One of the email lists I’m subscribed to pours a daily deluge into my inbox…in such volume I’m rarely willing or able to keep up with it. Rather I pick and choose from subject lines that catch my eye. One such recent topic sparked a series of riveting replies. Someone had pointed out an interesting BBC Technology article that poses the question:
“One can forgive Luke Skywalker, Captain Kirk and Flash Gordon for monkeying with the laws of physics in the interests of a rip-roaring storyline, but does bad science make a poor sci-fi film far worse?”
Which prompted a reply including this info:
“In _The Seduction of the Innocent_, Frederic Wertham lamented that comics such as Superman taught children improper physics (Superman, flying, pushes back a building, for example).”
With the footnote:
“(The book is near-impossible to find, but a copy existed in Harvard’s Widener Library in 1993 and still may…circa 1950something…)”
More serious comic book collectors are already aware of this book, but it was the first I’d heard of it. Intrigued, I continued reading only to find he wasn’t kidding about the “near-impossible” part. Of all online sellers “ABEbooks” has the most copies…ranging from $150 to $750. Youch. Serious collectors have driven up the price…but reasons for wanting to have it are understandable. Sort of a know thy enemy thing. The book is “blamed for the anti-comic environment of the mid-50s, and for the creation of the Comics Code Authority — an industry organization by which comics companies assiduously self-censored for more than 40 years.” It also includes a number of swipes from comic books of the day, mostly uncredited and all copyright violations. One guy on the list has a more personal nostalgia surrounding the book. He remembers reading it at the tender age of 14, when “Wertham was much better at finding naked women concealed in comic-book drawings” than he was. He concludes that “comic books were nasty, to be sure, but Wertham was nastier.” Thanks again to the muted horn.