Here is my take on the whole situation: Wertham wrote a book that severely damaged the comic book industry in an attempt to protect children from what he felt was damaging material. It was well-intentioned but ultimately flawed and has inadvertently served as the blueprint for other hysterical-reactions to things people see as harmful to children: rock music, rap, video games, etc. What resulted in comics is akin to the Hayes code in Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, the labeling systems for music and video games today: The industry had to self-police to save itself. And instead of going into a diatribe about how parents need to play a more active role instead of insisting that everyone else curb their activities, I'd like to go into the concept of comics as being a medium for children.

Looking back throughout the history of the comics medium in the U.S., it's fairly easy to find examples of comic strips and books that were not intended to be for children. Even today there persists a notion that comics are children's fare when, on the contrary, the medium is full of stories that can appeal to all ages who are willing to open the pages. We live in a society where cartoons are assumed to be only for children whereas, in Japan, comics are written for all age groups and not just something for the kids. This is something that we are only acknowledging (or re-discovering) within the last five years or so, putting us behind a number of countries that realized that long ago. I think the reason why people are afraid of things that they think will corrupt their children is because they don't familiarize themselves with the material. Sure, I wouldn't let a five-year-old watch Grave of the Fireflies because of its subject matter [The tragic tale of two children in Japan at the tail end of WWII] but, at the same time, I'm not going to condemn the medium because it has things that aren't intended for said five-year-old. I would exercise my parental rights to restrict what I think is inappropriate for my child and would have the same level of restrictions on Grand Theft Auto as I would with Die Hard, but I'm not going to object to someone's right to make those games and movies.

I guess my point is that it would be as unfair to declaim Wertham as being a one-note researcher who brought down the comic book industry as it would be to say that comics/games/music/movies should be severely curtailed because of the corruptive power they have over children. I'm studying comics in graduate school because I think that there is a lot there to be discovered: The evolution of advertising in Archie comics as it has changed to be directed towards children, strong female characters and their impact on society, how the medium allows for sensitive stories to be conveyed. I look at artists like Marjane Satrapi, who utilizes a neutral style in her artwork to show people that while her story is her own, the feelings she conveys throughout are universal (as she said in a presentation in Cleveland recently) and wonder how, in 2008, there are people who can look at her work (Persepolis), or Maus, or Joe Sacco's Palestine, and still maintain that this is something that is child-corrupting or directed towards a young audience.

Marjane, as well as others, have noted that comics require an active audience in reading the material, since the reader has to fill in the blanks to connect the stories from panel to panel. How can reading about a man who flies with a cape and tights be so damaging to children that it should never have been written? Yes, American superhero stories are largely good-vs.-evil, but do we not have a Commander In Chief whose presidency was built on an us-vs.-them mentality? At least most kids know that Superman isn't real, and graduate from the simplistic stories to tales that are more complex (if they keep reading anything at all).

I'm writing in a vacuum, so I really don't know what people have said on the topic (save the one comic artist who took umbrage with his work being cited without enough research to prove his stance one way or the other), but I think that comics are not the most damaging thing your kid can get his hands on. I'd be glad that he's reading! Use the material to communicate with your child if you feel it's objectionable (the same with anything else), and look for comics that can appeal to older readers. Taking an extremists point-of-view is definitely not the way to tackle the situation. Even the well-meaning can have negative impacts on who they are trying to protect.