You think this book is bad, because it is, but you don’t know the half of it. After Dr. Wertham’s death in 1981 his notes that were part of the book were sent to the Library Of Congress. In 2010, just after they were opened, writer Carol Tilley went to check his research in the hopes of finding information about the supposed letters sent to him by librarians worried that comics were pulling kids away from books and libraries. Not only did she find that this was overblown, but that most of his book were filled with exaggerations, missing information, and falsehoods! I don’t care how well Wertham meant, there is no excuse for this.
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This is no surprise. My feeling was correct then that Dr. Wertham was twisting things to drive home his points about comic books. Data can always be manipulated. Data manipulation happens a lot in the education world especially when it comes to a school’s released statistics about discipline incidents, drop out rates, and crimes committed on campus. I’ve seen the data manipulation happen in the education world, so it doesn’t shock me that Dr. Wertham also did the same. I wonder if the librarian professor ever was able to contact any of those kid letter writers? They’d be quite old by now. At least, that anecdote shows that dedicated kids (and some adults) did try to stand up for comic books in the 1950s.
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