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| Sitting on the news at a newsstand, Corpus Christi, June 24, 1939 |
Question: How many children read comic books in the 1930s and 1940s? Answer: All of them!
In 1933 Harry Wildenberg, sales manager of the Eastern Color Printing Company, couldn't help but notice how many sheets of colour comic strips were flying off the press. The funnies were often the most read section of any large newspaper that carried them, and he reckoned if they could sell newspapers, perhaps they could sell other merchandise -- if they were less cumbersome in size. Thus, he folded a broadsheet in half to standard newspaper proportions, folded it again to tabloid size, then folded it once more. After trimming, the pages were a bit more wieldy, just right for the small hands of children. One full newspaper sheet, when folded, could produce 16 pages of comics.
Copies of the first issue of Eastern's 36-page (32 pages, plus covers) Funnies on Parade, reprinting newspaper comic strips, were given away as advertising premiums. This was followed by A Carnival of Comics and Century of Comics. In 1934, encouraged by the success of these giveaways, Max Gaines, a salesman at Eastern, wondered about the commercial potential of this recent innovation. A new title, Famous Funnies, with 68 pages, was sold in chain stores at 10 cents each. The comic quickly sold out, and Eastern found a national distributor, the American News Company. In May of 1934 Famous Funnies #1 (dated July) hit the newsstands. It wasn't until the seventh issue that they saw profits -- lots of profits.
Soon other companies followed suit, but there weren't enough newspaper strips in existence to supply the demand for reprints. A proverbial light bulb lit up in Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's head, and he founded National Allied Publications and published New Fun #1 (February 1935), a 10" x 15" 36-page comic with card stock covers, and the first to feature all-new original material. It became More Fun Comics with the seventh issue, and with the ninth issue switched to standard comic size. At the end of 1936 Wheeler-Nicholson, in partnership with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, founded Detective Comics Inc., publishing Detective Comics #1 (March 1937). In 1938, DC published the first issue of Action Comics, which introduced Superman, whose wild success took comic books to a whole new level of popularity. Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) introduced Batman, whose brutal crime fighting tactics were inspired by violent pulp magazine characters, like The Spider and The Shadow.
Hopeful comic book publishers were crawling out of the woodwork, even though many of them didn't have their own company of talented creators. Taking advantage of this need, artists Will Eisner and Jerry Iger formed their own studio in late 1936 or early 1937, packaging comics on demand for fledgling publishers.
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| If you're looking for someone to blame, here's the one that started it all in 1933 |
In 1942, Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay hit the market, creating a deluge of crime comics. The title's logo luridly displayed "CRIME" in bold letters twenty times larger than the rest of the title, which was only one of the problems detractors of comic books had with that particular publication, and others like it.
Superheroes were pugilistic, to say the least. They were vigilantes, who used their fists and every other means to beat evildoers into submission, or even put them out of society's misery permanently. The "funny animal" comics were no less violent, in their own slapstick way. Teachers, librarians and psychiatrists took umbrage at this relatively recent invention, and for every new title that popped up in the 1930s and '40s, an article appeared in newspapers, family magazines, journals and text books decrying this lowbrow form of literature that was corrupting and corroding young minds. Even politicians pretended to be concerned. Parents began to question what their children were reading. Certainly, others in the fields of education and psychology countered with cogent arguments in defense of comic books, but ultimately it wasn't enough to stem the tide of negative press.
The worst part of it was that almost every child (and many adults, for that matter) read comic books. They bought the magazines themselves, or their parents bought them, or they traded them with their friends, or they were given to them, or they purchased them used for 5 cents or less. If they were forbidden to read comics, they perused them at someone else's house. Many boys and girls even created their own comics. And, in lieu of obtaining a copy, newspaper strips provided a fix, especially the Sunday funnies. And, failing that, kids could still curl up in front of the radio and listen to exciting programmes based on comics, like Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie.
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| Kids reading the Sunday funnies (and neglecting their chores) on an Iowa farm, December 1936 |
Though comic books started taking the brunt of the abuse in the late 1930s as they gained popularity, comic strips weren't exactly immune to severe criticism. The May 1936 issue of Forum and Century published an article by John K. Ryan, "Are the Comics Moral?" His target was the newspaper comic strips. He either hadn't taken notice of the recent innovation on the newsstands, possibly because the titles were so few; or it made no difference, because comic books were mostly comprised of Sundays and dailies. He didn't hold back in his condemnation of that ubiquitous newspaper feature:
"Sadism, cannibalism, bestiality. Crude eroticism. Torturing, killing, kidnapping. Monsters, madmen, creatures half-brute, half-human. Raw melodrama; tales of crimes and criminals; extravagant exploits in strange lands and on other planets; pirate stories; wild, hair-raising adventures of boy heroes and girl heroines; thrilling accounts in word and picture of jungle beasts and men; marvelous deeds of magic and pseudoscience. Vulgarity, cheap humor, and cheaper wit. Sentimental stories designed for the general level of a moronic mind. Ugliness of thought and expression. All these, day after day, week after week, have become the mental food of American children, young and old."
"Today the term 'comic section' and the older term 'funny pictures' are misnomers, for the newspapers are now showing strips that make no pretense of wit or humor. Along with funny pictures of the traditional type, the comic section now shows pictured stories that have all the worst features of the lowest type of fiction and some features peculiar to itself."
The author goes on to describe in lurid detail particularly gruesome and sadistic scenes from Dick Tracy and Tarzan, as well as the lack of clothing in both female and male characters in strips such as Flash Gordon.
SUPER SALES FIGURES:
In an article for the November 15, 1941 issue of School and Society, the uncredited author wrote:
"George J. Hecht, publisher of Parents’ Magazine, speaking at a Children’s Book Week luncheon (Hotel Roosevelt, New York), November 4, set forth some almost unbelievable facts suggestive of the pervasive influence that the comic strips and the comic magazines may now be exerting. Of the comic magazines alone there are now more than 125, and 'they are featured on more than 100,000 newsstands' throughout the country. 'I am told,' he said, 'that a publisher is pleased if 1,000 bookshops sell his children’s books, and an edition of 5,000 copies is a good sale.' In contrast to this, Mr. Hecht reports, 'Approximately 15,000,000 comics are sold a month—180,000,000 a year.'"
The English Journal reported in their June 1943 issue that 112 different titles sold 10 to 12 million copies per month, with more than a million dollars spent on comic books. (The author said her local drug store had 62 different comic book titles on their newsstand.)
Newsweek reported in December 1943 that two dozen publishers were putting out 125 titles, 25,000,000 copies monthly. Unsold comics usually averaged "20 to 30 percent; right now, however, there are practically no returns at all." This meant that the retail sales that year for 300,000,000 comic books added up to almost $30,000,000.
William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, and himself a psychologist, revealed some staggering statistics in The American Scholar (January 1944): "Eighteen million comics magazines are sold on the newsstands every month. Since, according to competent surveys, four or five persons read each magazine, we reach the startling total of 70,000,000 or more monthly readers. Research indicates that nearly half these readers are adults."
Louise Dunlop Yuill, writing for The School Executive, estimated that 125 titles were sold on 100,000 newsstands each month. (That number would lessen in 1945 due to the paper shortage.)
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| Like a Woodstock for comics fans, July 1946 |
THE COMIC BOOK CRAZE:
In April and May of 1941, Paul A. Witty, Professor of Education at Northwestern University, surveyed 2500 pupils in grades 4 to 6 who attended public schools in Evanston, Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He reported the results of the Evanston survey in the December 1941 issue of The Journal of Experimental Education. He presented the results of the wider survey in a separate article immediately following in the same issue.
According to a third article Witty wrote, this time for the January 1942 issue of National Parent-Teacher, "The average number of comic magazines reported as read was fifteen; of these, about five were read regularly. The average number of comic strips read was twenty-six; of these, about half were examined regularly. The popularity of the comics was attested by several related interests; fifty per cent of the children reported that they enjoyed making their own comics."
To these imprecise demographics, Witty added, "Some of the tabulations indicated that boys are more frequent readers of the comics than are girls, but in none was the difference between the sexes either consistent or highly significant."
Paul Witty, along with Ethel Smith and Anne Coomer, made a follow up report for The Journal of Educational Psychology (March 1942) titled "Reading the Comics in Grades VII and VIII". The article began with a recap of Witty's previous study of children in grades 4 to 6.
The survey of kids in grades 7 and 8 was actually conducted by Witty in April and May of 1941, but analysed separately from those in grades 4 to 6. The older kids were reading comics almost as voraciously: "The average number of magazines read was about thirteen or fourteen in these grades; two of these were read regularly; and three and one-half, often. Comic strips also were generally read; twenty-six was the average number reported to have been read. Of these, about fifteen were read regularly; and five, often. Sex differences and grade differences were not pronounced, although they were more noticeable at this level than in the middle grades. There was a slight decrease during the seventh and eighth grades in the number of comic magazines read, but the average number of comic strips was remarkably consistent."
The Market Research Company of America reported in 1944 that of children ages 6 to 11, 95% of boys and 91% of girls read comic books regularly, and from 12 to 17, 87% of boys and 81% of girls.
The numbers varied by region. A survey (disguised as a general reading questionnaire) was conducted in Quincy, Massachusetts, and of the 406 boys and 362 girls polled in grades 5 and 6, it was discovered that 97.5% of boys and 96.1% of girls read comics, though not all were necessarily regular readers. Of the 398 boys and 348 girls that did read comics, 41.2% of boys and 19.5% of girls read them everyday, 30.7% of boys and 33.3% of girls read them twice a week, and 38.2% of boys and 47.2% of girls read them infrequently.
A survey of 362 pupils at Center Junior High School in Chicopee, Massachusetts found that 83% read one or two comics per week, 15% read three or four, and 5% read more than ten.
Sister M. Katherine McCarthy, a teacher at the College of Saint Scholastica, and Marion W. Smith, principal at Oneota School, both in Duluth, Minnesota, wrote an article for The Catholic Library World (May 1942), after examining the results of a survey "undertaken to determine the magnitude of the comic magazine problem in Duluth." A questionnaire was given to 8,608 children from grades 4 to 9 in both public and private schools, which revealed that in the previous week they'd collectively read 25,395 comic books; only 935 kids had read none at all. The most comic books read by any boy in a public school during the prior week was 47, and by any girl, 42. The numbers were similar for parochial school children: 46 by any boy, and 47 by any girl.
The Quincy survey also revealed that 77% of boys and 74.6% of girls bought comics themselves, and that 77.9% of boys and 64.1% of girls were in the habit of trading comics with other kids, and that some of them did so because they were forbidden to read them.
Irving R. Friedman, a teacher at Cleveland Junior High School in Newark, New Jersey, conducted his own survey of 150 kids from grades 7 to 9. The report was published in the November 16, 1941 issue of The Clearing House. One of the questions he asked was how they acquired comics:
"It is arresting to note that many deprive themselves of an afternoon in the movies or of an ice cream soda in order to purchase a funny book. The majority of pupils, according to the survey, buy one ten-cent book each month. One girl said she purchased as many as three in a day.
"Most boys and girls indulge in an enterprise of exchanging used copies with their classmates and friends, and this process is often a complicated system of barter, borrowing, and transfer. Furthermore, several small stores buy and sell used books. There are two such establishments in the immediate vicinity of our school, which sell nothing but funny books and in which a child may buy old issues for as little as two or three cents."
Margaret F. Frost, in the opening summary of her article for The Elementary English Review (December 1943), noted that "Practically all children read comic books. One third of the new copies are bought by parents who either admit that they get them for themselves or, pretending that they buy them for the children, read them anyway. Boys who earn their own money buy copies because they think it is a good investment for a dime. Several boys who have allowances buy two or three at a time. One boy buys six or eight a week. Girls buy very few; they borrow them from the boys. One copy passes from child to child and is read many times before it is discarded.
"Comics are traded for junk, for things to eat, for other comics, or for different magazines. Junk is defined as any gadget which may prove useful to a little boy. The girls raid the pantry for food to exchange for the books. Comics in good condition are traded one-for-one regardless of how old they are. Worn copies are traded in bundles and are worth very little. Some copies are traded at the local second hand store, but most swaps are with neighbour children.
"In the trading for magazines other than comics, separate bargains are negotiated on each deal. One boy said that one Popular Mechanics is worth four comics; another said six. Popular Science, Popular Aviation, and Boy’s Life are favourite traders and are each worth several comics."
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| "Hey! -- this ain't a library!" (Circa 1945) |
WHY KIDS LIKE COMICS:
Many of the surveys asked children to write in a blank space why they liked comic books, or gave a list of reasons to choose from. George R. Reynolds, a teacher at the Dalton School in New York, taking an interest in the comic book phenomenon, questioned students at the school without letting on that he was making a study. Rather than conducting a formal inquisition in the classroom, he spoke with boys and girls from grades 4 to 7 in a more casual manner during lunch and recess. In addition, three of his own pupils asked if they might submit a paper giving their opinions on comic books instead of the regular assignment, a book review. Permission was granted. Reynolds listed nine main reasons that children read comic books: lack of anything better to read; the stories are easy to read; comic books are fun to collect; comic books contain sports stories; the stories are exciting; comic books are cheap; they enjoy the drawings; the stories are amusing; comic books are a fad.
Irving R. Friedman found the results of his survey "illuminating": "Of the 150 questioned, there was not one who did not read funny books. Pupils said they enjoyed reading them because the books were 'colorful', 'humorous', 'interesting', 'adventurous', 'picturesque', 'thrilling', 'exciting', 'wonderful', 'entertaining', and 'a good way to pass the time'."
Student teachers at Humboldt State College did a survey of children from grades 3 to 8, as well as high school students, the results of which were published in The Elementary English Review (December 1943). The high school students tended to outgrow comics, according to the author, Margaret F. Frost, and if they gave any opinions, none were included in the article.
Frost wrote, "In choosing favourite comics, children seek two things: they want them thrilling and they want them funny. These two qualities can be combined or can appear alone. They definitely do not want love stories."
The children (no names, genders, grades or ages were given) were asked to comment on the series of educational comics sponsored by Parent's Magazine (True Comics, Real Heroes, True Picture Magazine, and Calling All Girls). Here were some of their responses:
“The idea of having them true is O. K., but the heroes are too perfect.”
“Anyone can see that some well-meaning grown folks are trying to feed the kids what is good for them.”
“No one could believe that heroes are so sickly sweet; they aren’t real.”
“They are not as well drawn as the Superman series.”
“We usually do not like girls in stories, but we do not mind Lois Lane because she always tries to help out even if she does mix things up a lot of times.”
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| Life is good! New York City, c. 1943 |
Obviously, kids thought the educational comics proffered them were dull. They were somewhat more enthusiastic about the Justice Society of America team of superheroes and other characters found in DC's All-Star Comics:
“These are the real thrillers.”
“Sure, they are impossible, but when you are reading for fun, you like them exciting."
They also liked the funny animal comic books, like Merry Melodies and Looney Tunes, but had a marked preference for the Walt Disney titles:
“If Walt Disney could draw all the funny ones we wouldn’t ask for anything better.”
"We wish there were more like these.”
Ethel C. Wright reported in The Library Journal (October 15, 1943) the results of an experiment by the staff of the Boys' and Girls' Room, in the Main Library at the Toledo Public Library, which took place from April 5 to May 18, 1942.
The staff read 60 comic books and approved 25 of them for the experiment. None of the comics could be taken from the library. It was noted that up to 20 kids at a time were in the library reading comics. After six weeks, all of these "fantastic" comics were removed, replaced with three titles from Parents Magazine: True Comics, True Heroes, and Calling All Girls. Initially, calls came to the desk requesting these comics, no doubt for lack of any other titles, but interest dropped off to almost zero by spring 1943.
"We had little success in trying to discover why the children were so keen about comics. They were almost inarticulate when questioned, answering in an off-handed manner that they thought them funny or exciting or interesting."
McCarthy and Smith asked 350 children at one school in Chicago and one in Minnesota "Why do you like comic magazines?" Their answers were given anonymously. "Humour" was the number one answer (121 pupils), followed by "Adventure" (90 pupils).
The top two answers correlate with the Quincy study, in which "They are funny" was the number one answer (605), followed by "They are thrilling" (423), with little difference between the sexes. The kids checked their choices from a given list, which also included "They solve crimes" (264), "They tell about history" (240), "They tell about patriotism" (219), "They tell about scientific things" (147), "They are easy to read" (132), and "They tell about geography" (121).
Children were also encouraged to "write in any reason of your own." Some of the responses were "I like the pictures", "They have interesting stories", "They tell about sports", "They tell about true facts", "They have pictures to copy", "They don't cost much", "They have colour in them", "They tell about the war", and "They tell about famous men".
FAVOURITE COMICS:
Paul Witty's 1941 study of 171 boys and 163 girls in grades 4 to 6 at the Dewey and Lincolnwood schools in Evanston, Illinois yielded a variety of statistics, including favourite comic book titles and characters. Superman and Batman were the top two magazines in that order for girls, with the preference being reversed for boys. These were followed by Famous Funnies, Action (Superman), Flash, Detective (Batman), Ace, Jungle Comics, Tip Top, True Comics, Donald Duck, and Planet Comics. (Tip Top wasn't listed on the questionnaire, but was written on a blank space provided for other favourites.) By grade, Superman and Batman remained the top two magazines, though beyond that the preferences varied.
The top two comic strips were Dick Tracy and Smiling Jack. In third spot was Blondie for girls, and Donald Duck for boys. Apparently the Superman newspaper strip, which was ranked at #13 for girls and #9 for boys, wasn't as appealing as the comic book. On average, both boys and girls read about 25 comic strips regularly, and 4 or 5 others "often".
A larger investigation by Paul Witty shortly thereafter was conducted in eight schools in "Chicago and vicinity", involving 2500 students in grades 4 to 6. Once again, the Superman and Batman titles were the top two favourites, though this time Batman held the top position. These were followed by Jungle, Famous Funnies, Flash, Ace, Magic, Action, Detective, True, Green Mask, Shadow, and Wings.
As with the Evanston group, Dick Tracy, Smiling Jack and Blondie were the three favourite comics strips amongst boys and girls.
The results of the Quincy study, conducted almost four years later on December 11, 1944, bore little resemblance to Witty's statistics, but the large number of new titles that glutted the newsstands in those would account for it. In Quincy's list of the top twenty favourite comic books, the preferences between girls and boys were very different, with one exception: both sexes placed Donald Duck in top position. After that came True Comics, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, Tip Top, and Crime Does Not Pay. In those few intervening years, Superman and Batman made a drastic drop in rank, with Superman in 15th place, and Batman coming in second last. Not surprisingly, no boys voted for Calling All Girls or Sensation Comics (Wonder Woman), while no girls cast a vote for Military Wings, True Aviation or True Sports.
After the war superhero comics declined rapidly. Captain America was no longer needed. Only a few, like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel, maintained their popularity.
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| Engrossed in SUPERMAN #8 (January 1941) |
CHILDREN MAKING THEIR OWN COMICS:
Celia Natzke, a librarian at Community High School Library in Downers Grove, Illinois, ran her own survey (making no distinction between comic books and comic strips). When asked "Do they influence your living?", one senior boy wrote: "No, comics do not influence the lives of people, except, perhaps in one respect: they might make one want to be a cartoonist."
Paul Witty's 1941 questionnaire for the children in Evanston, Illinois from grades 4 to 6 revealed that 58% of the boys and 58% of the girls created their own comic books to amuse themselves. The wider survey, including Chicago, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, showed that 55% of boys and 45% of girls created their own comic books.
The numbers for the kids in grades 7 and 8 are markedly different. 60% of the boys in grade 7 and 62.5% of the girls made their own comics. Their interest in this activity drops dramatically in grade 8, where only 29% of the boys and 20% of the girls made their own comics.
The Quincy study showed that 51.2% of boys and 46.4% of girls made their own comics. The average for Quincy is 49%, which very closely correlates with Witty's average of 50% (comparing the results of his wider survey).
On the Quincy questionnaire, the children were asked "Do you ever make or draw comics of your own? Why do you like to?" (This was the thirteenth and final question.) Once tallied, their responses showed nine basic reasons, "It is fun" being the main reason for 87 boys and 46 girls. This is followed by "I like to draw and colour them" (22 boys and 30 girls), and "It takes up time" (30 boys and 20 girls). There's a significant drop in numbers for the rest of the answers, which are "To see how well I can draw", "It gives me practice drawing", "It is interesting", "I like to make them come out funny", "I like to make my own and read them", "They are easy to draw", and "I keep a scrapbook of my drawings".
Interestingly, 8 boys said "They are easy to draw", with none of the girls giving that response. However, for the fourth reason, "To see how well I can draw", only 9 boys gave that answer, compared to 22 girls, showing that the girls applied themselves when creating comic books, trying much harder than the boys to improve their skills.
Other answers given, outside of the nine categories listed above, were "You can make the kind you want", "I like to hang them up in my room", "I print a play newspaper and all papers have to have a comic strip", and "It's fun to see what others think of them."
CRITICISM:
Sterling North's excoriation of comic books, "A National Disgrace", appeared in the May 8, 1940 edition of the Chicago Daily News:
"Virtually every child in America is reading color ‘comic’ magazines -- a poisonous mushroom growth of the last two years.
"Ten million copies of these sex-horror serials are sold every month. One million dollars are taken from the pockets of America’s children in exchange for graphic insanity.
"Frankly we were not perturbed when we first heard about the rise of the action 'comics'. We imagined (as do most parents) that they were no worse that the 'funnies' in the newspapers. But a careful examination of the 108 periodicals now on the stands shocked us into activity. At least 70 per cent of the total were of a nature no respectable newspaper would think of accepting.
"Save for a scattering of more or less innocuous 'gag' comics and some reprints of newspaper strips, we found that the bulk of these lurid publications depend for their appeal upon mayhem, murder, torture and abduction -- often with a child as the victim. Superman heroics, voluptuous females in scanty attire, blazing machine guns, hooded 'justice', and cheap political propaganda were to be found on almost every page.
"Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed -- a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems -- the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. Their crude blacks and reds spoil the child’s natural sense of color; their hypodermic injection of sex and murder make the child impatient with better, though quieter, stories. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the 'comic' magazine."
A year later, in National Parent-Teacher (November 1941), North proudly declared, "We have now reached nearly twenty million persons with our crusade against the 'comics'..."
Beryl K. Sullivan reported in an article for The Clearing House (March 1943), that she was conducting an experiment of her own. Her blunt preamble showed an obvious disdain for comic books:
"The reading matter of the average junior high school pupil is both amazing and disgusting, and it is shocking to think of such unmitigated nonsense filling the adolescent mind. The material has neither reliability nor validity, it is harmful in content and suggestive in pictorial material. Constant reading of the comics leads to day dreaming on the part of the child, and prevents him from giving his imagination and mind to more valuable, normal thoughts and ideas."
The junior high teacher was in the middle of an ongoing experiment to cure her students of their comic reading habit, and implied -- by dint of the article's title "Superman Licked" -- that her mission to replace lurid trash with wholesome reading material was a success!
Sydney Katz, in the December 1, 1948 issue of Maclean's magazine, quoted Jean Thomson, in charge of Boys’ and Girls’ House, Toronto Public Library: "Comics are cheap, vulgar and require little or nothing of the reader. They atrophy the child’s brain."
A few children dared voice a negative opinion of comic books. Unless they were masochists, they certainly belonged to the minuscule portion of their peers who, for one reason or another, didn't read comics.
"Comics, in time, may kill themselves, but until then, we must do everything we can to hasten the day. There is absolutely no excuse for comics in any form." (Janice Mason, Routt High School, Jacksonville, Illinois.)
Comic books "have sprouted from the newspapers into a very corrupt form of amusement for the youth of today. They certainly have no place in the curriculum of the school. The gangsterised leaflets that enter the everyday home are crimes in themselves and should be outlawed, if at all possible." (Bill Query, Newton Bateman High School.)
"Many of them are harmful in that they contain immoral presentations in picture and print and they encourage juvenile crime by imitation of the characters in them." (Marjorie Bruce, age 16, Newton Bateman High School.)
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| With a pile of comics like that, it's a sure bet this girl doesn't mind waiting for the train at La Crosse station in Wisconsin, 1948 |
POSITIVE POSITIONS
In his January 1944 article, "Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics", for The American Scholar, William Moulton Marston commented, "Comics, they say, are not literature -- adventure strips lack artistic form, mental substance, and emotional appeal to any but the most moronic of minds. Can it be that 100,000,000 Americans are morons?"
Marston was on DC's advisory board of educators. "We have inaugurated the policy of introducing into continuities a certain percentage of words which are above the average child-reader level, with the result that children soon determine the meanings and add these new words to their vocabularies."
Robert L. Thorndike, of Teachers College, Columbia University, was convinced that reading comic books increased a child's vocabulary, publishing his findings in The Journal of Experimental Education (December 1941). "It would be manifestly impossible to make an analytical study of all the hundred-odd magazines which now flood the newsstands," Thorndike realised; therefore, he limited his study to two of the most popular characters, analysing Superman Nos. 9 and 11, Batman No. 6, and Detective Comics no. 53. He found an average of 10,000 words in each issue, with the four books together totally 3000 words not found in the Thorndike (Edward Thorndike, Robert's father) list of the most common words. 1000 of those words were "uncommon words in the reading of the elementary school child, but words which he should probably be encouraged to learn."
According to Thorndike, the four books fell within the fifth and sixth grade reading levels, consistent with the the 9- to 15-year-olds who read them, presenting some difficulty for the younger ones, and easier comprehension for older, slower readers. Thorndike allowed that the illustrations might help reduce difficulty with any new words encountered. In his opinion, comic books "do provide a substantial amount of reading experience at about the level of difficulty appropriate for the upper elementary school or even junior high school child."
Irving Friedman, in his 1941 Clearing House article, agreed: "Funny books can also foster vocabulary development. One seventh-grade boy argued that reading funny books had helped him learn new words. He proceeded proudly and with great self-satisfaction to list the following words he had accumulated: hirelings, coveting, erupting, plummets, reconnoiter, sabotage, molecule, atom, dissipate, autosuggestion, surrealism, and astern."
Illinois Libraries asked sixty educators, librarians, parents, as well as grade school and high school students, to voice their opinions on comic books. Their responses were published in the April 1946 issue.
One girl wrote, "Many of them are harmful in that they contain immoral presentations in picture and print and they encourage juvenile crime by imitation of the characters in them." (Mary C. Standley, Routt High School, Jacksonville, Illinois) However, another student insisted that comics teach kids to avoid doing what the characters do: "When we see in the funnies how silly these pranks appear surely we will try to avoid the same kind of conduct." (Joan Kriener, Grade 8, Cathedral School)
Similarly, one person, identified only as "Junior Boy", when asked if comics influence his living, replied, "Yes, I read about the things that happen to people and try not to do them."
Josette Frank, staff advisor on the Children's Book Committee, Child Study Association of America, published an essay, "Let's Look at the Comics", in the Spring 1942 issue of Child Study. She refused to believe that reading comic books "atrophy the child's brain":
"At the other extreme are those children who read comic books and little else; but we have no way of knowing that these same children would read good books or any books at all if they did not have the comics. Many a child who is put off by a solid page of book print finds the captions and balloons of his comics easy to read. We can only conclude that for those children who would not naturally be great readers the comics provide some essential reading experience, obviously pleasurable, in which familiarity with words is acquired incidentally in the small units of print that accompany the pictorial story. For such children, then, comics reading is better than no reading at all."
She also opined that comics were cathartic, since children seek justice in simple terms, even if the hero uses a violent expedient to accomplish that goal:
"That the adventures of the comics are at once impossible and violent seems to detract no whit from their attraction. Invariably they follow the traditional pattern of wishful reading -- of heroes triumphant, right vindicated and villainy confounded. The biff-bang methods by which these noble ends are accomplished often startle adults, but to children, less sensitive or less civilised perhaps, these are but short-cuts to action. There is some indication that this very quality in the comics serves children as an outlet for their own aggressive feelings which find so little place for expression in ordinary living today."
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| From an article in MACLEAN'S magazine (December 1, 1948), "What About the Comics?" |
"Terry and the Pirates" cartoonist, Milton Caniff, was of the same mind. A brief opinion piece, "Are the Comics Harmful Reading For Children?", appeared in the August 1944 issue of Coronet:
"True, villainy and wrong-doing are daily exposed to the juvenile’s gaze, but the powers of good, though often strained to the utmost, never fail to win out over evil. Good taste has become of paramount importance in the presentation of this general theme, with the result that, rather than being harmful to children, the comic strip has reached a new high as a continuously good influence."
Paul Witty's 1941 study of children in grades 4 to 6, found little if any difference in the reading and comprehension levels between those who read comics often, and those who read them infrequently:
"Comparisons revealed little difference between these two groups in mental ability, educational attainment, marks, or personal and social adjustment. This was particularly clear in an examination of the reading habits of the children.
"The results of individual case studies were likewise inconclusive. Some children who read the comics constantly exhibited impoverished reading habits and attitudes; but so did some who seldom looked at a comic magazine or a newspaper strip. On the other hand, individual children were found among both readers and nonreaders of the comics who exhibited quite commendable reading patterns."
By 1948 the number of comic book titles had doubled to 246, as did sales, with some estimates as high as 50 million copies a month in North America. Sydney Katz, writing in the December 1948 issue of Maclean's magazine, gave a more balanced perspective on the comic book craze:
"Do comic books really discourage the reading of good books by children? If they do, then it should be reflected in the circulation figures of children’s libraries during the past decade. In 1936, there were no modern-type comic books; today, some 40 or 50 million are sold each month. It is therefore reasonable to deduce that library circulation figures should have by now reached an all-time low.
"I polled a number of children’s librarians across Canada and was told emphatically that such was not the case. Libraries in Halifax, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver reported substantial gains between 1937 and 1947 in the number of books loaned to youngsters. Of the communities reporting, the only place to show a decrease was Ottawa." (The headquarters of the federal government, no less.)
Also consulted was famed pediatrician Benjamin Spock, who "believes it a necessary step in the child’s development that he read simple comics before tackling something more complicated."
Dr Spock commented, "There’s no more reason to think it will ruin his taste than there is to fear that letting him creep on hands and knees in infancy will keep him from ever walking in the more elegant upright position."
Addressing the often claimed correlation between comic book reading and juvenile delinquency made by the anti-comic brigade, Katz countered with a good point:
"The demand for banning them is frequently made here in Canada. It is generally triggered off when a youngster commits a barbarous crime. He often admits that he reads comic books, which is not surprising since practically every child does."
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| Captain Marvel and his sister, Mary Marvel, ready to go pulverise some bad guys! |
(Some of the images used here appeared in an earlier post -- decades earlier, it feels like -- called "Girls Read Comics", chock-full of photos of girls doing just that, from the early 1900s to 1959.)
