[1] Many of his other conjectures, particularly about hidden sexual themes (e.g. images of female nudity concealed in drawings or Batman and Robin as gay partners), were met with derision within the comics industry.

[3] Wertham critiqued the commercial environment of comic book publishing and retailing, objecting to air rifles and knives advertised alongside violent stories.

Wertham sympathized with retailers who did not want to sell horror comics, yet were compelled to by their distributors' table d'hôte product line policies.

Consequently, Seduction of the Innocent serves as a culminating expression of his sentiments about comics and presents augmented examples and arguments, rather than wholly new material.

Even if the government didn't act beyond the hearing, and Kefauver lost interest in comics after he was selected as a presidential candidate, the public damage was already done.

[8] The committee's questioning of their next witness, EC publisher William Gaines, focused on violent scenes of the type Wertham had described.

At the time, Wertham was also the Court's appointed psychiatric expert during the trial of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, a gang of youths who had brutalized people and killed two men during the summer of 1954.

According to a 2012 study by Carol L. Tilley, Wertham "manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence" in support of the contentions expressed in Seduction of the Innocent.

[10][failed verification] He generally did not adhere to standards worthy of scientific research, instead using questionable evidence for his argument that comics were a cultural failure.

[11] Wertham used New York City adolescents from troubled backgrounds with previous evidence of behavior disorders as his primary sample population.

[16] West Germany from 1954 had the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons), a government agency intended to weed out publications, including comics, considered unhealthy for German youth.

This agency came about because of the "Gesetz über die Verbreitung jugendgefährdender Schriften" law passed on June 9, 1953, itself resulting from the "provisions for the protection of young persons" clause in Article 5 of the German constitution, regulating freedom of expression.

Witty, professor of education at Northwestern University, has well described these comics when he said that they "present our world in a kind of Fascist setting of violence and hate and destruction.

"Actually, Superman (with the big S on his uniform — we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an SS) needs an endless stream of ever new submen, criminals and "foreign-looking" people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible.