Home > Letters to CR
Robert Beerbohm on Dr. Wertham
posted December 24, 2005
[
Editor's Note: The following is a posting to a (mostly) academics group on comics on the subject of Dr. Wertham that
Mr. Beerbohm offered up for publication here at
CR. Mr. Beerbohm is a well-regarded old comics and comics-related books authority/dealer, so the subject starts there.]
All i have is a couple original first prints for sale right now, as well as a couple copies of Wertham's last book, THE WORLD OF FANZINES, centered on "fandom".
Interesting side bar on TWOF is Dr Wertham referenced & quoted from my comics fanzine FANZATION (five issues 1969-70) no less than 9 times including quoting from a letter on comics creativity by Spiderman creator Steve Ditko in our 3rd issue, though he never identified Ditko by name. He must have asssumed Ditko was just another fan at the time.
The index in the back of TWOF is absolutely useless though - the few times my zine was listed in the index, the pages it says do not match up
- and there are half a dozen direct references & quotes not in the index including the Ditko letter quote from my zine.
Wertham basicly "exhonerated" comics readers in TWOF, acknowledging that maybe aspects of SOTI were wrong.
I still remember when i was in high school and my mother informing me there was a Doctor Wertham on the phone for me. Talk about trepidation being scared to take that phone call.
Those of us in early comics fandom in the 1960s grew up learning from our older comics collecting peers that Wertham was The Devil Incarnate Who Destroyed Comic Books In America. I thought at first he had found me, a comics collector, tracking down all us comics collectors and was coming after us.
He was a very nice man - he ordered a subscription to FANZATION. We exchanged many letters during 1969 thru 1972, as he asked probing questions regarding comics fandom, how i got into it, what i got out of it, where i thought i would be going in it. He said he was researching "fandom" which i learned later included what was then science fiction fandom.
Then in late 1972 I moved to the San Fran Bay Area and Bud Plant, John Barrett and myself started Comics & Comix, the first store HQ'd on Telegraph Ave just a couple blocks from UC-Berkeley. We fell out of contact. A couple years later The World of Fanzines was published and soon thereafter he died.
Sounds like i want to get Bart's new book. Congrats.
