Just like social media and the iPad these days, Pokémon and Heavy Metal and horror movies before that, comic books are at the root of all that’s wrong with kids. I wouldn’t know what’s wrong with kids, but even Socrates had a few things to say about them.
Anyway, thanks to the efforts of Frederic Wertham c.s. we know that it all boils down to comics, their sordid subjects and lurid images. But even years before Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954) people knew it was better to burn them, as is suggested in this fragment from 1948’s Pitfall by the lead character, married insurance adjuster John Forbes, who later (and I quote IMDB), “falls for femme fatale Mona Stevens while her boyfriend is in jail and all suffer serious consequences as a result.“
But, like I said, it was all because of the comics.
