Chapter 2: The Rise of the Cincinnati Committee and the Ascendant Anti-Comics

Movement, 1948-1953

Beginnings of the Cincinnati Committee

On May 2, 1948, Rev. Jesse Murrell stepped to the pulpit of the First Methodist Church

of Covington, Kentucky to deliver his opening sermon for Children’s Sunday as part of that

year’s National Family Week campaign.1 From his vantage point above the congregation, Rev.

Murrell thundered, “Comic books are a poisonous mushroom growth of the last decade. . .[t]he

bulk of these lurid publications depend for their appeal upon mayhem, murder, torture, and

abduction. A child is often the victim of these cruelties.”2 Rev. Murrell importuned comic books

as a direct threat to the sanctity of the family, especially its most vulnerable asset—the child.

An excitable newspaperman approached Rev. Murrell after the sermon and suggested to

him that the Cincinnati Enquirer publish an article on Murrell’s sermon in the following day’s

issue. According to a later letter sent by Rev. Murrell, the newspaperman asked for a hard copy

of the sermon, but Murrell had delivered the speech entirely off of a few notecards, with which

he let the reporter abscond.3 The story, as promised, appeared in the May 3rd edition of the

Enquirer, with the headline “Pastor Blasts Comic Books From Covington Pulpit As Poisonous

Growth Corrupting Children of Nation.”4

1
The Methodist Church practiced National Family Week sometime prior to 1948 until 1969. Each National Family
Week, celebrated the first and second Sundays in May, had a unique theme. These included “Home Builders are
World Builders,” “A Christian Foundation For Every Home,” and “A Troubled World Needs Christian Families.”
Each day of the week had a special activity beginning on the first Sunday, known as “Childhood Sunday.”
According to the 1952 National Family Week brochure, Childhood Sunday was celebrated to “stress the importance
of the Christian nurture of children in church and home.”
2
“Pastor Blasts Comic Books,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 1948.
3
Letter from Jesse Murrell to Otto Larsen, February 1954. Box 3, Folder 4: Correspondence, 1954. Committee on
Evaluating Comic Books collection, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Main Branch (hereinafter
CECBC). Larsen went on to chair Lyndon Johnson’s President’s Committee on Obscenity and Pornography and was
one of the first people pied as an act of political protest.
4
“Pastor Blasts.” Ibid.
 In addition to its place in the Enquirer, local radio stations also got wind of Rev.

Murrell’s sermon, broadcasting his words around the greater Tri-State area. According to Rev.

Murrell’s brief account of the Committee’s formation, the local Council of Churches approached

him shortly after the initial broadcast of the sermon to head a committee dedicated to “see[ing]

what, if anything, could be done about the bad comics.”5

Fan mail for Rev. Murrell that contained words of congratulations for his pursuit of those

foul comic books came in droves following the broadcast of his sermon, even as soon as the

following day. One of the more interesting letters came from a Mrs. Lora M. Walker of

Richmond, Indiana, who congratulated Rev. Murrell on taking steps towards “...saving the

moral[s] of our children.”6 Mrs. Walker also suggested that Rev. Murrell start a “non-prophet”

(sic) organization together with ministers of other denominations in order to “wipe out sin.”7

To cap off her letter, Mrs. Walker offered prescient foresight into the political battles that

underscored the early tenure of the Cincinnati Committee: “America was once a God fearing

nation. Now foreign nations call us decadent. We have a fight in Zionism and Communism also.

Back to God and the church is our only hope.”8 Mrs. Walker also offered to distribute copies of

Rev. Murrell’s sermon to ministers in Richmond and Dayton, OH, which Rev. Murrell politely

declined for lack of funds in his response.9

Rev. Murrell later wrote the main branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati and

Hamilton County (then known as the Cincinnati Public Library) on May 17th, seeking to book a

5
Jesse Murrell, “A Brief Report: The Greater Cincinnati Committee On Evaluation of Comic Books (June, 1964)”,
Box 3, Folder 4: Correspondence, 1954. CECBC.
6
Letter from Lora M. Walker to Jesse Murrell, May 3, 1948. Box 5, Folder 1: Fan mail. CECBC.
7
Lora M. Walker to Jesse Murrell, Ibid.
8
Ibid. From her references to Zionism and Communism, Lora Walker is a possible source of leaflets from the
antisemitic and pro-fascist Protestant War Veterans of America found in the fan mail folder with no context or
explanation.
9
Letter from Jesse Murrell to Lora M. Walker, May 6, 1948. Box 5, Folder 1: Fan mail. CECBC.
conference room for the informational meeting. He termed the would-be group’s purpose in this

letter “to formulate a standard by which we may study and appraise the comic books that are

circulated among our children and youth.”10 In this early letter, Rev. Murrell lays out a unique

aspect of the future Cincinnati Committee that would set it apart from other decency groups in its

time like the Catholic-centered National Organization for Decent Literature. Said Murrell, “Since

we feel that those who do this work should be widely distributed as to creed and sect, we want to

call the meeting at a neutral place.”11

The library returned Rev. Murrell’s letter the following day, regretting to inform him that

the Central branch was too crowded for the size of meeting that Rev. Murrell sought. The

responding librarian, Carl Vitz, suggested the Walnut Hills branch on Cincinnati’s near east side

as an alternate location. Vitz informed Rev. Murrell that he was holding Tuesday, May 25th for

the group and added that the library was “...interested in reading problems including the

influence of the ‘comics’,” and would appreciate an invitation to the meeting.12

The first meeting of the group that became the Cincinnati Committee for the Evaluation

of Comics took place on May 25, 1948 at the Walnut Hills public library. Nineteen individuals

attended that first meeting, the main purpose of which was to elect officers for the committee and

begin to formulate criteria for rating comic books. The group unanimously named Rev. Murrell

as chairman, and chose Hildegarde Benner, the Chairman of Juvenile Protection for the

Cincinnati PTA to serve as secretary, a role she would fulfill until the group’s folding in 1979.13

J. Louis Motz, the head of a local newspaper and stationary distribution company, invited the

10
Letter from Jesse Murrell to Cincinnati Public Library, May 17, 1948. Box 3, Folder 1: Correspondence prior to
1950. CECBC.
11
Ibid. Some groups Murrell wished to involve in the organization were the Parent-Teacher Association, local
children’s recreation groups, the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University, local women’s clubs, Boy and Girl
Scouts, and groups that served Jewish and Catholic children.
12
Letter from Carl Vitz to Jesse Murrell, May 18, 1948. Box 3, Folder 1: Correspondence prior to 1950. CECBC.
13
Hildegarde Benner, Meeting minutes, May 25, 1948. Box 2, Folder 21: Minutes, 1948-1979. CECBC.
meeting’s attendees to tour his warehouse and take a cursory glance at the types of comics

supplied to local newsstands and drug stores.14 Walter H. Pitts of the Northern Kentucky

Independent Druggist’s Association previously wrote to Rev. Murrell to personally guarantee the

cooperation of his organization.15

An assistant librarian sent by Cincinnati Public Library named Ernest Miller suggested

that the group form a smaller committee in order to assess attempts by other municipalities to

rein in comic books, and Rev. Murrell assigned Miller, Dr. Kemper McComb, head of the

Council of Churches, Rev. Leo J. Streck, Superintendent of Education for the Diocese of

Covington, Charles Dibowski of the Juvenile Court of Covington, and a Leonard J. Brooks to the

smaller inter-city research committee.16

Every intersection of youth-based literary censorship had a presence at the Cincinnati

Committee's first meeting. The Parent-Teacher Associations, who united the powerful groups of

teachers and activist parents in order to attack comics from a didactic standpoint, members of the

legal community, specifically juvenile divisions concerned about the potential effect comic

books had on exacerbating postwar America’s nouveau juvenile delinquency crisis, and

ecclesiastical representatives from both Protestant and Catholic camps.

Ernest Miller’s inter-city comics code committee met on the 27th of May to discuss some

minor business matters pertaining to group membership and inquiries to publishers with regard

14
Meeting minutes, 5/25/48.
15
Letter from Walter H. Pitts to Jesse Murrell, May 20, 1948. Box 3, Folder 1: Correspondence prior to 1950.
CECBC.
16
Other notable members at the inaugural meeting were George F. Veith, City Clerk and Recreation Director of
Covington, Robert Aldemayer, Covington’s chief probation officer, Mrs. William A. Thomas, vice president of the
Hamilton County PTA Council, Mrs. Archie Barnes, president of the Federation of Catholic Parent-Teacher
Associations, Willard A. Friend, director of the Boy Scouts of Northern Kentucky, and three women, Mrs. Roy
Melott, Mrs. Betty Harton Whiting, and Mrs. Eleanor Walker, all affiliated with children’s ministries at local Baptist
churches.
to their in-house editorial codes.17 At their following meeting on June 10, Rev. Murrell

communicated his intent to enlist local university faculty in the committee’s work to provide

expert opinions and an academic footing for the group’s criticisms. The group contacted

University of Cincinnati’s sociology department, and they instead recommended Dr. Arthur Bills

of the psychology program’s measurements division, who agreed to sign onto the committee’s

cause.18 With their academic acquired, the Cincinnati Committee was well on its way to

achieving the interdisciplinary vision that Murrell wrote of in his letter to the Cincinnati Public

Library. Though Bills was never a prominent member of the committee, he provided a gateway

into the academic realm, where the committee would recruit some of their more influential

members that allowed their message to spread across disciplines and across the country.

Getting to Work: The First Evaluation

With Bills in tow, the Cincinnati Committee’s drive continued to gain momentum. On

June 24, the full committee met for a second time, adding some new members that would prove

influential in the years to come: Dr. H.B. Weaver, a psychology professor at the University of

Cincinnati and Dr. Charles Wheeler, an English professor at Xavier University. At a previous

meeting of the smaller committee, the group mentioned Dr. Weaver as an individual with

experience in formulating measurements that hopefully would solve the committee’s early

dilemma of deciding on reviewing criteria, or as Rev. Murrell put it, a “dependable measuring

device and one that will prove reasonably fool-proof.”19

17
Jesse Murrell, Minutes of Meeting of Small Committee, May 27, 1948, Box 2, Folder 21: Minutes, 1948-1979.
CECBC.
18
Jesse Murrell, Statement of the General Chairman to Smaller Committee, June 10, 1948, Box 2, Folder 21:
Minutes, 1948-1979. CECBC.
19
Jesse Murrell, Minutes of Meeting of Smaller Committee, June 22, 1948, Box 2, Folder 21: Minutes, 1948-1979.
CECBC.
 Also, at this meeting, the group decided on its wider approach to evaluating comics and

appealing to publishers. They agreed that work would not begin until the subcommittee finalized

the review criteria, which the larger committee would subsequently use to rate comic books. The

final point stated that the committee would attempt to seek cooperation of publishers “before any

drastic measures were resorted to.”20 Again, this desire to seek the cooperation of publishers, to

assuage the problem of objectionable comics from the source, later resulted in a profound

efficacy of the Cincinnati Committee’s practices in comparison to the National Organization for

Decent Literature, who engaged in dealer intimidation on a localized level.

By the time the full committee met again on October 3, the resurgent debate over comic

books continued to expand. Parents’ Magazine and Woman’s Day both ran articles on comics,

though these were of the more dispassionate type. The Parents’ article, “Common Sense About

Comics,” reiterated the educational consensus of the 1940s from individuals such as Josette

Frank, and maintained that some comics were bad, but not all, and parents should educate

themselves rather than condemn outright. “Certainly a steady diet of comics is bad. So is a steady

diet of jam. But we don’t throw away the jam jar—we provide other foods along with jam.”21

Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg, director of the Child Study Association of America, wrote

the Woman’s Day article, “What About The Comics Books?” In it, Gruenberg assessed

arguments both for and against comic books, ultimately concluding that “We cannot fight what is

objectionable in the comics by calling for more censorship or police guards.”22 Keeping in line

with the CSAA’s stance on parental involvement in the supervision and selection of children’s

20
Hildegard Benner. Meeting minutes, June 24, 1948, Box 2, Folder 21: Minutes, 1948-1979. CECBC.
21
Katherine Clifford, “Common Sense about Comics,” Parents Magazine, October 1948. N.p.
22
Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg, “What About The Comics Books?” Woman’s Day, September 1948.
reading, Gruenberg called for a “wider and a more active and more intelligent interest on the part

of parents” to promote good reading for their children.23

In view of the Cincinnati Committee’s executive minutes and records, the group’s

meeting on October 3 was its first as a fully functioning organization. The committee adopted

Dr. Weaver and company’s proposed criteria, created another subcommittee to select a group of

“forty or fifty” comic book reviewers, and created a finance committee to raise money and track

group expenditures.24 Dr. Weaver’s criteria comprised four levels of objectionality over three

subject areas. Comics could receive ratings of No Objection, Some Objection, Objectionable, or

Very Objectionable. In later years, the committee also substituted grades from A to D for these

ratings, noting that comics rated No Objection or Some Objection were, in their opinion, safe for

children to read.

To receive a rating of No Objection in the first category, “Cultural Area”, a comic was to

possess good art and diction, and have no situations which offended good taste along with an

“overall pleasing effect.”25 The Cincinnati Committee also included a stipulation in its Cultural

Area that “undermining in any way traditional American folkways” merited Some Objection,

while “[p]ropaganda against or belittling traditional American institutions” led to an

Objectionable rating.

The second category, “Moral Area”, functioned as a response to crime comics, by which

standards the Cincinnati Committee would consider nearly all crime titles to be objectionable.

Stories with No Objection featured “properly dressed”, wholesome characters in an “uplifting

23
Gruenberg, “What About”, ibid.
24
Hildegard Benner. Meeting minutes, October 6, 1948, Box 2, Folder 21: Minutes, 1948-1979. CECBC. The
librarian Ernest Miller, secretary Hildegard Benner, Mr. Dibowski of the juvenile court, Rev. Murrell, and a Mrs.
Rengering made up the reviewer search committee, while Murrell placed Mary Bradstreet (named treasurer at the
group’s subsequent meeting), Kemper McComb, and Dr. Wheeler on the finance committee.
25
H.B. Weaver, “Criteria for Evaluating Comic Books, 1948.” Box 1, Folder 2: 1948 evaluation. CECBC.
plot” and only incidental references to crime, with the stipulation that the story “[did] not

compromise good morals.”26 The mere appearance of a criminal or criminal act moved the story

to Some Objection, and in a direct rebuke to Lev Gleason’s series, depicting “...Crime stories

even if they purport to show that crime does not pay”, merited an objectionable rating. Also

included in the Objectionable criteria in the Moral Area was the portrayal of law enforcement as

stupid or ineffective, which mirrored other codes like the ACMP’s and reinforced a message that

comics were to promote respect for authority.

The final area of Weaver’s criteria was “Morbid Emotionality”, later explained by

Murrell as functioning to keep children’s minds safe from violence or disturbing situations in

comic books. A No Objection comic simply needed to “not arouse morbid emotionality of

children”, though Weaver never entirely clarified what this meant. Deaths of any sort or the

appearance of strange creatures merited a rating of Some Objection, while nearly any form of

violence, actual or implied, warranted an Objectionable rating. The criteria for a Very

Objectionable Rating was the same for each area of Weaver’s criticism: “An exaggerated degree

of any of the above-mentioned acts or scenes.” The committee later eliminated the Very

Objectionable rating due to criticism over its vague and arbitrary nature.

The committee’s first comprehensive evaluation, released in November 1948, rated 378

comic books, breaking down into the following levels of objection: No Objection, 105, Some

Objection, 94, Objectionable, 102, and Very Objectionable, 57. The committee found funny

animal stories to be unobjectionable, but expectedly, any comics with “crime” in the title resided

in the Very Objectionable category. Of course, not everyone was pleased with the Cincinnati

Committee’s initial work, and an anonymous letter presumed to also be from 1948 was, by the

organization of the archival collection, the first piece of critical mail the committee received.
26
Weaver, 1948 criteria.
Signed only “a fed up citizen,” the letter read: “I am writing this letter as to let you know what I

think of you no-good stinkers who cant [sic] mind your own business. Also I would like to offer

a suggestion - the next time you fatheads don’t have anything to do - Go jump in the lake, and

take your comic book list along with you. crumbs”27

As the domestic realities of the Cold War began to set in, so too did a profound sense of

anxiety. This anxiety stemmed from multiple sources – the existential threat of Stalinist Russia,

the consequences of American nuclear behavior (for which comics served as a means of

escapism), and lingering memories of the Depression which led Americans to fear the loss of

their newfound abundance.28 As this Cold War anxiety began to creep in and Americans looked

for detractors to their idealized society, namely in communists and other leftists, they began to

fear brain-washing and other un-American activities. This fear of brain-washing became

especially evident in later critiques offered by the anti-comics movement, which saw comic

books as communist tools to gain control over the nation’s youth by subverting their morals.

These developments mirrored the emergence of “consensus America,” and moreover a

culture of domestic containment that rewarded adherents to the mainline political culture while

marginalizing detractors.29 The Cincinnati Committee contributed to this manifestation of

domestic containment through their rating system—it served as a means for parents to shield

their children from comics that would have a negative effect on them, thereby helping to contain

the influence of comic books. The inclusion of Weaver’s “Cultural Area” in the Cincinnati

Committee’s criteria set it apart from the other rudimentary codes of the time such as Fawcett

27
Anonymous critical letter to committee, presumed 1948, Box 3, Folder 1: Correspondence prior to 1950. CECBC.
28
Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade: America, 1945-1955 (New York: Knopf, 1956), 14. “In St. Louis, an
Inquiring Reporter stopped a young mother and asked about her personal expectations for the postwar. ‘Oh, things
are going along just wonderfully,’ she bubbled. ‘Harry has a grand job, there's the new baby—' Then she frowned.
Do you think it's really all going to last?’”
29
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War, 3rd ed. (New York: Perseus, 2008),
16.
Comics’, the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers, and the National Organization for

Decent Literature. Where these codes mainly saw themselves concerned with the regulation of

sexual and violent imagery, the Cincinnati Committee, reflecting the seepage of Cold War

ideology into American domestic life, actively sought to regulate what they saw as, in their own

words, “propaganda against or belittling of traditional American institutions.”30

Onto the National Scene: The Cincinnati Committee and Parents’ Magazine

1949 started on a quiet note for the Cincinnati Committee, but by year’s end they would

be well on their way to the national repute they enjoyed throughout much of the early-to-mid

1950s. At their January 11 meeting, one of only two that they held for the year, Dr. Weaver

noted that the overall percentages of objectionable nature reflected in the 1948 evaluation were

55% objectionable or very objectionable and 45% no objection or some objection.31

In the last weeks of February and early weeks of March, Rev. Murrell wrote to several

notable magazines, ostensibly to offer the group’s evaluation campaign as a source for an article.

Much to Murrell’s chagrin, all the publishers that he wrote to during this time turned him down.

Woman’s Day declined to feature the work of the Cincinnati Committee, as they had already

featured Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg’s article in their September 1948 issue. Good Housekeeping

rejected Rev. Murrell’s proposal as well, saying that there was “no possibility” of a story on the

committee, while LIFE said in somewhat friendlier terms that while they were considering a

story on comic books in some form, they “had no definite plans for a story.”32

The latter part of spring and summer were friendlier to Rev. Murrell and the committee,

as they were featured in a newspaper article in early April and held a short meeting on May 3 to

30
Weaver, 1948 criteria.
31
It is important to reiterate here that the Cincinnati Committee held that comics rated “no objection” or “some
objection” were all right for children to read.
32
Letter from E.M. Miller to Jesse Murrell, March 10, 1949. Box 3, Folder 1: Correspondence prior to 1950.
CECBC.
discuss publisher correspondence and updates to the criteria. The committee made another

evaluation during this time, but its records are missing from the evaluation collection. They did,

however, keep a more detailed record of which persons evaluated which comics for this

evaluation. Reviewers worked in teams of two and were responsible for three to five comic

books each.

Their long-awaited break came on July 12, when Clara Savage Littledale, an editor at

Parents’ Magazine, wrote to Rev. Murrell and offered to run an article on the Committee’s work

in one of their upcoming issues, offering $50 for a completed article of 1,500 to 1,800 words and

calling the committee’s work “among the first that goes about an intelligent evaluation [of comic

books].”33 Incidentally, something Littledale says near the end of her letter has a fateful

importance for the Cincinnati Committee: “We should also like to stress in the article that

Cincinnati’s example should be followed and that other communities may well work out such

committees.”34 Without the agency afforded their message by Parents’ Magazine, the Cincinnati

Committee would certainly not have enjoyed such wide success and admiration.

Rev. Murrell went to work writing the article for Parents, titling it “Cincinnati Does

Something About The Comic Books.” In his article, he relays the story of the founding of the

committee because of his sermon on comic books, tells of the wide array of organizations and

interests represented on the committee, describes the development of criteria and review process,

and lays out for the first time their policy of education rather than censorship advocacy. 35

33
Letter from Clara Savage Littledale to Jesse Murrell, July 12, 1949, Box 3, Folder 1: Correspondence prior to
1950. CECBC.
34
Ibid.
35
Jesse L. Murrell, “Cincinnati Does Something About the Comic Books,” unpublished draft in Box 4, Folder 1:
Articles. CECBC. “Furthermore, [the committee] decided it would seek no [censoring] laws or ordinances. If the
publishers chose to ignore the appeals to make better comics, the committee would try to persuade the public to be
selective in buying them.”
 Littledale wrote back in early October and told Rev. Murrell that Parents planned on

publishing “Cincinnati Does Something About The Comic Books” in their January 1950 issue,

but informed him that the evaluation list he sent initially of spring 1949 was, at that point, very

out of date. Littledale, attaching a list of new comics, hoped that the Cincinnati Committee

would be able to accomplish a new evaluation and offered incentive by speaking of the potential

payoffs of the article’s appearance:

The publication of this article in PARENTS’ MAGAZINE, which has a circulation of

more than 1,200,000 throughout the United States will, I am sure, bring the most

favorable kind of attention to your Cincinnati group. It will get Cincinnati talked about all

over the nation as the one community that did something constructive and intelligent

about comic books. We think it will stimulate other communities to follow your example

and therefore, we are extremely anxious to hear from you that you will cooperate with us

in evaluating promptly the supplementary list of comic books that you missed in your

first evaluation as well as those that have been launched since then.36

Following Littledale’s reply, the committee redoubled its efforts and sent to Parents’ a mostly

complete re-evaluation on November 17, which reached New York later that week. Littledale

was pleased with the quickness of the response and though the article was delayed a month,

Parents’ increased the committee’s payment to $100, and provided the greatest intangible benefit

of the Cincinnati Committee for the Evaluation of Comics’ short existence: in under two years,

they had gone from a small group of interested citizens to a large, serious moral advocacy group

with a nationwide audience. From the publication of their first Parents’ article in February 1950

to the cessation of the partnership in April 1957 (the Committee had stopped making yearly

36
Letter from Clara Savage Littledale to Jesse Murrell, October 6, 1949, Box 3, Folder 1: Correspondence prior to
1950. CECBC.
evaluations by then), the Cincinnati Committee and Parents’ enjoyed a thriving, mutually

beneficial partnership.

In addition to their Parents’ exposure, the Christian Century, a major liberal Protestant

magazine, featured the Cincinnati Committee and a similar group in St. Paul, Minnesota in an

article regarding comic book “cleanup" groups. The St. Paul group was of similar occupational

membership: local diocesans, educators, and news distributors, but it also employed fifty high

school students in its reviewing team. The article described the main difference between the two

groups as a matter of criteria.

After the success of their 1949 evaluation’s publication in Parents’ Magazine, the

committee was relatively inactive for much of 1950, meeting only twice that year in May, and

deciding to furnish their yearly evaluation in early June. The executive committee went through

some membership changes during this time, losing Kemper McComb of the Council of Churches

due to the committee’s meetings not working with his schedule, and seeing Charles Dibowski of

Covington’s juvenile court move to a different city. Leo Streck, from the Covington diocese, was

also assigned to different work in 1950 and had to discontinue his affiliation with the committee.

Though the effect that the Parents’ partnership with the Cincinnati Committee had on the

national discussion over children’s reading of comic books did not materialize for a few more

years, it moved the Cincinnati committee from a local decency group (of which existed many

around the nation) to an advocacy organization with a national audience for its critiques. It was

this partnership, especially in the more tenuous years of the anti-comics movement, that brought

them widespread adoration—and more than a few strongly worded letters.

Greater Audience, Greater Criticism

Cincinnati Committee now settled into a regular schedule of meetings and preparing

evaluations for Parents’, which appeared in the November 1952 of the magazine. At the group’s

first of their two meetings, Arthur Santanen, a YMCA staffer new to the committee who worked

with young boys, shared some observations about comics from his workplace, namely that small

children did not display interest in comics, but boys aged 12-14 displayed tremendous interest.

The 1951 evaluation rated 423 comic books, finding 239 to be suitable for children’s

reading and 158 to be objectionable, while the 1952 evaluation looked at 482 comics, finding

59% of those comics good for children to read. Murrell noted in his annual letter to the reviewer

base in 1952 that the percentage of acceptable comics had dropped perspicuously from 68% in

1950, which Murrell attributed to “some new comic books. . .which are generally bad from the

standpoint of children.”37

No doubt the new comics, which Rev. Murrell described as war comics, mystery and

horror comics, “witch and ghost magazines,” and science-fiction magazines had much to do with

Bill Gaines and his new line of EC Comics, many of which debuted in 1950 and would, in time,

become the scapegoat for the most virulent comics criticism. The committee suffered its first

major loss in mid-1952, as Weaver took a job as head of the psychology department at the

University of Hawaii, leaving Joan Bollenbacher, a member of the Cincinnati Board of

Education, in his place. Weaver continued his comic book supervision advocacy in Hawaii,

explaining why several newspaper stories on comic book evaluations appeared in Honolulu

newspapers.

37
Ibid., also Jesse Murrell, Letter to Comic Book Reviewers, August 23, 1952, Box 1, Folder 5: 1952 evaluation.
CECBC
 The first hint of international relevance for the Cincinnati Committee came in 1952, when

Rev. Murrell received a document titled Evaluation List of Comics Published in Britain, likely a

response to a request by the United States Department of State Library there for the committee’s

evaluation work. The document, presented alongside a record of a Parliament debate on

“American-style comics,” says that the work in Britain “parallels that of an American committee,

the Cincinnati Committee on Evaluation of Comic Books.”38 The British committee, for the most

part, agreed with the Cincinnati Committee when mutually evaluating a comic book, but some

notable disagreements existed.39

The British committee rated a Roy Rodgers (misspelling the famous Western movie

actor’s name) comic No Objection, but the Cincinnati Committee rated the book Objectionable.

The British committee also rated western comic Bill Boyd and Fawcett superhero anthology Whiz

Comics (where Captain Marvel was introduced) as Some Objection, despite those books also

being rated Objectionable by the Cincinnati Committee. Conversely, the British committee rated

the science-fiction book Captain Video, Lev Gleason’s superhero comic Daredevil and the

detective/crime series Sam Hill and Crime Exposed as Objectionable, despite the Cincinnati

Committee rating them only Some Objection.40

In October and November 1952, the committee began to receive more serious criticism

from readers of Parents’. A critical letter came from Albert and Helen Cree of Schenectady,

New York, who had two major “immediately apparent” qualms with the Cincinnati Committee’s

evaluation methods as printed in Parents’ Magazine.41 The Cree’s first objection was that the

38
Evaluation List of Comics Published in Britain, Box 6, Folder 1: Britain Report. CECBC.
39
About half of the comics reviewed by the British committee had been previously reviewed by the Cincinnati
Committee, and they noted the Cincinnati Committee’s ratings in parentheses.
40
Britain report.
41
Letter from Albert and Helen Cree to Parents Magazine, November 6, 1952. Box 3, Folder 2: Correspondence,
1951-1952. CECBC.
committee’s scope was too narrow, evaluating comic books individually instead of in general,

and not looking at the greater picture of youthful reading habits. The Crees proposed that it was

more important to assess how much time children spent reading comics, rather than demarcate

the content of individual comics.

The second main objection raised by the Crees concerned the subjective nature of the

Objectionable criteria: “No standard is proposed to determine what make a comic book

objectionable and what does not.”42 The Crees referred to the committee’s policy of rating most

Western comics Objectionable due to the treatment of Native Americans, to which the Crees

agreed, noting “[i]t is important that our children not think poorly of the first Americans. . .

evidently their horses are less objectionable as Silver and Trigger received “A” (No Objection)

classifications!”43

What the Crees worried more about, however, was the influence of love and romance

comics on young girls such as their three daughters. They noted that the Cincinnati Committee

found 94.7 of the “Love-Romance” books evaluated to be acceptable for children to read, but

wondered whether the amount of love comics, as well as the “ideas of love, courtship and

marriage” that they preached were healthy for young girls who did not yet have substantive

courtship experiences.

Later scholars echoed the Cree’s worries, notably Bradford Wright, who offered that the

overarching theme in the deluge of love comics during this time was to encourage girls to marry

young and fulfill expectations of 1950s domesticity. 44 Pointing to the committee’s rating of

Classics Illustrated, as well as Beany (a comic adaptation of the children’s puppet show Time for

42
Albert and Helen Cree to Parents’ Magazine.
43
Ibid.
44
Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2001), 130.
Beany) as Objectionable, the Crees cast doubt on the basis by which the Cincinnati Committee

evaluated its comic books. “We believe,” the Crees said to end their letter, “[Parents’ Magazine]

did not exercise good judgment in publishing this article, which is, not only incomplete and

inconclusive, but is also very misleading.”45

Although the Cincinnati Committee received a fair amount of criticism during 1952, they

also garnered some laudatory and extensive newspaper spotlights. The first of these was in the

Honolulu Advertiser, based on a lengthy interview with Dr. Weaver, who had again moved there

in August to take a job at the University of Hawaii. Weaver spoke favorably yet humbly of the

committee, saying “[o]f course we have no way of determining definitely whether or not our

work has brought about a decrease in the more objectionable comic books, but we sincerely hope

it has.”46

Speaking at length in the rest of the article about his views on comic books, Weaver also

shared some demographic information on which segments of children enjoyed comic books the

most. Annabel Damon, the article’s author, follows this up by offering a prescient way of

describing the cultural challenges that comics presented: “What do these facts mean? They mean

that today’s children live not merely in an age of atomic energy, but also in an age of mass

communication. Many of them--unlike their elders--have never known a world without comics.

Today--directly or indirectly--this form of entertainment touches every child, and no amount of

parental care can prevent it.”47

The committee’s second bout of newspaper publicity came from the Cincinnati Enquirer

in late November, opening with the proud claim that the Cincinnati Committee “has drawn the

45
Albert and Helen Cree to Parents’ Magazine.
46
Annabel Damon, “What Comics Do Your Children Read” Honolulu Advertiser, October 26, 1952.
47
Ibid.
attention of every state in the Union and six foreign countries.”48 The article briefly elucidated

the Committee’s evaluation criteria, before showcasing a rare instance of the Cincinnati

Committee visibly subscribing to Cold War ideology: “In the latest survey of comic books, the

Rev. Mr. Murrell believes one of his readers uncovered some insidious Communist propaganda.

The book in question dealt with the Korean War and it showed the United Nations cause as

completely hopeless with nothing to look forward to but continued killings of American

soldiers.”49 Rev. Murrell sent the comic in question to the FBI but appears to have never received

a response.50

Fittingly, with this increased attention paid to morals in the United States during the early

1950s, the Cincinnati Committee’s first of two governmental references occurred this year. The

Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, chaired by Arkansas senator E.C.

Gathings, met in December 1952 to assess the levels of purported moral decay brought to the

nation through its print media. The Committee’s goals, as Gathings stated them, were to

[D]etermine, by investigation and study, the extent to which books, magazines, and

comic books containing immoral, obscene, or otherwise offensive matter, or placing

improper advertising emphasis on crime, violence, and corruption, are being made

available to the people of the United States through the United States mails and

otherwise; and to determine the adequacy of existing law to prevent the publication and

distribution of books containing immoral, offensive, and other undesirable matter.51

48
Cincinnati Enquirer, “Comic Book Committee Gaining Far-Flung Fame”, November 23, 1952. In addition to the
United Kingdom, letters for the Cincinnati Committee expressing support or asking for aid came from Sweden,
South Africa, and the Philippines.
49
Cincinnati Enquirer, “Far-Flung Fame.”
50
The comic likely was a copy of EC Comics’ Two-Fisted Tales or Frontline Combat. Harvey Kurtzman, creator of
MAD, created his war comics in an anti-war mode due to his experiences as a veteran.
51
Hearings Before The Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, December 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, 1952
(Washington, United States Government Printing Office: 1953), 1. (Hereafter Gathings Committee hearings)
While the investigation purported to examine all the previously mentioned forms of print media,

Gathings’ committee almost entirely singled out comics for examination and criticism. Said

Gathings, “Some of the most offensive infractions of the moral code were found

to be contained in the low-cost, paper-bound publications known as pocket-size books, in so-

called cheesecake magazines, and in the flagrantly misnamed ‘comics.’”52

Arch Crawford, president of the Magazine Publishers Association, a trade organization of

over 100 publishers, was the first to refer to the Cincinnati Committee in his testimony. He

defended the practices of Dell, a member company in his association that also published comic

books, in light of the Cincinnati Committee’s ratings. After offering the committee’s acceptance

of Dell, Crawford humorously took issue with the Cincinnati Committee’s rating of The Lone

Ranger as objectionable, saying that his sons loved the comic and “have not gone to hell yet.”53

After days of testimony, the Gathings Committee deliberated and at the end of the month,

released a report that detailed their proposed actions to stem the tide of objectionable literature:

greatly increased and punitive government oversight. The committee proposed that interstate

transportation of books or pamphlets “…of an obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy character”

become a federal offense, that the Postmaster General possess the power to restrict challenged

objectionable mail, and that the publishing industries take some steps toward self-regulation.54

However, internal dissent hampered the efficacy of the Committee’s recommendations.

Representatives Emanuel Celler of New York and Francis E. Walter of Pennsylvania (who later

chaired the House Un-American Activities Committee beginning in 1955) disagreed with the

Committee’s approach and presented their own minority report that criticized the Committee’s

52
Ibid.
53
Gathings Committee hearings, 116-120.
54
Report of the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials (Washington, United States Government
Printing Office: 1952), 116-120. (Hereafter Gathings Committee report)
interpretation of existing media regulation law. Believing, in the classic conservative legal mode,

that most states already possessed stringent laws regarding obscenity and that states needed to

merely enforce their existing laws more strongly, the two men repeatedly claimed their

disapproval of both objectionable literature and new, more stringent forms of censorship

legislation.

In the story of the Cincinnati Committee, the Gathings Committee helps to typify several

factors important in understanding their greater relevance to the anti-comics movement and

conservative social climate of the time. First, Arch Crawford’s reference to them in

Congressional testimony highlighted the respectability of their critique, amplified by the

perceived “expert” approval from Parents’ magazine, which he used to defend the group’s

critiques to Gathings. Second, that the Committee formed when it did points to the emerging

thought in American political life that culture, and more specifically comic books, should face

more stringent regulation. Though the Gathings Committee was undermined by internal dissent

and its own reactionary chair, it remains, like the Cincinnati Committee, an understudied part of

the tightening cultural politics of the 1950s.

The following year, the committee exchanged some correspondence with notable figures

in the battles over comic books, adjusted their criteria slightly, and continued to receive critical

letters. The group met on February 6 for the first of its two yearly meetings, deciding to nod

toward the Korean War effort (which by this point would be over in less than half a year), adding

a new criteria to the Objectionable part of the Morbid Emotionality section that read “Stories or

frames which tend to affect the war effort of our nation adversely.”55

The committee also combined some old criteria into Morbid Emotionality’s 4th

Objectionable criteria, which now read “anything having a sadistic implication or suggesting use
55
Hildegarde Benner, Meeting minutes, February 6, 1953. Box 2, Folder 21: Minutes, 1948-1979. CECBC.
of black magic.”56 At this meeting, Rev. Murrell also read a letter from New York sociologist

Harvey Zorbaugh, editor of Educational Sociology and a sponsor of serious pro-comics

scholarship in his journal during 1944 and 1949. Zorbaugh wrote to the committee to encourage

attendance at a “Workshop on the Cartoon Narrative” held at New York University.

Zorbaugh and his graduate students were interested in questions pertaining to emotional

needs of children and how comic books fulfilled those needs, how comic books shaped

children’s worldviews, the effect of comic books on the ideals of children, whether or not violent

content made children anxious or conditioned them to be criminals, whether or not comic books

damaged children’s reading abilities, and if they hampered the social skills of children in any

way.57 Rev. Murrell could not attend due to a previous engagement, and the committee elected to

send Hildegard Benner, the committee’s secretary, in his stead.

George Hecht, the publisher of Parents’, passed on a letter to Rev. Murrell in late

November that constituted the fiercest criticisms the committee would face in a piece of mail.

According to Hecht, the letter, which he had held onto since August, was addressed to their

editorial advisor, Oscar Dystel, and penned by a man named Vernon Pope who worked for a

public relations firm contracted by National Comics.58

Pope, who appeared to know Dystel outside of a professional scope, impresses upon him

that he does not think Parents’ should continue to reprint the Cincinnati Committee’s

evaluations, questioning “the competence of this group to evaluate reading material for

children,” and wondering if they really were “trained to intelligently evaluate comics

56
Ibid.
57
Letter from Harvey Zorbaugh to the Cincinnati Committee, February 16th, 1953. Box 1, Folder 6: 1953
evaluation. CECBC.
58
The company later known as DC Comics.
magazines.”59 Pope objected further to the lack of information regarding the committee’s 84

reviewers, citing no description of their backgrounds, what training they underwent before

evaluating comic books, or what they thought constituted good reading for children.

Another of Pope’s criticisms, which by this point had been raised many times, were the

subjective nature of the criteria, namely the provisions against “unconventional behavior,”

arguing that some of America’s most cherished figures could be criticized on those grounds.

Pope also opposed the new criteria against “adversely affecting the war effort,” and the criteria

against “undermining American folkways.” Cautious and critical of Parents’ for readily

accepting the Cincinnati Committee’s views on patriotism and other social views, Pope pointed

to what he saw as an inconsistency in the Cincinnati Committee’s rating of The Lone Ranger as

Objectionable while rating at the same time his companion Tonto’s comic No Objection despite

the books being “...identical in concept and execution.”60 Pope, to end his letter, also expressed

his confusion over Objectionable ratings of Action Comics, Buzzy, Famous Funnies, and

Superboy.

Pope’s letter notwithstanding, the rest of 1953 continued without incident for the

Cincinnati Committee. Their evaluation went as scheduled and copies of their lists and criteria

were highly sought by educators and church personnel from across the country. A bid sheet

typed up by Murrell in June called for 30,000 copies of the 1953 evaluation, 1,000 copies of

publishers whose works the committee rated, and 3,000 order cards.61 Benner attended Harvey

Zorbaugh’s Cartoon Narrative seminar, and while not reporting a great deal of the event in

meeting minutes, her visit was clearly fruitful as she met another ardent defender of comic

59
Letter from Vernon Pope to Oscar Dystel, August 26th, 1953. Box 3, Folder 3: Correspondence, 1953.
60
Vernon Pope to Oscar Dystel.
61
1953 stationery order sheet, Box 1, Folder 6: 1953 evaluation. CECBC.
books, Josette Frank of the Child Study Association, while in New York. According to Benner,

Dr. Zorbaugh was impressed by the continued loyalty of the Cincinnati Committee’s reviewers. 62

Emboldened by his committee’s success, Rev. Murrell wrote to Dr. Fredric Wertham, a

significant voice in the anti-comics movement, on December 11. Hoping to foment a partnership,

Murrell complimented Wertham’s work and spoke of the committee’s formation, noting in a

postscript the “extensive contact” with groups around the nation afforded the committee by

Parents’.63 Wertham replied that he had known of the committee and its work for some time.

However, as Wertham would express in this letter and one more time in the future, he

vehemently disagreed with Murrell and the Committee. Wertham objected to the committee’s

range of classifications, saying that there was no such thing as a comic with some objection or no

objection--according to Wertham, comics were “not only debased but definitely harmful.”64

In a scant five years, the Cincinnati Committee for the Evaluation of Comics went from a

small group that gathered at a local library, confronting what they perceived as a growing

menace to their children, to a force of over 100 reviewers and committee persons that concerned

parents, educators, and religious personnel looked towards for guidance and expert opinions. The

committee’s partnership with Parents’ Magazine contributed the most to their increased standing

in the eyes of the American public, but equally important was the committee’s makeup of

experts. Consisting of well-educated individuals (“the cream of the crop,” according to Murrell)

from fields that held considerable sway over the development of children as well as notable local

62
Hildegard Benner, Meeting minutes, March 25, 1953, Box 2, Folder 21: Minutes, 1948-1979. CECBC.
63
Letter from Jesse Murrell to Fredric Wertham, December 11, 1953. Box 3, Folder 3: Correspondence, 1953.
64
Letter from Fredric Wertham to Jesse Murrell, December 29, 1953. Box 118, Fredric Wertham Papers.
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
academics, the Cincinnati Committee served well the function of experts in the postwar era—

they made the unmanageable manageable.65

Possessing the guides and grades from the Cincinnati Committee, parents now had a

rudimentary rating system for deciding what comics they would either purchase for their children

or allow into their homes, and teachers now knew what comics to bar from their classrooms. As

the Cold War evolved and Americans became ever more concerned about brainwashing and un-

American activities, those in the anti-comics movement began to turn a sharper eye towards the

pedestrian comic book. Where naysayers posited that comics dulled the senses of children and

turned them away from classic works of literature, the comics stood accused of functioning as

coded communist propaganda—controlling the nation’s youth by mining away at their morals.

That most virulent and reactionary criticism of comic books, as well as the most

significant recognition of the Cincinnati Committee came the following year, in 1954. The

following chapter, “The Anti-Comics Movement Triumphant, 1954-1956” charts the decisive

apex of the anti-comics movement, the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile

Delinquency, and its role in the formation of the Comics Code. That code, the strictest imposed

at any time against a cultural medium, found itself profoundly influenced by the Cincinnati

Committee and other decency groups. The Cincinnati Committee’s influence peaked during the

early days of the Comics Code but, as we shall see, they soon put themselves out of work.

65
May, Homeward Bound, 29.