Titles

During the time when the trend toward love-confession comics seemed to be in the ascendancy, those crime comics which continued without changing their policy were read more than ever. Towards the latter part of 1950 a reversal started. Having betrayed their experts by suddenly proclaiming that psychological need and popular demand was not for murder but for love and confession, the industry reversed itself again and set sail for sadism on the old and much-publicized theory that this is what children really need to get rid of their aggressions.

New crime comic books sprang up. Where formerly Murder, Inc. had become My Private Life, and Western Killers had changed to My True Love, it was now the other way around; My Love Memoirs became Hunted, All Romances became Mr. Risk, and My Intimate Affair became Inside Crime. Thus does an alert industry follow the abrupt changes in the psychology of American children. Or is it perhaps the other way around?