Has anyone actually read Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent?" 0

[NoMan]

2 minutes ago, valiantman said:

An interesting quote from 1953...

One expert writes about the fact that children, while they may neglect their other possessions,
"hardly ever deface or lose a comic book. These books are treasured, they are objects of
barter, they become collector's items."

Did anyone have 1953 (and earlier) as the start of serious comic collecting and the protection of comic conditions? 

wasn't there some drug store owner collecting in the 30s? I dunno. I may have just made that up.

[Robot Man]

Not only did I read SOTI but extensively studied it for many years. Myself, Redbeard and Bob Nastasi combed the book and our collections trying to put his quotes about certain books to the books themselves by identifying them. We sent Overstreet much of the information we learned for the guide. At one time, I had about 75% of the noted ones in my collection but just got bored with it.

One of my favorites was finding the "Bombs and Bums Away" quote in I believe a Jungle comic just on chance. The illustrations were easy but the small quotes throughout were a bit of a challenge. Was a lot of fun.

Was also a student of "Love and Death" and the scarce English version "Parade of Pleasure".

[Robot Man]

5 minutes ago, valiantman said:

An interesting quote from 1953...

One expert writes about the fact that children, while they may neglect their other possessions,
"hardly ever deface or lose a comic book. These books are treasured, they are objects of
barter, they become collector's items."

Did anyone have 1953 (and earlier) as the start of serious comic collecting and the protection of comic conditions? 

Edgar Church?

[NoMan]

15 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

Not only did I read SOTI but extensively studied it for many years. Myself, Redbeard and Bob Nastasi combed the book and our collections trying to put his quotes about certain books to the books themselves by identifying them. We sent Overstreet much of the information we learned for the guide. At one time, I had about 75% of the noted ones in my collection but just got bored with it.

One of my favorites was finding the "Bombs and Bums Away" quote in I believe a Jungle comic just on chance. The illustrations were easy but the small quotes throughout were a bit of a challenge. Was a lot of fun.

Was also a student of "Love and Death" and the scarce English version "Parade of Pleasure".

Now that's cool! My kinda researcher

[valiantman]

19 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

25 minutes ago, valiantman said:

An interesting quote from 1953...

One expert writes about the fact that children, while they may neglect their other possessions,
"hardly ever deface or lose a comic book. These books are treasured, they are objects of
barter, they become collector's items."

Did anyone have 1953 (and earlier) as the start of serious comic collecting and the protection of comic conditions? 

Edgar Church?

Sure, but he was no child.  Edgar Church was a professional artist who collected comics (other professional art) as an adult.  (He turned 50 years old in 1938.) 

The 1953 quote says children were protecting their comics against defacing/loss and treasuring them as collector's items.

Edited December 4, 2019 by valiantman

[AJD]

I got part way through SOTI. There's a fundamental methodological error that's impossible to ignore. Wertham noted a correlation (juvenile delinquency and comic reading) and inferred a causation. He didn't look at a control group - i.e. kids who weren't troubled/in trouble - to see if comic book reading was also correlated with good behaviour. If I recall correctly from other reading, the biggest causative factor was the impact of WW2 on a generation of fathers - either missing or with what we would now know as PTSD.

[catman76]

2 hours ago, valiantman said:

An interesting quote from 1953...

One expert writes about the fact that children, while they may neglect their other possessions,
"hardly ever deface or lose a comic book. These books are treasured, they are objects of
barter, they become collector's items."

Did anyone have 1953 (and earlier) as the start of serious comic collecting and the protection of comic conditions? 

Just like kids collected and traded baseball cards then. Cards that were cut off the back of candy boxes were called collectors items and said collect them all. Collecting then didn't mean caring about condition or money.they carried them around in thier pockets, how they treated them would give any collector now a heart attack. they just didn't rip them up and draw on them or anything. They stacked them under thier beds, read and re read them, traded them for issues they never read with other kids. Folded them up and stuck them in their back pocket. it was all about reading them, so of course they didn't deface them, but they didn't care if they got creased and bent.

[Dr Zen]

5 hours ago, NoMan said:

wasn't there some drug store owner collecting in the 30s? I dunno. I may have just made that up.

Pop Hollinger

 

http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2015/12/on-history-pop-hollinger.html

[porcupine48]

5 hours ago, Ken Aldred said:

and talking out of his arse hyperbolically, 

a fine set of words

[Poka]

I have my copy of the book. It is worth the read if interested in history. Other than that it is just a person’s opinion. Another person could counter argue. But you have to take yourself back to a time where book/papers were the main source of information. 
 

so if you see a person with the head chopped off - will you think that is ok to do or are you able to separate reality from fictions. 

[tv horror]

Me no read cus am de-link-quint head hurts now made me fink too hard!

[wilbil]

16 hours ago, AJD said:

I got part way through SOTI. There's a fundamental methodological error that's impossible to ignore. Wertham noted a correlation (juvenile delinquency and comic reading) and inferred a causation. He didn't look at a control group - i.e. kids who weren't troubled/in trouble - to see if comic book reading was also correlated with good behaviour. If I recall correctly from other reading, the biggest causative factor was the impact of WW2 on a generation of fathers - either missing or with what we would now know as PTSD.

I think Wertham professional peers would clinically define the fundamental methodological error as impossibly wacky.

On the subject of causative factors, comics were lovingly embraced by our troops and the american public in general, and provided an escape from the daily turmoils of the time. The mythical correlation of comics to juvenile delinquency was a phony scheme cooked up by meddling authoritarian adults and religious zealots, to explain their own failures to connect with children and provide a healthy influence. The same type of scheme was used to describe any person that had anything to do with a motorcycle as a juvenile delinquent/Hells Angel in the 50s/60s. Harley Davidson and Triumph had the last laugh on that subject.

[theCapraAegagrus]

37 minutes ago, tv horror said:

Me no read cus am de-link-quint head hurts now made me fink too hard!

[NoMan]

15 hours ago, Dr Zen said:

Pop Hollinger

 

http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2015/12/on-history-pop-hollinger.html

yup. thanks.

[tv horror]

12 hours ago, Poka said:

so if you see a person with the head chopped off - will you think that is ok to do or are you able to separate reality from fictions. 

Not unless it was a paper CUT from a comic then you're in trouble!

[SOTIcollector]

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 3:19 PM, Robot Man said:

Not only did I read SOTI but extensively studied it for many years. Myself, Redbeard and Bob Nastasi combed the book and our collections trying to put his quotes about certain books to the books themselves by identifying them. We sent Overstreet much of the information we learned for the guide. At one time, I had about 75% of the noted ones in my collection but just got bored with it.

One of my favorites was finding the "Bombs and Bums Away" quote in I believe a Jungle comic just on chance. The illustrations were easy but the small quotes throughout were a bit of a challenge. Was a lot of fun.

Was also a student of "Love and Death" and the scarce English version "Parade of Pleasure".

 

Awesome!  I didn't realize you were one of those early SOTI researchers. It was repeatedly reading the phrase "Used in Seduction of the Innocent" in the 1976 Overstreet Gide that piqued my interest, an interest that would later bloom into a full-fledged obsession with SOTI and the anti-comics hysteria of the 50's.   So thank you for all your research! 

The "bums & bombs away" was in Dagar, Desert Hawk #21.  For years, Overstreet indicted that it was used in SOTI, but unlike most other references, they didn't indicate the page number on which it was referenced.

 

[Robot Man]

1 hour ago, SOTIcollector said:

Awesome!  I didn't realize you were one of those early SOTI researchers. It was repeatedly reading the phrase "Used in Seduction of the Innocent" in the 1976 Overstreet Gide that piqued my interest, an interest that would later bloom into a full-fledged obsession with SOTI and the anti-comics hysteria of the 50's.   So thank you for all your research! 

The "bums & bombs away" was in Dagar, Desert Hawk #21.  For years, Overstreet indicted that it was used in SOTI, but unlike most other references, they didn't indicate the page number on which it was referenced.

 

Thanks. Yeah, it was a long time ago. Mind gets fuzzy after so much time. Bob, Ron and I would correspond a lot by mail and the phone when we found refrences. We turned them all into Overstreet as we found them with corresponding page numbers. I believe we are all listed for it in an old Overstreet Guide. We had a lot of fun with it. The cool part was there were so many genres that he picked on so I had quite the "type" collection of books.

I remember when Rozanski found the Church collection he first brought a bunch of them to the "Casual Con" in Buena Park CA. While all the "big guys" were hitting the big books, I was over digging through the boxes looking for SOTI, POP and Love and Death Books as well as PCH and Crime books. All VERY cheap back then. I got most of what he had. Some of them I traded to Bob and Ron but kept quite a few. Here are a few Church books I pulled out.

[SOTIcollector]

8 hours ago, Robot Man said:

Thanks. Yeah, it was a long time ago. Mind gets fuzzy after so much time. Bob, Ron and I would correspond a lot by mail and the phone when we found refrences. We turned them all into Overstreet as we found them with corresponding page numbers. I believe we are all listed for it in an old Overstreet Guide. We had a lot of fun with it. The cool part was there were so many genres that he picked on so I had quite the "type" collection of books.

I remember when Rozanski found the Church collection he first brought a bunch of them to the "Casual Con" in Buena Park CA. While all the "big guys" were hitting the big books, I was over digging through the boxes looking for SOTI, POP and Love and Death Books as well as PCH and Crime books. All VERY cheap back then. I got most of what he had. Some of them I traded to Bob and Ron but kept quite a few. Here are a few Church books I pulled out.

Now where's the drooling emoji when you need it?  Awesome books!  I have only one Church SOTI book, and I'm happy to have it.  Thanks for sharing!

[Paul © ® ⚽️💙™]

I read SOTI and found it very enlightening and uplifting, so much so I burnt all my comic books  and am far more content now I know that Batman and his ilk are to blame for all the world's ills.

Thank goodness for Dr.Wertham and his incisive and well balanced views.

I can't wait for the sequel. 

[speedcake]

No, but I'm currently reading The Ten-Cent Plague, and it's been a good read.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00139XT6Y/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1