Racketeers of Childhood

Young America now gobbles up about 10,000,000 comic books a month--an overseasoned, indigestible, nerve-shattering, eye-ruining diet of non-comic murder, torture, kidnappings, sex-baiting. Traceable to these hyperthyroid thrillers are many a midnight scream in the nursery, many a juvenile nervous tantrum. Some parents ban the lurid comic books; the more thoughtful try to substitute "good" books. Meanwhile the comic books go marching on--with a slight drop due to the loss of the export market. *

Last week Young America was offered a new eye-compelling antidote to the comic books--a 64-page, bi-monthly called True Comics (10-c-60-c- a year). The publisher was Parents' Magazine, headed by able George J. Hecht. Advisory board included Historian David S. Muzzey, George Gallup (Gallup Poll), Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney. The idea: to fight fire with fire.

Excellently drawn, in fresh, lively colors, intelligently captioned, True Comics offered: the colorful stories of Winston Churchill, "World Hero No.1";-George Rogers Clark, potent Revolutionary War hero and frontier fighter; David Bushnell, ingenious Yankee inventor of the first submarine in the Revolutionary War; Simon Bolivar, great South American liberator, whose hero was George Washington. Other brightly colored features include a series on the world's warplanes in action, Lowell Thomas' "greatest adventure," the story of the original Greek Marathon run. Confident first edition was 300,000 copies.

Hard-boiled comic-book publishers, eager to continue their profitable trade in murder, torture and sex, discounted True Comics' chances on two main counts: They doubted 1) whether it could arouse sufficient newsstand appeal to make money (since subscription sales of comic books account for only about1% of the total), and 2) whether thrill-sophisticated comicbook readers could be convinced that "Truth is stranger and a thousand times more interesting than fiction!" But at least, True Comics had given parents a weapon with which to fight the racketeers of childhood.

-Of the current 70 comic books a bare 20% are reprints of newspaper "funnies"--a minority which by comparison are decent. However, few newspapers carry innocence in funnies so far as did the Baltimore Sun last week: It dropped Winnie Winkle because she is going to have a baby.

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