"Comic Books
"Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children ... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!" - Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954 "
As a former comic book collector I actually have a 1954 copy of this book (although not the very most valuable edition). Wertham might have used some exaggeration or hyperbole, but I don't think there's any question he believed that comic books were going to destroy our children.
Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventure of the mature "Batman" and his young friend "Robin." --Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954
Yeah, and Liberace 'might have' been gay.