One of the more infamous topics harped on by Dr. Fredric Wertham in his anti-crime/horror comic screed Seduction of the Innocent is what he calls "the injury to the eye motif". Mostly aimed at crime comics, he manages to include the term "horror" here:
“The injury to the eye motif is an outstanding example of the brutal attitude cultivated in comic books — the threat or actual infliction of injury to the eyes of a victim, male or female. This detail, occurring in uncounted instances, shows perhaps the true color of crime comics better than anything else. It has no counterpart in any other literature of the world, for children or for adults.
“A generation is being desensitized by these literal horror images. One comic shows a man slashing another man across the eyeballs with a sword. The victim: ‘MY EYES! I cannot see!’”
While I have come across the following examples and a few others as well, I have a hard time with his claim of "uncounted instances" and believe it was instead just another instance of his uncounted exaggerations.
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| Art by Bernard Bailey. |
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| Art by Bernard Bailey. |
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| From Charlton's notorious The Thing! #16. |
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| A Crom the Barbarian panel from Avon's Strange Worlds #2. |
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| One of the most often seen examples is from True Crime Comics #2. |
Weirdly the eye thing doesn't scare me all that much. I get uncomfortable when they start slashing at fingers. It makes me squirm.
ReplyDeleteBy the time I saw these types of images I was "immune" to the intended reaction, but they must have packed a punch back then.
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