Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/124

112 eate’s own editors, who are many, and highly critical, and then this

han el includes the readers themselves, who are in a position to take the editor to task for printing your material and they are quick to respon.

So we are never jn denbt az to ow status. There will never be any question after the fact. Yon almost know by the time it hits the street whether or not your material is acceptable to the reader.

So we are in this white-hot fight of public judgment, which is as it should be,

For instance, Walt's strip runs in 400 newspapers. Mime in 380. Blondie in 1,800 eut of the 1,500 dailies. That means we have a daily cireulation of 55 or 75 million. So that we are in front of the pack ail the time and highly vulnerable, as a result.

I bring this in here because I think it is germane on this principle alone, that we also have comic books publishing our material so that we are in this field as well.

It is pointed toward perhaps a little audience in the simple sense that we hope to sell to the daily audience that reads the 10-cent book.

But we are in effect as responsible as well. Insofar as deploving individual books, that is a matter of individual taste. Some books I like which you wouldn't like. I can't say blanketly, for instance, that f dislike all crime comics or I think they are bad. I think they are only good or bad as they affect you, the individual, and by the same token the individual reader of any age group is affected relatively rather than as a group and cannot be condemned I believ €, a8 2 group.

The. That is a very fine statement.

Mr. . Thank you very much.

Would you like to add anything, Mr. Musial ?

Mr. . T am supposed to be cdueational director. I can see IT have to give my job over to Mr. Caniff. He presented| my thonghts better than I coulkd.

I would like to say, I think cartoons are of a sort and instead of making a speech at this particular time I brought in an editorial draw- ing which I made, which I think germane to y the situation, T would like to place this on the bourd, with your permission,

The. Would you please do that.

Mr. . Mr. Chairman, we would appreciate yery much show- ing you a few of the things that we have been doing, one of which is a series of talks that I personally have been giving before journalism students, newspaper groups, luncheon clubs, and other respectable bodies and people in search of some sort of education, trying to point oul what is the basis of the philosophical workings of the comic strip.

I think I can use my own strip as an example, and you can see what thought goes into what we do and how we do it.

[Demonstrating.] In the first place, in every one of our strips we have a central character around whom we base most of our plotting and action.

In my ease it happens to be a character who is supposed ta look Like a possum. in effect; he is a possum by trade, but he doesn't really work ab i becanse nets lly he happens to be related to most of the people that vend comic strips.

Now, he looks a little bit like a monster. This little character actually looks a little bit like a monster.