The U.S.—moppets and moppet-minded grownups—buys some 25,000,000 comic books each month. Are they good for children?
Those who say yes include Dr. Lauretta Bender, psychiatrist at New York City's Bellevue Hospital, and an adviser to the editors of Superman. Her opinion: "The comics may be said to offer the same type of mental catharsis to their readers that Aristotle claimed was an attribute of the drama."
Those who say no got a strong advocate last week: Walter J. Ong, onetime professor of English at Denver's small Regis College, now completing his Jesuit studies at St. Mary's (Kansas) College. Said Ong in the Arizona Quarterly: Superman is a Nazi.
"The civilization of the new [comic book] order is in great part a herdist phenomenon. Its subjects are . . . standardized men, men en bloc. . . . Everything is centered on one man—the leader, the hero, the duce, the Führer. Herd responses not being on the rational level, this hero does not appeal by argument. ('I was just realizing how much better it is to reason with these poor wayward fellows,' Plastic Man observes as he drives a left to the jaw.) He builds on the herd's dreams: he hypnotizes. Thus did Hitler and Mussolini. . . . The Superman of the cartoons is true to his sources. He is not another Horatio Alger hero or a Nick Carter; he is a super state type of hero, with definite interest in the ideologies of herdist politics."
Bull-Necked Males. "The creature familiar as Superman is the leader of a swarm of satellites separated from him only by a copyright. Scores of comic books feature similar characters—for example, Catman, Bullet Man, The Human Torch, Captain Midnight, Captain Marvel, Black Terror, Blue Beetle, Green Lama, Yankee Boy, Bogey Man—which follow the Superman pattern of a 'hero' who overcomes all obstacles with machine-like precision. Often, victory comes from frankly preternatural powers . . . propulsion and X-ray vision: these heroes' bull necks are often a pretty fair index of their intellectual prowess."
Ong has no quarrel with the old-style comic like Mr. & Mrs., The Gumps, Gasoline Alley, and he seems to have a sneak ing admiration for Li'l Abner ("sexy and synthetic pastoralism" done with "manifest cleverness.") But, he says, "there seems to be nothing in the good comics which keeps readers from liking the others." He saves his sharpest slings for Superman's female counterpart, a four-year-old character named Wonder Woman, who is described by her creator as "the girl from Paradise Isle, beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules and swifter than Mercury." Wonder Woman swears "By Zeus!" and regularly prays to Aphrodite—which Ong says is Hitlerite paganism.