Avoiding grief, throwing myself back into my work

... When ... adolescent drug addiction had ... finally come to public attention, it ... led to the publication of lurid new comic books devoted entirely to the subject, like the one with the title, Teenage Dope Slaves. This is nothing but another variety of crime comic for a particularly deplorable character.

A further adornment of crime comics may be a seal on the cover indicating that the book is "Authorized A.C.M.P." (Association of Comics Magazine Publishers) and "Conforms to the comics code." This association, which is not listed in the telephone book, was formed following one of my most outspoken statements about what parents don't know about comic books. A representative sample of a comic book bearing this endorsement shows the customary unrelieved succession of crimes and violence. And among the weapons advertised in this comic book are guns, knives and whips—with thirty-seven illustrations of guns altogether, one of them a high-powered air pistol for $19.95. A District Attorney in New York City has definitely linked such arsenal advertisements to the actual arsenals confiscated from juveniles by the police.