Sept. 20, 1957
Los Angeles
Hey moms and dads, comic books don’t rot your children’s minds or turn your kids into hoodlums. No, really! Comics are good, wholesome entertainment that will ensure your offspring become lifelong lovers of fine literature. Mad magazine, like all EC comics, is especially valuable for young, easily influenced minds, as are any publications with "Weird," "Terror" or "Horror" in the title.
If you don’t give your children comic books, every library in the nation will close down in 20 years! You don’t want that, do you?
And be sure to put them in tightly sealed plastic bags!
ps. You can keep all those issues of "Richie Rich." Those comics will destroy your sense of humor forever.
ladailymirror.com 
A very late (1957) reaction to Fredrick Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent”. About 3 years too late. By 1957, with the exception of DC (Superman, Batman, etc.) and the comics aimed at the primary schoolers, the comic book industry had been virtually wiped out. The Comics Code was in full force in 1957 and would remain in force for decades to come.
Of course, that didn’t stop Robert Crumb and the rest of the underground comic book artists 10 years later.
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It’s been over a year since this blog entry was put up and I did put a comment up then. But, so what, time for another comment on the impact of comic books on American culture in the 1950’s and after.
After all, I am one of those people that bought comics and put them “in tightly sealed plastic bags” (and still have them!!!). I even read them! But that was during the 1960’s and 1970’s.
You mention “Mad magazine and E.C. Comics”, which was at the center of the comic book controversy of the early 1950’s.
The E.C. Horror and Crime Comics all stopped publication in 1954 when Distributors refused to circulate them after the establishment of the Comics Code Authority.
The comic book controversies of the 1950’s was before my time. I missed all the fun. The old E.C. Comic books were much better than the mainstream comic books being published in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Much better art and writing. Very much like the old pulp fiction of the 1930’s. E.C. Comics were aimed at an older and more mature reader than the other comics of their day, or the later comic books permitted circulation by the Comics Code. They were not intended for children, although it was obvious children read them, which was at the center of the controversy.
Mad magazine originally was a comic book, published by the same people that put out the E.C. Horror and Crime comics. A ‘funny” book. It was upgraded to a magazine type publication to escape the Comics Code.
This upgrade was successful since Mad Magazine conitnues to be published to this day. The 1950’s Mad Comics and Magazine at times was a pretty savagely satirical take on American culture and politics during the 1950’s. A sort of a comic book version of Saturday Night Live. The original editor, Harvey Kurtzman, had a falling out with the publisher, William M. Gaines and left. Mad magazine would never be the same again. I can’t say I care for it much now.
Harvey Kurtzman would go on to try other satire magazine ventures but none would be as successful as “Mad”. He did a comics feature in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Magazine titled “Little Annie Fannie” that ran for years. He also introduced artists like Robert Crumb and had a hand in beginning the “underground” comics during the late 1960’s and 1970’s.
The real issue was the Comics Code Authority. It would have been as if only “G” rated movies would be shown in theaters or television or otherwise distributed in order to protect impressionable children.
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