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Authors: Max Allan Collins
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testimony. The witness chair was angled to prevent eye contact between those testifying and those questioning (and, for that matter, those observing). A trio of stenographers were positioned nearby, one man, two women.
On both the witness table and bench were arrays of microphones with a nest of heavy cables on the floor, snaking behind the spectator seating, where (up on a platform) TV and newsreel men, their cameras as big as robots in a science-fiction film, were waiting for the fun to begin. As the seats around and behind us quickly filled in, I was reminded of the bustling tension you encountered on a movie set.
Senator Kefauver was the draw here—his crime hearings had been a big hit on TV, making a star out of him (and the sweating, twitching manicured hands of camera-shy witness, gangster Frank Calabria). But the man in charge was New Jersey Senator Robert C. Hendrickson.
So it was Chairman Hendrickson who, at 10 A.M ., spoke into the microphone and called the proceedings to order. He was a straight-laced type, mustached, bespectacled and in his mid-fifties, his thinning, silver hair combed slickly back on a bucket head. He had the humorless demeanor of a high school principal in a Henry Aldrich movie.
“Today and tomorrow,” he began lugubriously, “the United States Subcommittee on Investigating Juvenile Delinquency is going into the problem of comic books...”
So, they’d already decided it was a problem.
“...illustrating stories depicting crime or dealing with horror and sadism.”
To be fair, the committee chairman did claim that their work was not as a board of censorship.
“We want to determine what damage, if any,” Hendrickson declared, “is being done to our children’s minds by certain types of publications.”
First up was not a witness, but a slide show of comic-book panels that alternately depicted scenes of blood-spattered horror or bullet-spraying crime, with occasional “headlights” panels tossed in. Some images were genuinely disturbing, as when a hypo wielded by a madman seemed poised to plunge into the wide-open eye of a lovely young woman. This stuff made the array of violent covers on those looming easels look like kid’s stuff.
Which of course was the problem—the assumption by these stuffed shirts that only little kids read these comic books. Hell, the EF line was clearly for teenagers and adults. Despite the vivid, detailed horrors of the artwork, you couldn’t tell what was going on if you didn’t read the captions and speech balloons. Feldman was a guy who seemed to be getting paid by the word.
No kid under eleven would be able to read this copy-heavy stuff, much less understand it. And those older kids who could read it needed to be smart. You know—literate.
But that wasn’t touched on, not at all. Committee executive director Richard Clendenen—lean, middle-aged, with a square jaw right out of an Americana superhero comic book —narrated the slide show with unctuous pre-judgement: “Typically, these comic books portray almost all kinds of crime, committed through extremely cruel, sadistic and punitive acts.”
At several points, Clendenen singled out particularly violent, disturbing panels as prime examples of the content of comic books published by Entertaining Funnies.
“I mention this,” Clendenen said, “because the publisher of that firm will be appearing before this committee later this morning.”
The implication was that Price had been summoned, when of course he had volunteered.
Following the slide presentation, various documents were introduced as exhibits from assorted government agencies, as well as newspaper and magazine articles criticizing comic books and linking them to juvenile delinquency—the majority written by one Dr. Werner Frederick.
Then the first witness was called, a mental health expert with New York’s so-called “Family Court.” Surprisingly, he did not join in on the anti-comics theme. Some of his colleagues (he
On both the witness table and bench were arrays of microphones with a nest of heavy cables on the floor, snaking behind the spectator seating, where (up on a platform) TV and newsreel men, their cameras as big as robots in a science-fiction film, were waiting for the fun to begin. As the seats around and behind us quickly filled in, I was reminded of the bustling tension you encountered on a movie set.
Senator Kefauver was the draw here—his crime hearings had been a big hit on TV, making a star out of him (and the sweating, twitching manicured hands of camera-shy witness, gangster Frank Calabria). But the man in charge was New Jersey Senator Robert C. Hendrickson.
So it was Chairman Hendrickson who, at 10 A.M ., spoke into the microphone and called the proceedings to order. He was a straight-laced type, mustached, bespectacled and in his mid-fifties, his thinning, silver hair combed slickly back on a bucket head. He had the humorless demeanor of a high school principal in a Henry Aldrich movie.
“Today and tomorrow,” he began lugubriously, “the United States Subcommittee on Investigating Juvenile Delinquency is going into the problem of comic books...”
So, they’d already decided it was a problem.
“...illustrating stories depicting crime or dealing with horror and sadism.”
To be fair, the committee chairman did claim that their work was not as a board of censorship.
“We want to determine what damage, if any,” Hendrickson declared, “is being done to our children’s minds by certain types of publications.”
First up was not a witness, but a slide show of comic-book panels that alternately depicted scenes of blood-spattered horror or bullet-spraying crime, with occasional “headlights” panels tossed in. Some images were genuinely disturbing, as when a hypo wielded by a madman seemed poised to plunge into the wide-open eye of a lovely young woman. This stuff made the array of violent covers on those looming easels look like kid’s stuff.
Which of course was the problem—the assumption by these stuffed shirts that only little kids read these comic books. Hell, the EF line was clearly for teenagers and adults. Despite the vivid, detailed horrors of the artwork, you couldn’t tell what was going on if you didn’t read the captions and speech balloons. Feldman was a guy who seemed to be getting paid by the word.
No kid under eleven would be able to read this copy-heavy stuff, much less understand it. And those older kids who could read it needed to be smart. You know—literate.
But that wasn’t touched on, not at all. Committee executive director Richard Clendenen—lean, middle-aged, with a square jaw right out of an Americana superhero comic book —narrated the slide show with unctuous pre-judgement: “Typically, these comic books portray almost all kinds of crime, committed through extremely cruel, sadistic and punitive acts.”
At several points, Clendenen singled out particularly violent, disturbing panels as prime examples of the content of comic books published by Entertaining Funnies.
“I mention this,” Clendenen said, “because the publisher of that firm will be appearing before this committee later this morning.”
The implication was that Price had been summoned, when of course he had volunteered.
Following the slide presentation, various documents were introduced as exhibits from assorted government agencies, as well as newspaper and magazine articles criticizing comic books and linking them to juvenile delinquency—the majority written by one Dr. Werner Frederick.
Then the first witness was called, a mental health expert with New York’s so-called “Family Court.” Surprisingly, he did not join in on the anti-comics theme. Some of his colleagues (he
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