A group of Hookey Club boys from twelve to fifteen discussed what they thought was good and bad in comic books and spoke about "torture" as a bad feature. Most of them agreed they liked books showing it, though. I asked the boys whether any of them, if they actually had a little girl in a lonely place, would really like to tie her up, beat her and torture her. I wondered whether any of them would admit to that and asked for a show of hands. Everybody smiled - and every hand went up. They had learned their comic-book lessons well. It is frequently overlooked that long before the age of puberty children may have very elaborate sexual fantasies which do them no good. The sexualized brutality of crime comic books leads not infrequently to a connection between the thrill of suspense and that of sexual arousal - a kind of anxiety stimulation. Sometimes this may go far enough to produce orgasm. "I think sex all boils down to anxiety," one boy told me. In some cases, more often in girls but also in boys, this arousal is closely related to masochism.
There is a special kind of cruelty mixing crimes against property and sexual exploits which I have hardly ever encountered in juvenile cases before the comic-book era. Nowadays it is not at all uncommon.
A boy from a well-to-do family was referred to me for psychotherapy after he had become very inattentive in his studies. During treatment he told me once that he and three other boys, fifteen and sixteen years old, used to go to a candy store in the neighborhood where they ate ice-cream cones, bought comic books and talked big. One evening in one of the boy's parents’ car they drove from the suburb where they lived to Broadway. There they picked up a young prostitute and took her to the home of one of the boys whose parents were away. Two of them had intercourse with her and various sexual experiments were tried out, the girl being very co-operative. They paid her five dollars each. After that, all four went out with her in the car to drive her back to Broadway as they had promised. On the way they had a bright idea. They stopped the car, pounced upon the girl and while one held her forcibly around the neck the others beat her unmercifully about the face and body. They went through her handbag and took out all her money. One boy, hitting her in the face, said to her, "You are too independent!" The girl did not fight back. She just sat and cried and said it was not fair after she had been so nice to them. Then they left her at a subway station, with just enough money to pay her fare. This is comic-book stuff.
Comic books create sex fears of all kinds. In girls the identification of sex with violence and torture may cause fear of sex, fear of men and actual frigidity.
A Western with a picture of Tom Mix on the cover has in one story no less than sixteen consecutive pictures of a girl tied up with ropes, her hands of course tied behind her back! She is shown in all kinds of poses, each more sexually suggestive than the other, and her facial expression shows that she seems to enjoy this treatment.
Psychiatrically speaking, this is nothing but the masturbation fantasy of a sadist, and it has a corresponding effect on boys. For girls, and those boys who identify themselves with the girl, it may become the starting point for masochistic fantasies.
Some of the ordinary comic books have illustrations revealing crude sexual details if you look at them in a certain way.
The shoulder of a man with a red scarf around his neck shows a girl's nude body.
This is so clear that it can induce the immature reader to look for such things and stir him up sexually.
Love comics do harm in the sphere of taste, esthetics, ethics and human relations. The plots are stereotyped, banal, cheap. Whereas in crime comics the situation is boy meets girl, boy beats girl; in love comics it is boy meets girl, boy cheats girl - or vice versa.
Adolescent girls are not helped by this bit from a love comic: "How long can a beautiful woman wait for love? Is it a crime to take passion where it is found - regardless of mocking faithfulness? (For the thrilling answer see page 17.)"
Love comics, like crime comics, play up the angle that what they depict is real life. "These girls are real people with real problems and real dramatic confessions," says a typical issue. What do these "real" girls want? "More than anything in the world I wanted glamor, money, adventure . . ." What are their problems? The titles of the stories give the answer:
FALLEN WOMAN
RUNAWAY PASSION!
PRICE OF PRIDE
FORBIDDEN LOVE
MY FOOLISH MISTAKE!
MUST I REVEAL MY PAST?
In crime comics normal sexual life is repressed, whereas violence is shown in detail. In love comics it is just the reverse. Homicide is usually prevented at the last moment, while fornication is completed:
"Violent passions smouldered in my heart! I burned with love for a man who could never be mine. In a moment of weakness I surrendered to a tragic impulse and grasped at a forbidden love!"
Or: "Naive, innocent fool that I was, I thought he was asking me to marry him! But I found out different fifteen minutes after we checked into the hotel!! My folks hushed it up of course . . . and I learned to forget. . ."
Or, again:
"One moment of sin . . . The ugliest sin in the world . . . would it bring her a lifetime of happiness?"
Fred’s Video Collection
Simon and Kirby's Young Romance debuted in 1947. In the next 30 years, over 200 issues of the flagship romance comic would be produced.
By 1950, more than 150 romance titles were on the newsstands from Quality Comics, Avon, Lev Gleason Publications, and National (DC Comics).
For this montage I’ve used covers from Matt Baker (my fave rave) and Al Feldstein.