COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Crime and Punishment 12 Universal
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Grade:
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6.5
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
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Certification #:
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3777931005
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Owner:
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GAM
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Crime and Punishment #12 is referenced in Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI) in the text on pages 21-22.
On pages 21-22 Wertham describes the anatomy of a crime comic as follows “A typical sample has inconspicuously above its crime title, ‘A force for good in the community!’ and underneath that in a small circle, ‘Crime does not pay,’ and then in a square, ‘TRUE criminal case histories!’ and, in smaller type, hard to read, the words ‘Dedicated to the eradication of crime!’ Average, normal boys have often told me that if they read such signs at all they know of course that they are only ‘eyewash’ intended to influence parents and teachers who have no time to read the whole comic book. The cover of this example depicts a corpse with blood on his mouth, with the killer who has just beaten him to death beside him”.
Wertham provided an expanded description of this comic in his November 1953 Ladies Home Journal article "What Parents don't know about Comic Books". The Ladies Home Journal article provided an advanced preview of content that would later be used in the SOTI and beginning on page 52 of this article Wertham described a crime comic as follows “Another typical sample has inconspicuously above its crime title: ‘A force for good in the community!’ and underneath that in a small circle: ‘Crime does not pay,’ and then in a square, ‘TRUE criminal case histories!’ and, in smaller type, hard to read, the words ‘Dedicated to the eradication of crime!’ Average, normal boys have often told me that if they read such signs at all they know of course that they are only ‘eyewash’ intended to influence parents and teachers who have no time to read the whole comic book. The cover of this example depicts a corpse with blood on his mouth, with the killer who has just beaten him to death beside him. In the doorway lounges a ‘nattily dressed’ man, gun in hand, saying: ‘I couldn’t do better myself, Teddy, but you put me in a peculiar position! I should thank you for promotin’ me to the top of his mob, but what should I do about a guy who rubes out my boss?’” The nattily dressed man quote in the Ladies Home Journal article comes from the cover of Crime and Punishment #12 positively identifying the book as the SOTI source. Wertham goes on to describe several examples of interior story components contain in Crime and Punishment #12.
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