW advocating to replace the evils of table d'hôte.

---

And a few peripheral opinions that last question.

My impression is that the public health conscious FW viewed health as a primary value, and the Anglo-American tradition of free speech as an overinflated secondary value, the mental health equivalent of freedom to spread viruses and disease; and that just as governments should vigorously pursue detection, inspection, cleanliness, vaccination, quarantine, and nutrition to prevent microbe-borne plagues, governments should also vigorously pursue their speech equivalents to prevent media-borne mental health plagues (crime, delinquency, war, graft) with mandatory education, detection (how?), cleanliness ("voluntary" codes, licenses, fines, de facto censorship), etc., it'd be a cleaner, more nutritious table d'hôte, to make the world safer for mentally healthy people.

His talkative adversaries come from that Anglo-American tradition where unhappy church based states and communities spread and split like wildfire, nonconformists fleeing oppression to start bigoted utopias that oppressed anew, causing more splits, until the only thing generally agreed on in the Godly chaos was how general religious agreement seemed virtually impossible, and Law should not attempt impossible things. Freedom of speech Milton style probably seemed as nutty as the other creeds of its day, but that particular creed was viable and flourished.

FW argues against the evils of insanity from medical analogy and for the positive value of sanity, (a vague term), his opponents argue from a history of self-destructive religious warfare and its apparent basic futility, and for the neutral value of doubt. It's a question of how much professed holiness (opposed to the sin without) and professed sanity (versus a mad world) have in common. --AC 08:05, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Article as it now appears ....
.... just seems to be a reiteration of the portion of the Frederic Wertham article covering SotI. Since this book and Wortham's subsequent invitation to appear at the Kefauver hearings seemed to be the proximate cause of the creation of the Comics Code and the subsequent "voluntary" self-censorship of the industry, there needs to be more facts (actual sales of the book subsequent to its first publication, for example) about the book, rather than just its contents and Wertham's opinions, as these seem to be adequately covered in the Wertham article. If not modified and improved, the article as currently constituted would just as well be a redirect to the SotI portion of the Wertham article. Rlquall 01:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Anti-Batman & Robin quote needed...
Current text has a revision where editor Lenky "Changed 'homosexual lovers' to 'gay partners' to reflect more inclusive and less clinical word usage" -- this is unhistorically PC, Wertham's actual usage IIRC was 'homosexual lovers' or something much like that, as a psychoanalytic pejorative against Batman and all boy sidekicks. Also 'partners' seems presumptuous even in 2008, given that the fictional Robin circa 1954 was a minor, a "Boy Wonder", below the age of consent. Instead of rephrasing a highly interpretive or prejudiced epithet, we should quote it. Calling all quoters with a SOTI copy handy... --AC (talk) 08:37, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Taken from one of my several copies of SOTI, here are two direct quotes that confirm the statement made in the main article regarding the homosexual content in Batman:' "Several years ago a California psychiatrist pointed out that the Batman stories are psychologically homosexual. Our researches confirm this entirely. Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoerotism which pervades the adventures of the mature 'Batman' and his young friend 'Robin.' " (Seduction of the Innocent, pp. 189-190). ""... (t)he Batman type of story helps to fixate homoerotic tendencies by suggesting the form of an adolescent-with-adult or Ganymede-Zeus type of love-relationship." (Seduction of the Innocent, pp. 190).

PopeElvis (talk) 14:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Comics B-Class Assesment required
This article needs the B-Class checklist filled in to remain a B-Class article for the Comics WikiProject. If the checklist is not filled in by 7th August this article will be re-assessed as C-Class. The checklist should be filled out referencing the guidance given at Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/B-Class criteria. For further details please contact the Comics WikiProject. Comics-awb (talk) 17:25, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

C-Class rated for Comics Project
As this B-Class article has yet to receive a review, it has been rated as C-Class. If you disagree and would like to request an assesment, please visit WikiProject_Comics/Assessment and list the article. Hiding T 14:27, 24 February 2009 (UTC)