In the 1940s and 50s (aka “the Golden Age of Comic Books”), the US comic book industry looked very different from today. Instead of two dominant corporations, there were many smaller publishers producing comics. Heroes appeared and disappeared, jumped between titles and covers, and were sometimes blatant copies of one another. It was, compared to today, a chaotic industry.
This was partly because, in a time before television, comic books were not considered a serious art form but cheap mass entertainment, primarily marketed at children. And children loved them: they bought, collected, and traded comics with friends. The Golden Age coincided with the Second World War, and its aftermath. Even the most attentive parents had more pressing concerns than monitoring everything their children read.
That changed when Dr. Fredric Wertham, a child psychiatrist, noticed that his clients kept referring to comic books. He decided to investigate. In 1954, he published his book Seduction of the Innocent, intended to warn parents of the supposed dangers of comics. Among his claims:
- Realistic depictions of violence that children might imitate
- Advertisements that making children insecure about their bodies
- Heavy reliance on racist stereotypes
- Objectification of women and of violence against them
- And: Batman is gay — and turning the children gay
Having read the Seduction of the Innocent and more Golden Age comics than most people, I can weigh in: Dr. Wertham was not entirely wrong. He identified real issues in society, the juvenile justice system, education, and the comic book industry. For example, racism in Golden Age comics was a serious issue.
Unfortunately, he then leapt to the conclusion that comic books were the root of all these (and other) problems. He relied heavily on fearmongering, offered little evidence, and failed to cite sources. That makes it difficult to take his arguments seriously.
Sadly, that’s one of the parts he largely invented.
In the chapter titled Sex Perversion, Dr. Wertham accuses three superheroes of homosexuality: Batman, Wonder Woman, and the now mostly forgotten Black Cat. His major argument is the homosociality of these heroes: Batman is a very male-dominated story, while Wonder Woman was always marketed to girls. Both were children’s stories, aimed at an age when boys and girls see each other as opposite — the current, darker and adult Batman, is a later development, emerging around the 1980s.
A good-faith literary analysis of these characters is certainly possible. Dr. Wertham, however, was not conducting one. He fixated instead on the relationship between these heroes and their teenage sidekicks — with all the implications that that carries.
All Golden Age superheroes had teenage sidekicks. Batman’s popularity, in fact, increased with the introduction of Robin, aka Dick Grayson, an orphaned boy he adopts and who joins him on his adventures. Since the audience was mainly children, having a child character made the story more relatable. Batman and Robin became famous. Soon, other publishers followed suit.
There is one famous panel that is frequently cited as evidence: Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson lying in bed together. I never see the actual context of it discussed, and since it is the major piece of evidence, I wish to look at it more closely.
The panel comes from the story “Ten Nights of Fear!”, which appeared in Batman #84, published in June 1954, and is written by Bob Kane and illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff. It is the third story in the issue. In the first, Batman hallucinates a colony of giant bees. In the second, Catwoman wins a beauty competition through elaborate trickery. In the third, Batman has vivid nightmares that seem to come true the next day, pushing him toward a minor breakdown.
Two details matter: First, both characters are portrayed closer in this story than usual, and clearly share a bedroom. Second, they only appear to share a bed in that single panel at the beginning. In the rest of the story, there is a visible space between them, including a night stand.
It is the only Batman story I recall where their closeness seems unusual, but given the incredible number of Batman stories, I may easily have missed something. It is also the only panel consistently cited. The Wikipedia article Homosexuality in the Batman franchise also uses it as illustration, but doesn’t give any other examples.
My best bet? It was an artistic shortcut. Golden Age superhero comics are… not known for their narrative depth. They function mostly according to the logic of a child playing, and in this context, the story suddenly does make sense: for story purposes Bruce and Dick need to interact at night, so they share a room. They need to fit into the same panel, so they have one shared bed, but only when needed.
This, obviously, is my own interpretation. But the panel is very little to base an entire moral panic on.
My reluctance to read this picture as evidence for an actual romantic relationship is of course also important: if it were one, it would be deeply disturbing. Dick at this time is a teenage boy, and Bruce’s adopted son. The vast majority of people would feel an instinctive reaction of repulsion at the idea of them sharing the same bed — regardless of gender — and, I believe, that is exactly what Wertham intended. If his goal had been to argue for homosexuality in general, he could have chosen adult characters. Instead, he chose an emotionally manipulative language, designed to provoke repulsion — even outrage — in people.
So why revisit all of this today?
Because it mattered — and still matters.
Thanks to US-American cultural imperialism, superheroes are now a global phenomenon. And Dr. Wertham’s book caused lasting damage to the comic book industry. For a while, comics were widely seen as harmful to children; there were even public comic book burnings. Most Golden Age titles went out of business, and the surviving publishers eventually consolidated into the two big ones that have dominated the industry ever since: Marvel and DC.
To protect itself, the industry introduced self-censorship through the Comics Code Authority (CCA). They imposed roughly the same rules on comic books like the Hay’s Code did to movies — so, no gay stories were allowed. Restrictions on crime and violence also shaped the tone of the following era: the so-called Silver Age, which introduced most heroes we know today, is marked by its heightened absurdity.
But there is a second, darker reason why we should revisit this history.
We are currently witnessing a renewed wave of media censorship, both attempted and successful, and once again, the main target is queerness — especially in stories for children.
The emotional mechanism is the same. People want to protect children from inappropriate sexual content. For some, queerness is part and parcel of such content. Historically, gay men and lesbians were accused of “corrupting” or “recruiting” youth. This idea lingers. Today, trans people get the shorthand of the stick — whenever a trans character appears in children’s media, claims of indoctrination follow, with the exact same rhetoric, only slightly updated to fit modern needs.
Still, there is reason for optimism. Despite the damage he caused, Wertham’s work has fallen from grace and is no longer taken seriously. Those who remember him tend to cite his claims as examples of moral panic rather than credible scholarship.
And Batman? Batman endured.
