Seduction of the Innocent Read Online Free PDF Page B

damaging to impressionable minds, and children are inherently in that category.”
    “Homosexual?” I asked.
    That got me another flash of a look from Maggie.
    “Impressionable,” he said sternly. “And the Amazonia comic book is rife with fetishistic bondage, and the lead character herself is clearly lesbian.”
    “She has a boyfriend, doesn’t she?” I asked innocently. “Some captain in the army or air force?”
    “Amazonia is a closeted lesbian, frequently shown participating in semi-clothed frolicking with other lesbians.”
    I never get invited to the good parties.
    Rather than argue the point, Maggie said, “We no longer distribute those strips.”
    “That’s an admirable decision.”
    I noticed Maggie didn’t point out to him that in both cases that was a business decision.
    “However,” the shrink said, “you continue to distribute the strip version of one of the most offensive of these char-acters—Wonder Guy.”
    What the hell was offensive about Wonder Guy? He was just a big lug wearing patriotic colors and a cape, going around saving people from fires and earthquakes and punching out the occasional bad guy.
    “This,” he was saying, his eyes cold and glittering, lost in themselves, “is a reprehensible exhibition of the Nazi theme of the superman. A dangerous celebration of the triumph of power and violence over the logical and intellectual.”
    I wanted to point out to this dope that the creators of Wonder Guy were Jews, kids from Des Moines who came to the big city. Where other Jews screwed them, but that’s another story.
    “We also distribute,” Maggie said pleasantly, putting it right out there, “the Crime Fighter strip, a spin-off of a very successful comic-book title. That puts us in business with Levinson Publications, whose output you hold in much disfavor.”
    “Yes,” he said, but now his eyes were narrowing. What is she getting at? he seemed to be wondering.
    What is she getting at? I was wondering.
    “Here’s what I’m getting at,” Maggie said. “We are a syndication service, as you accurately put it. We provide content to over two thousand newspapers, Sunday and daily. Some of those papers editorially are Republican, others are Democrat. A good number are in major cities, but many more are in small towns.”
    “Yours,” he granted, “is an egalitarian pursuit. But I’m not sure I understand how that explains...”
    She raised a palm like a traffic cop. “We have comic strips that appeal to young children, and we have comic strips that appeal to teenagers, with soap-opera strips for women, a sports strip for dads, and panel cartoons for both sexes.”
    He had begun shaking his head perhaps halfway through that. “I have no objection to comic strips per se. They are an established medium in the pages of our newspapers. The controversy, so-called, over the crime comic books does not apply, generally, to the comic strip.”
    “I assure you that comic strips, back at the turn of the century when they began, were crude and rude, fodder for the lower-class, for immigrants, and got plenty of criticism. The Yellow Kid was a hoodlum, the Katzenjammer Kids juvenile delinquents.”
    The doctor was frowning. In thought, maybe. Or maybe not.
    “I do not dispute that the comic strip,” he said, mildly irritated, “has blossomed in its limited way in the greater garden of the American newspaper. But its bastard child the comic book is a poisonous weed that infests our newsstands. A dozen state legislatures have worked to ban or limit this blight upon our children, and many parents have risen up, even having public burnings of these wretched pamphlets.”
    And here I thought the doc didn’t like the Nazis....
    Maggie raised her hands as if in surrender. “I didn’t invite you here to argue, doctor. But I did want to...clear the air.”
    From his seat he bestowed her a little quarter bow. “I never mind discussing this or any topic with a person of your