Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/183

Rh ihe wayside and worthy publications produced by conscientious pub- lishers endure to entertain young end old.

We publish many old comie magazines and we fully realize our responsibility to the demands of youthful and adult readers of comics. T am referring now specifically to our line.

Itis and always has been our aim to avoid production of such comic macgiuzines as may be considered in any way conducive to lowering the moral and ethical standards of those who read them. With this in mind we sometime back retained the services of Dr. Thompson as a consultant. Dr. Thompson was a psychiatrist employed at the time by the Board of Education of the City of New York and after a year and a half the board of education decided that they would not permit ah employee to continue as a consultant in an outside field and for that reason Dr. Thompson gave up her consulting position with our firm. Obviously at that time we stopped using Dr. Thompson's name.

Dr. Thompson consulied with the editor and prepared for us a code which we followed religiously. Since that date the code has been supplanted by the code drawn up by the Association of Comic Book Publishers which J believe was acknowledged to be a carefully planned, well thought out, and objective code yesterday by the members of the committee.

Under our arrangement with Dr. Thompson every comic book we published was submiited to her for reading and eriticism. Changes were made in accordance with her criticisms.

Tn the main J can truthfully say during the time that Dr. Thompson acted as our consultant she had no adverse criticism for the great majority of our comic titles and when there was criticism we changed it in aceardance with her recommendations,

Mr. . When was this?

Mr. . Back in 1948 and 1949, for a period of a year and a half.

Mr. . She is no longer with you?

Mr. . No, sir; because the board of education ruled that an employee of the board could not held an outside position us a consultant, and for that reason she was supposed to sever her connection with us.

As a result of the framework within whieh we operate we have developed a well-organized, intelligent, regulatory procedure and con- tinue to strive to maintain the high standard of our comic books. Our editorial and artist departments have been taught to tnderstand the reactions of readers to the publications so produced. There is ne ques- tion that a serious and directed effort with constant improvement at self-reeulation has been successful as has been evidenced in the past by the favorable comment of many of those who have matched our work and effort and particularly by the fact that om sales of our enlire comic line are consistently good as compared to our competition,

All ef cur comie book magazines, approximately 60 titles, are care- fully edited with regard to the editorial as well as the art work con- tained therein. We avoid the publication of material which can be consilered offensive or salacious. Obviously we try to stay within the code. We feel that we not only observe the code in the spirit but in fact as well.