SOURCE: "Tales From the Crypt," in The Humanist, Vol. 54, No. 2, March-April 1994, pp. 40-2.

In the following essay, Siano presents a defense of comic books against a new trend of censorship reminiscent of that practiced during the 1950s.

In the early 1950s, a respected psychiatrist and well-meaning reformer named Fredric Wertham published a book entitled Seduction of the Innocent and nearly destroyed an indigenous American art form. Wertham alleged that comic books were a major cause of juvenile delinquency, violent crime, social disaffection, and deviant sexuality (sound familiar?). Not only did he wax apocalyptic over the lurid horror comics of the time—EC Comics' The Haunt of Fear, Tales from the Crypt, and The Vault of Horror—even the superheroes fell under his ever-critical eye. Wertham accused Wonder Woman of promoting lesbianism (under the very scientific theory that dykes wear skimpy flag costumes and fly about in invisible airplanes...