Number 1304: Headlights on full beam

With the 1948 cover of Phantom Lady #17, artist Matt Baker helped give us comic book fans a code word we've used now for decades: “headlights”. It happened when Dr. Fredric Wertham, M.D., published his book, Seduction of the Innocent, which pointed out how murder, crime and sexual perversion were all part of the comic books kids loved. Wertham used the cover to point out that children called big breasts on comic book women “headlights”. (This page has been razored out of some of copies of SOTI I've seen. By headlights fans, no doubt.)

I've pointed out before that Wertham’s book is a good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was used at the time to condemn comic books, but is used now to identify comics that belong on a special list of desirable collectibles. Interior art on this story is also by Matt Baker, and the whole issue was prepared by the Jerry Iger comic book shop, where Baker was a star. The publisher was Victor Fox, and the blobby printing was by some fast and dirty web press printing company of the 1940s, which didn't care that they were printing one of the most iconic covers and collectible comic books of all time.

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Number 1219: Baseball by moonlight

Ty Cobb (1886-1961) was an awfully great baseball player and a greatly awful person. There are many stories of his nastiness. Despite the records he set and his accomplishments on the field he's just as well known for his bad temperment, his aggression and intimidation of opposing players. The story is that Cobb filed his steel cleats to be razor sharp, and when he stole bases he slid into base “with his feet up and steel showing.”

I'm sure that Ty Cobb was the inspiration for “Foul Play” in Haunt of Fear #19 (1953). The story, with its gory ending, was fairly typical EC-revenge. But it was brought before a stunned public of non-comics readers with a page in Seduction of the Innocent (1954) by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

The caption reads, “A comic-book baseball game. Notice the chest protector and other details in the text and pictures.”

In 1986 I attended a panel with Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis at the San Diego Con. Davis made mention of the horror comics and the trouble they caused. Speaking of the Senate hearings and uproar over them Davis said, “I'd lie awake at night and think, did I cause this?”

This is the infamous baseball story, drawn by Jack Davis, and written by editor Al Feldstein.

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