I am always happy to present a story recognized in the infamous anti-comics book Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, MD, published in 1954. The panel I used today as a teaser at the top of the page was squeezed onto a page in that book, with no explanation, just that killing people in lovers lane is a not uncommon perversion. There have been some famous real-life cases of killers preying on victims in so-called lovers lane, including the Phantom in the late '40s in Texarkana, Texas, and the Zodiac killer of California. But “a not uncommon perversion”? All right, any of you who have fantasies about killing people in lovers lane, raise your hand. I see by peering through the cameras in your phones, laptops and other devices that one guy is waving his hand, but maybe he is just asking permission to go to the bathroom. (Go, but then come right back.) I imagine there may be other perverts out there, since a lovers lane is a good spot for voyeurism, and especially now that most drive-in movies are closed. But killing, I just don’t know.
Anyway, the story, “Crimson Trail of the Lipstick Slayer” is about a Navy man who kills a woman and puts a lipstick mark on her forehead, something shared by the couple in lovers lane. I don’t know if this is based on a true story, or if it is a mashup based on the Texarkana killings and the killings of William Heirins in Chicago, also in the mid-'40s. Heirins was known as “the Lipstick Killer” in newspapers, for a message on a mirror written in lipstick, “For heavens sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself”...a hair-raising note that caught the public’s attention.
The artwork is by L.B. Cole, who does an excellent job, both with the story and the cover. Cole was known for designing poster-like covers, and this one is a beauty for grabbing attention on crowded newsstands.
As for the contents of Law Against Crime #3 (1948), it is a mixed bag: two violent crime stories bookending two crudely drawn funny stories, which look more at home in a child’s comic book. They were obviously filler, but how disappointed did they leave the readers of the sordid crime stories? Dr Wertham didn’t mention them. Once again I opine that comic books published in 1948, unless they were laying around in stacks of old comics, would be unavailable to most readers at the time Wertham’s book was published. He did that with many of the other illustrations, also, leaving the reader of 1954 horrified at the images which hadn’t been seen for several years. No matter...many comic books in 1954 were just as sordid. Maybe he didn’t think anyone would know that his material was mostly outdated and years later be the subject of scrutiny by people he could not have dreamed at the time would ever exist, fans of the very books he put under attack!
The infamous message in the case of the Lipstick Killer was, of course, written on that mirror by a journalist, seeking to fabricate a scoop and to increase the sensationalism of the case. (And, as you've remarked elsewhere, there seems to be reasonable doubt as to Heirin's guilt in the killings, though he was plainly a burglar.)
ReplyDeleteWhen called out about some of the out-right falsifications in SotI, Wertham blamed those who helped him to assemble the book. Wertham should have felt ethically compelled to read every word and examine each piece of evidence that were to be presented in his name. But, in any case, not only those falsifications but some of the other peculiarities in SotI may indeed have been the work of subordinates. Gershon Legman claimed to have been Wertham's ghost-writer. I've read one of Legman's books published under his own name, and various of its assertions about sexuality or about physiology range from dubious to simply false, though Legman might have confidently believed any one of them. He was something of a cracked-pot.
In “Crimson Trail”, the girl in 1:3 is supposed to be the girl in 4:2 and in 9:2-4,, but the drawing was so inconsistent that the colorist didn't see that he or she were making that girl a blonde in the first image and a brunette in the later images. (4:3 has an ambiguous silhouette.)
While I'm carping, I'll note that: There's a weird attempt at spurious precision in writing “within two months to the day of the fifth anniversary”. When children are adopted, parents are adoptive. (That which is adopted is also adoptive, but children aren't generally allowed to adopt a set of parents.) And it didn't make much sense for an officer to wave the Naval record of Leroy's fingerprints in Leroy's face, in-so-far as Leroy's fingers were right there, attached to Leroy.
The crime comics scene of the mid-1950s is an absolute cauldron of under-discussed real-world connections.
ReplyDeleteWhile Wertham was working on writing up Seduction, a colleague of his in NYC, Renatus Hartogs (a member of whose staff would testify alongside Wertham at some of the Kefauver hearings) was doing a psychiatric examination of a 'juvenile delinquent' in his charge at a facility there -- teenage Lee Harvey Oswald, who told him he often skipped school to stay home and read comic books. And how nobody ever made a meal out of THAT in the day is a mystery for the ages.
Meanwhile, after Crime Does Not Pay's Bob Wood committed his infamous murder, the NY Daily News reporter who first told the world about the matter was a man named Kermit Jaediker... who was also a comic book writer who had published work at Lev Gleason, Timely, and elsewhere... and certainly knew Bob Wood and did not disclose that in the now-infamous "Gramercy Park Gets the Horrors" article that helped send Wood into historical infamy.
Jaediker was a man who like to write about murder, interestingly enough, which eventually brought him to the attention of ZODIAC a couple decades later, who sent a letter about an article he wrote.
It's all a textbook case of truth being stranger, it seems, and the strangest part of all: newsstand arrival dates of comic book covers which feature "Wheels of Death" or Doom are excellent predictors of unsolved murders in California circa 1950s-70s.
Mark, thank you for your information on not only Wertham, but the connection of Bob Wood with reporter Kermit Jaediker.
ReplyDeleteI was also fascinated by your paragraph on unsolved murders in California circa 1950s-1970s coinciding with arrival dates of comics "Which feature 'Wheels of Death' or Doom." Are you implying that there was cause and effect? I have an open mind about what triggers criminal behavior, which includes popular culture.
Also interesting is the story about teenage Lee Harvey Oswald. All of the years reading about the JFK assassination I have never once run across that story. Your note is a fount of interesting information. Thanks again.
Daniel, ". . . it didn't make much sense for an officer to wave the Naval record of Leroy's fingerprints in Leroy's face, in-so-far as Leroy's fingers were right there, attached to Leroy." Acute observation! One of those things in comics (and TV and movies) that people don't really think of. And I confess, I can be one of them, as I was with that.
ReplyDeleteWertham put his name on the book, so he can't blame his researchers for errors. I agree, he should have been the fact checker.
Wertham was not successful when, after the Comics Code was implemented, he pitched a book about the further sins of comic books. My guess is that when SotI was published in 1954 it had a lifespan in public interest, which had expired. I have also wondered if SotI was not taken seriously by other mental health professionals because of Wertham's methods.
The book the publishers turned down might have been an extension of his article in Saturday Review, "It's Still Murder," how despite the Code crime comics were still being published. The date on the article is April 9, 1955; the first Code-censored comics were about two months on the stands by that date.*
My problems with his work and his conclusions drawn are many, but despite that SotI still has a place in my heart as being my gateway to crime and horror comics. I read it when I was 12. I wrote down every title he mentioned in the book so I could look for them.
*"It's Still Murder" begins with a description of "necronimicon," as known by children: "it is a creature that eats human flesh and drinks human blood." I'd be interested in knowing what comic book that came from, if anyone knows. To anyone familiar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft and his literary cronies the Necronimicon is a fictional book, and outside of Wertham's literary interests.
I've heard that claim that Legman might have ghost-written parts of SOTI, and it's certainly not impossible, if only because Legman seemed to be trying to coast on the reputation of the Good Doctor as early as the 1948 symposium they both attended (though I've sometimes wondered how a non-academic like Legman wangled his way into such company).
ReplyDeleteHowever, if Legman did any ghost-writing for Doc Wertham, Legman must have damped his normal frenetic style of writing by one hundred percent!