Western True Crime (C)
Western Winners (C)
Whiz Comics (B)
Whodonit (B)
Wilbur Comics (C)
Wild Bill Hickok (C)
Wild Western (B)
Willie Comics (A)
Wings Comics (D)
Winnie Winkle (A)
Women in Love (B)
Women Outlaws (D)
Wonder Comics (D)
Wonder Duck {A)
Wonder Woman (A)
Woody Woodpecker (A)
World's Finest Comics (D)
Young Hearts (A)
Young Love (B)
Young Romance (B)
Youthful Love Romances (C)
Zago (D)
Zane Grey's Thunder Mountain (A)
Zane Grey's West of the Pecos (A)
Yegra (C)
Mr. Clendenen. Now, I cannot here adequately summarize the vari- ous opinions which are expressed by sociologists, psychiatrists, and law-enforcement officials and other people who might qualify as experts in this field, but I do feel that it is eminently accurate and fair to say that there is substantial, although not always unanimous, agreement on the following three points:
1. That the reading of a crime comic will not cause a well adjusted and well socialized boy or girl to go out and commit crime.
2. There may be a detrimental and delinquency producing effect upon some emotionally disturbed children who may gain suggestion, support, and sanction for acting out his own hostile and aggressive Jeeling.
3. There is reason to believe that as among youngsters, the most avid and extensive consumers of comics are the very boys and girls less able to tolerate this type of matertal.
As a matter of fact, many experts feel that excessive reading of ma- terials of this kind in itself is symptomatic of some emotional malad- justment in a youngster.
In other words, I would say in terms of all these materials that, although not, completely unanimous, there is very substantial agree- ment as to these three points, Mr, Chairman.
Senator Hennings. Mr. Chairman, may I ask one question?
The Chairman. The Senator from Missouri.
Senator Hennings. I remember, and I am sure many of us do, the enjoyment with which some of us at a very tender age read the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Many of us read Sherlock Holmes, There was the modus operandi for certainly many crimes.
I suppose that was the basis of the modern crime story, the beginning of the modern crime story.
Certainly nothing is more horrible and calculated to bring a certain degree of terror and chill to the spine of a youngster than the Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat, and The Pendulum—stories of the French Revolution depicting heads held before the crowd on the Place de la Concorde and so on.
Now, how did these differ in your opinion, Mr. Clendenen, these comic books, and the manner in which these things are presented, graphic as they are, being picture stories as they are?
These books, too, are rather profusely illustrated by some pictures you never forget. I can remember some of them myself, now. How do those things differ from the things many of us read as youngsters?
Mr. Clendenen. Well, I think there are certain differences perhaps not so much in the content of the material as in its wide distribution and greatly increased consumption.
