To begin at the beginning:

When I was 4 years old (and my mother was reading Dell’s Animal Comics to me), Albert Alligator told Pogo Possum, “Ah good at readin’ pitchers.”

That may have been my first reason for loving comics. I was good at reading pictures. In fact, I loved to read comics before I could read.

And after I learned to read—well, let me describe a portion of the first issue of something my parents published in June 1949, when I was 6 and the Golden Age of comics was morphing into attempts to deal with a changing audience, even as attacks on the artform itself were becoming ever more vitriolic and actual comic book burnings were becoming a possibility:

The Cricket, self-described as “A periodical of culture and reefinement” with the epigraph “You plays cricket, drinks tea, and lifs the pinky when you holds the cup” (a Walt Kelly quote from Animal Comics), was a fanzine published by Mom and Dad and edited by Mom “at their editorial offices, mimeograph salon, studio, dishwashing and ironing parlors, nursery and residence.” Circulation of the mimeographed newsletter (judging from the published list of recipients) was 36, but only 4 of those copies went to relatives. (It was an ongoing attempt to communicate with friends.) In the midst of a variety of book, magazine, and music recommendations, was the following essay by Mom:

Best Sellers

So many friends have asked me in grim or pathetic tones, “Do you approve of comic books?” that I feel I must make some public statement which I can hand out to such gals and run for cover while they are reading it. The question, of course, makes about as much sense as “Do you approve of books?” but it is hard to say this without being thought impertinent or irrelevant by the questioners.

Comic books are naturally appealing. Pictures, like stage drama, are more interesting than mere print. The rapid action of most of the plots and the excitement of adventure hold a child’s attention in comics as they do in western movies. Passages of slow moving description are not necessary when the action is presented in pictures.

Many objections to comic books have to do with their subject matter. It is certainly not surprising that the children of avid whodunit readers should like detective comics and that children who are offered few fairy tales should satisfy their craving for fantasy with Superman and the Green Lantern (whose doings are in their way more moral than “Big Claus and Little Claus” and most of the contents of the Red, Violet, and Blue Fairy Books). And comics are cheaper than “good” fantasy—the Oz books are still retailing at $2. I wish I could afford to supply Judy [my nickname in 1949] with books which she would enjoy more (and there are plenty) than comics.

Some mothers object that their children bury themselves in comics and no longer spend time in active “fantasy play” with their friends. Cops and robbers are supposed to have given way to afternoons in the corners of the sofa with piles of comics. Comics are also supposed to have replaced “real literature” in the lives of our young. I can see no reason why there should not be a “real literature” in comic form. It is slow in taking shape, but the work of such artists as [Morris] Gollub, [Dan] Noonan, and Kelly give promise that comics can be good reading for children. Certainly these stories have been acted out by children—I’ve seen and heard it.

Comic art is a young art. When better comics are printed, kids will read them. I have considerable faith in the taste of children—they like good fiction better than bad; but as long as they are offered only mediocre, bad, and worse, in a form that is more appealing and cheaper than good stories, they will continue to read mediocre, etc.

I don’t know how to get good comics on the market any more than I know how to encourage the writing and publishing of other good books for children—but I am hopeful that artists and publishers will come across in time for our grandchildren to have lots of fun at a very moderate cost.

The largest number of periodicals in our household seems, in spite of culture and reefinement, to be made up of comic books. Most of our collection are really intended to be comic—that is, funny. Most of them are published by the Dell Publishing Company and portray the doings of urban children (Little Lulu, Henry) or urban animal child-substitutes (Walter Lantz, Merrie Melodies, Walt Disney, Tom and Jerry, etc.). The cream of the crop were, in the recent past, Our Gang, Raggedy Ann, and Fairy Tale Parade (still Dell) with the excellent drawing, interesting stories and amusing dialogue of Walt Kelly, Dan Noonan, and Morris Gollub; but these three gentlemen seem to be deserting the comic book business and two of the publications are no longer in existence. The least painful comics still on the market other than the ones I have just mentioned seem to be the Disney ones. I should recommend a recent special, still on the stands in Canton—“Donald Duck in the Treasure of the Andes” [Dell Four Color #223, actually “Lost in the Andes” by the then-anonymous Carl Barks]—as the best of the recent dime publications for the four- to eight-year-old. We do seem to have accumulated a number of Superboy, Wonder Woman, and Bat Man opera, but these do not hold the attention of our six-year-old for more than five or six readings. Even Raggedy Ann can beat that.

So, boiled down, among more reasons I loved comics as a grade-school kid were: