Bane of the Bassinet

A lot of Americans like comic strips, but some hate them. One who hates them belligerently is Author-Critic John Mason Brown. Last week during a radio debate in Manhattan's Town Hall on what's wrong with the funnies, he collided with boisterous Cartoonist Al Capp (real name: Alfred Gerald Caplin).

Critic Brown admitted "that as a part of every healthy diet, everyone needs a certain amount of trash. . . . The comic books, however . . . [are] the lowest, most despicable, most harmful and unethical form of trash. . . As a people we must grow up. . . . We must put behind us that fear of the best and that passion for the mediocre which most Americans cultivate. Comics are the marijuana of the nursery . . . the bane of the bassinet."

Nonsense, retorted Al (Li'l Abner) Capp. "Comic strippers are storytellers. . . . Dickens might have written in comic books if he could have gotten a contract."

Novelist (Message from a Stranger) Marya Mannes, another Town Hall debater, was shocked. "Dickens is a creative artist," she snapped, "and Mr. Capp is a conveyor belt." The only good thing about the comics, said Mrs. Mannes, is that the most popular strips are in the most irresponsible papers, and serve to keep people from reading their editorials.

How about Critic Brown's own children, asked Publisher (Parents' Magazine, True Comics) George Hecht. "They have been so corrupted by you," said bitter father Brown, "that they love them."

Are comics any more corrupting than the classics? Of course not, said Capp. He told of a typical American family ("named Kinsey, of course") that wanted to shield young Kingsblood, 11, a comic fan, from "stories of murder, crime, violence and S-E-X." Before the Kinseys were through, said Capp, they had thrown out Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, Shakespeare and everything but the phone book. Cracked Capp: "Mr. Brown is sorry that Li'I Abner isn't Huckleberry Finn. I'm sorry that Mr. Brown isn't George Jean Nathan."

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