Before there were theories about the devastating effects of social media or video games or Tide Pods on young brains, there was one about comic books.
“Back in the day, Dr. [Fredric] Wertham was really good about scaring parents about what appeared in comics,” says William Harroff. “He decided comic books are responsible for juvenile delinquency in my generation, the Baby Boom generation.”
Wertham’s impact wasn’t subtle. His anti-comics advocacy led to the 1953 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, Harroff says.
“They surely did burn a whole gob of comics, and they put the industry basically out of work by about 1953,” he adds.
Harroff and his wife, Charlotte Johnson, explore the comics scare of 1948 to 1952 and the impact of Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent in their exhibit Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men (and Women) in St. Louis?, which is now open at the St. Louis Public Library’s Central Express branch (815 Olive Street, Suite 160).
Harroff and Johnson’s work takes the form of borderline psychedelic comic collages that explore comics censorship. To make them, Haroff taps a technique often used by Wertham.
“Dr. Wertham would take tiny snippets from the comics, a shoulder that he said, ‘Oh, look, that's clearly a vagina. Or, hey, this word balloon. Look at those words. Think of the secret message that's sending to your kids,’” Harroff says. “I take small, tiny little micro sections of comics from the 1950s, the same ones that were burned and banned. And then I do my little magic, using generally Photoshop and Illustrator, to create the strange little comics that I do today.”
Wertham’s impact isn’t just history to Harroff. It’s his personal origin story.
“I learned to read by reading comics, and so I’ve probably been a comic book reader now about 67 years of my 70 years on Earth,” he says. “I’ve loved comics from the very beginning because I just thought there was magic there.”
Harroff loved comics so much that he adopted the moniker “Wascally Wee Willy” as a nod to his role model, Bugs Bunny. (“It just sounded right to be a William and say ‘Wascally Wee Willy’ and other people seem to enjoy that as well.”)
Initially, he read the somewhat bland comics that came in the Wertham’s wake. Then Stan Lee and Jack Kirby got together to form Marvel in 1961.
“Suddenly the industry and the American population was ready for a new kind of comic to come back,” Harroff says. He, like many, was captivated.
But despite Marvel’s popularity, not everyone was into comics, much less took them seriously. In school, people teased Harroff, and in art school he’d literally get his hands slapped for drawing them.
Things have changed with the popularity of the Marvel superhero movies and shows such as the Walking Dead. Comics are now mainstream.
But Harroff says that we should remain vigilant against influences such as Wertham. “[We need to] let creative people be creative whenever we can,” he says.
That’s where his work — a reminder of the mistakes of the past — comes in.
Check out Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men (and Women) in St. Louis? through the end of the month at the St. Louis Public Library’s Central Express branch (815 Olive Street, Suite 160). Admission is free and the show is open during library hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
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