Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/70

58 Mr. . Yes, sir; although that is advertised as firing blanks, .22 blanks.

Senator. That is similar to the one you had on the Board in Philadelphia last week. It was denominated a starter's pistol, al- though I da not think the starter starting a foot race ever used any- thing like that.

The. Except they were homemade weapons, were they not?

Senator. No.; this was one ordered through the mail and the placard stated starter's pistol ordered through the mail.

The. I thought the Senator was referring to homemade weapons.

Mr. . Do these ads advertise switch-blade knives?

Mr. . No, sir; we heard of ads for switch-blade knives in the comic books, but we ourselves located no such ads.

J would like to say one other word about the advertising, that is, we also have very real questions as to whether or not there 1s not a possi- bility that their advertising in comics, that is, the ordering of certain articles advertised in comics, may lead to a youngster also being solicited by direct mail for salacious, sexually suggestive material.

Now, that is a possibility which we also plan to explore through the presentation of other witnesses.

Mr. . Mr. Clendenen, have you in the course of your investi- gation found any evidence of subversion in the use of comics, crime and horrer comics?

Mr. . If you mean by that a debberate and planned ef- fort to use the crime comics as a medium through which you are going to subvert the minds and morals of youngsters, my answer would be "No."

Now, that does not mean that youngsters cannot or may not be damaged unintentionally and not by plan.

Now, I would like to make a couple other comments on this particu- lar question. First of all, as I have said earlier, our investigation to date has related only to the crime-type comics.

In other words, we have not gone into war comics, love comics, jungle comics, and the many other varieties of comics.

Now, we do plan and will be looking further at some of these other types of comics. They will be subject to careful evaluation and cer- tainly, Mr. Beaser, we will be looking for such evidence of subversion im the course of that exploration.

Now, I would like to mention one other item in connection with this. IT have here a copy of a newsletter which is issued by the Association of Comic Magazine Publishers which contains an item regarding a charge which appeared in the Rapid City, S. D., Journal on February 18 of this year, which did make the claim that certain comic books were being utilized in an effort to get certain kinds of commmnistic propa- ganda across to youngsters.

New, at the other extreme, I would like to mention one other item. That is, I have here a page which is designed to appear in another not too distant issue of a comic book, and this little page contains three different pictures. It is entitled "Are You a Red Dupe?" It is the story of Melvin Blizunken-Skovitchsky, who lives in Soviet Russia and who printed comic books, but some people didn't believe that other