Comic Culture

U.S. readers--or whatever you call them--now buy nearly a quarter-billion comic books a year. The avid addicts are not just kids, either; they include an estimated one out of every five U.S. grownups. At Army post exchanges, comic books outsell LIFE, Reader's Digest and Satevepost combined--by ten to one.

At a press conference last week Eleanor Roosevelt, like thousands of other parents and teachers, viewed this phenomenon with alarm. The Journal of Educational Sociology devotes an entire issue to calm examination of it, offers panicky parents and teachers some solid reassurance.

Comic books, the Journal points out, are so readable that" they become grand-scale teaching aids:

P: "Captain Midnight" fights inflation and home-front perils.

P: "Superman's" schoolmarmy sentences have taught grammar to thousands of schoolchildren. Only drawback: students do a week's work in one evening.

P: "Private Pete" of the Army's training program explains basic training problems, teaches G.I.s to read.

P: True Comics devotes itself to real heroes, teaches about everything from health to Latin America.

P: Bible stories in comic-book form are conned in some 2,000 Sunday schools.

P: The Twain Shall Meet-- and Johnny Everyman--explore and deplore sources of racial prejudices.

Recent tests show that facts presented in picture strips are (at first reading) grasped 10% to 30% more thoroughly than the same facts presented in words alone. And even the comic strips which offer only fantasy and adventure are not without their cultural value, argues Psychiatrist Lauretta Bender of New York City's Bellevue Hospital. At any rate, there is evidence that comic books do not debase young literary tastes forever. Children who read comics read "good" books too, and juvenile reading generally ap pears to be on the increase.

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