Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/319

Rh Counsel Reaser declured that children would answer an innocent advertise- ment in a comic book und then start receiving quantities of mail advertising sex books. lle said the committee has received many complaints about this from parents and that the Post Office Department and the committee are inv estigating ihe matter,

William Richter, counsel for the Newsdealers Association of Greater New York, charged the retailers are “foreed to take bad comic books along with the good magazines.” He said, however, that the dealers could return the maga- zines at the end of the month and then eet their money back. “If they do this,” he suid, “they may find themselves net getting magazines they wnt, however,”

The committee adjourned its heatings here and said it would reconvene them ata later date. Hoth was ordered te remain under subpena by the ¢ommittec.

Editorial, April 23, 1954

pv iily the Army-McCarthy hearings have tended to obscure the hear

gs on comic books heing held hy a Senate subcommittee. Easily the star of the aha, if we use the word “star” quite looscly, is William Gaines. Mr. Gaines proudly lays elaim to the paternity of horror comie books, and his contribution to the kiddies of America is some 2 million comic hooks a mouth. These ore all in good taste though, as Mr. Gaines obseryes. And that is his yardstick of what not to print.

For example, one of his current books show a woman decapitated, with an ax-wielding man holding aloft the blonde head. This, said Mr. Gaines, was good taste beenuse, while blvood oozed from the mouth and the ax wis gory, the neck was not shown dripping blood. Mr. Gaincs’ sense of the fitness of things was also demonstrated in his defense of a story in which a small girl murders her father and sends her mother to the electric ehalr,

This unique contribution to the Nation's children was justifled, said Mr. Gaines, because the child emerges triumphant. Aecording to the Gaines’ eode of good tasie, shooting daddy and sending mama to the chair are justified becuuse the tiny tat’s ambition to live in a nicer house is thereby justifted.

Mr. Gaines may haye disappointed some of his public. He arrived without the conipany of a complement of vampires or werewolves, with fhe usual number of fingers, and with only one bend, fSven though he does gross close to a million dollars a year from this dirty business, Mr. Gaines is a man ta be pitled as well as censured. For if he sees nothing wrong in the literary sewage that he helps to ereate and distribute to simall children, then he is indeed as strange asx some of the creufurcs who stalk across the pages of his sardonically named Mntertain- ing Comics. If one hupes for the eliminution of these bad books, one might say that Gaines’ loss would be the country’s gain.

Editorial, April 24, 1954

The Senate investigation of comic baoks has resumed in New York. And the resubiption of hearings on this important source of juvenile pollution was timed felicitously with the publiention of a serions study, by a well-known psychiatrist, of these bad books for children.

Considering the kind of material that is blandly peddled by the harpies, it is to he hoped that the Senate committee will dvag out into the open the individuals who are responsible for it. Who profits fron: these books? Who puts up the money to finance them? Why docs each publication company issue hooks wuder a yariety of names?

Putting your finger on those resnonsible for iis stream of sewage is like trying to tab un energetic ilea—und ne offense to the flea intended. Only one so far discovered scems to be proud of his cating. Whe others, while witling to make money froin fouling the minds of children, da not secu: anxious to be identified with their publications. That is not surprising. Most poisoners are not anxious ta announce their profession to the world.

The so-called coniie book represents a greater medium of entertainment and education than most persons realize. Vhe phenamenal rise of this industry indicates that the books fill a definite need among the intellectually undeveloped and the young, Unfortunately u huuch of literary ghouls baye chiseled into