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“The real question is this: Are comic books good or are they not good? Now it all depends on what you want. If you want to raise a generation that is half storm-troopers and half cannon-fodder, with a dash of illiteracy, then comic books are good. In fact, they are perfect.”

Via Bill Kartalopolous, an audio file of a pretty terrific old episode of The Author Meets the Critics, featuring a debate with the infamous Dr. Frederic Wertham.

UPDATE: Oh, and gee, I should mention that this is a different episode than the one Tom Spurgeon highlighted the other day, which also featured Wertham, along with Al Capp.

Because of my dereliction of duty, let me point you to an article I only recently discovered was available online, Robert Warshow’s famous essay on Wertham and EC, in which he references the Capp/Wertham episode in question.

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Since just about all the best of 2008 lists have been presented now I thought I’d rip off follow in Dan’s footsteps, and share the “outstanding graphic stories” of forty years ago, as presented in Graphic Story Magazine 11:

“Who is Scorpio?”
Written, told and drawn by Jim Steranko
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1, June 1968

“Mind Blast”
Written, told and drawn by George Metzger
Graphic Story Magazine 9, 1968

“Whatever Happened to Scorpio?”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with John Tartaglione
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 5, October 1968

Honorable Mentions:

Equal Time for Pogo
Written, told and drawn by Walt Kelly
Simon & Schuster, 1968

“The Pipsqueak Papers”
Written, told and drawn by Wallace Wood
Witzend 5, 1968

“Dark Moon Rose, Hell Hound Kill”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with Dan Adkins
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3, August 1968

“Today Earth Died”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with Joe Sinnott
Strange Tales 168, May 1968

“The Junkwaffel Invasion of Kruppenny Island”
Written, told and drawn by Vaughn Bode
Witzend 5, 1968

“The Adventures of Fritz”
Written, told and drawn by Robert Crumb
Cavalier, February through October, 1968

Another big year for Steranko, obviously. It’s kind of fun to see the undergrounds start to sneak their way onto the list…

Graphic Story 11 is a terrific issue otherwise, too, by the way, with a great Will Gould interview, and even a fan letter from the infamous Dr. Wertham himself, congratulating the fanzine on its recent interview with Alex Toth, and attempting to claim the artist as a fellow spirit:

The point that interests me most, of course, is what he says about the artist not showing the realistic details of horror in a story, but having it take place offstage, as it were, as far as the picture is concerned. I agree with him entirely on that … because I have found out through long clinical studies that it may have adverse effects on the immature mind. For that I have been blamed often, and I’m glad to read the technical opinion of Alex Toth.

This didn’t prevent the editors from publishing a lengthy, vehement denunciation of Wertham on the preceding pages, of course.

Which is awesome, and one reason I like reading old magazines.

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As a lot of you probably already know, great writer-about-comics Jeet Heer recently got into a small disagreement with another great writer-about-comics, Michael Chabon, in response to a piece Heer wrote about David Hajdu‘s new cultural history of the crusade against violent comics, The Ten-Cent Plague. I don’t have too much to say about it, other than that in his Slate article, and in several other recent pieces, Heer has been making a worthy attempt to depict the complexity of the 1950s comic-book scare. (That second link, a discussion between Heer and Fredric Wertham biographer Bart Beaty, is particularly interesting.)

I wish the same could be said of the ongoing debate about the book between Hajdu and Douglas Wolk at The New Republic (to which both are frequent contributors). Wolk’s a smart guy, and as evidenced by the Jeet Heer links above, there’s a lot of potentially meaty topics to discuss in Hajdu’s book, so why waste this opportunity with a lot of talk about how comic books are too taken seriously!? Hajdu’s answers aren’t particularly enlightening, but I can’t really blame him after Wolk starts with that bizarre hobbyhorse tangent inspired by a stray Newsarama (!) interview question that has little or nothing to do with the subject of Hajdu’s book. Can we ever lay off this tired “are comics sufficiently recognized?” stuff? Anyway, the exchange isn’t over yet, so there’s time for things to get more cogent. It would be great if Wolk followed up on some of the questions obviously posed by Heer and Beaty’s writings.

UPDATE: The second round of questions is up, and it’s really not much better. I’m curious to see if Hajdu can make more sense out of them than I can. (And Bernie Krigstein‘s artistic accomplishments should be judged only by how many of his stories are famous? Really?) Oh well.

UPDATE II: Since Tom Spurgeon linked to this post this morning calling these comments “unkind”, I wanted to point out that I have found Wolk to be a very likeable person in all of my encounters with him — he very generously gave me advice before a panel I moderated at SPX (something I’d never done before), for example. This is simply meant to be friendly argument. That may not need saying, but I’m weak and can’t help myself. (I like Tom, too. I like everybody!) All the same, I really think that Wolk could (and should) have done a better job with this.

UPDATE III: In the final round, Hajdu gives it the old college try, and quite rightly defends Krigstein, but understandably gives up on answering Wolk’s weirdest question: “If there hadn’t been a conflict over morality in entertainment going on, how do you think the comic books of the ’50s might have been received at the time?” That one stumps me, too. Actually, upon further reflection, it doesn’t: I’d say about the same, but with fewer bonfires.