Throughout American history, controversies have emerged regarding the effects of new media on the nature of social order and especially the well-being of children. This was particularly true of the twentieth century, when cheap forms of entertainment like amusement parks (Coney Island, for example), movies, television, comic books, and computer games seemed to have a serious effect on children and their behavior. Behind these controversies lay important and critical questions. Did the depiction of socially disapproved and/or criminal and violent behavior have an immediate effect on young and unformed personalities? Would young people copy the scandalous behavior that was so often the subject of novels, films, and other cultural media? Would they copy the crime in crime comics?

If this was a danger, and if commercial culture validated depictions of disapproved behavior, who, if anyone, had the right or duty to regulate this culture? Was parental disapproval sufficient? Should government pass censorship laws? Should the entertainment industries be compelled to regulate themselves? And if some sort of regulation emerged, was this a serious attack on free speech and commerce?

The early 1950s saw an extraordinary uproar about a rise in juvenile delinquency in the United States. To a broad section of the public—including sociologists, childrearing experts, and politicians—one cause of this moral panic seemed to be crime and horror comic books, which were thought to promote copycat crime. The issue moved from journalism to televised Senate hearings that brought together the principal crime comic publishers and their critics. At issue was the question of whether culture, in the shape of comic books, could actually influence behavior. Should there be any limits to the imaginary violence to which children were exposed? Should violence in the media be regulated, and if so by whom?

A study of the controversy over crime comics in the early 1950s reveals the many problems associated with moral panics about the behavior of young people. It raises the issues of censorship, self-regulation, and, especially, the problem of determining if, indeed, children’s behavior is changed by exposure to disapproved culture.