Dr. Wertham’s biggest complaint was crime comics, and while what he listed under that banner is up for debate they existed. One of the names he brought up a lot in early chapters was Crime Does Not Pay, a “true crimes” anthology. According to Comic Book Plus, where I was able to read this, it was the first “true crimes” comic, building off of true crime stories on the radio. See kids, before television radio didn’t just play music or the occasional news report. They had all kinds of radio dramas and comedies. It was before my time too, except for special broadcasts like comedy compilation shows and one religious station that still plays Adventures In Odyssey.
And true crime shows are nothing new on television. There’s at least one cable station devoted to it and even the Law & Order franchise is doing a miniseries around the time of this writing adapting the Menendez Brothers case. Why are people fascinated by these kinds of shows? Beats me. I’ve never been into most fictional crime dramas, never mind the real stuff. A random episode may grab my attention but it’s not something I watch regularly.
Well tonight it’s time to look at this infamous comic to see if it’s really as bad as Wertham says it is. Both Comic Book Plus and Wikipedia agree that the true crime comics got more and more graphic and sensational journalism is nothing new (neither is outright lying in docudramas if it makes the story more interesting, unlike documentaries–intended bias aside of course). Plus we saw that the publishers wanted to push the violence and gore so I’m not sure what to expect. The comic features short stories rather than a long piece. CB+ says issues #63 and 64 were probably used for Seduction Of The Innocent so let’s virtually grab #63 and see what this comic is really like.
And while you two ramble on Superman has already caught you 10 times.
Crime Does Not Pay #63
Lev Gleason/Comic House (May, 1948)
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Charles Biro, C.H. Moore, and possibly Bob Wood (in question),
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS: Charles Biro, C.H. Moore, Fred Guardineer, George Tuska, Mike Roy, John Belfi, and Tony DiPetra
The lettering is only credited to “typeset”. I’m going to go rapid fire through these since the stories are about six or pages each at most, with a few one-page and our first story, the only long-focus part of this review, at 13 pages. It starts off with a notation of their personal censorship rules.
Chapter By Chapter Special: Seduction Of The Innocent ch. 10 part 3
This is the part I’ve been dreading as a creator. His constant comments about comic art being bad (trust me, sequential art shouldn’t look like museum pieces and every time it’s tried, no matter how good the artist, it never looks right) and complaints about the stories (which gets to me as a writer) as well as his obvious biased made me think this whole section was going to be one bit slam against the actual creators of the comics. Nope, it’s still a strike against the publishers, trying to take blame away from the writers and artists.
Don’t get me wrong. I know why he’s doing it. I’m not going to say what that is just yet. See if you figure it out before we’re done with this section. Based on previous statements I’m not convinced he’s doing it for the right reason.
Read up before we begin.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on August 23, 2017 in Comic Spotlight, Seduction Of The Innocent and tagged book review, Chapter By Chapter, comic creation, commentary, Dr. Fredric Wertham, Seduction Of The Innocent.
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