The first comic books appeared in 1935. Not having 
anything connected or literary about them, and being as 
difficult to decipher as the Book of Kells , they caught on with 
the young. The elders of the tribe, who had never noticed that 
the ordinary newspaper was as frantic as a surrealist art 
exhibition, could hardly be expected to notice that the comic 
books were as exotic as eighth-century illuminations. So, 
having noticed nothing about the form , they could discern 
nothing of the contents , either. The mayhem and violence were 
all they noted. Therefore, with naive literary logic, they waited 
for violence to flood the world. Or, alternatively, they attributed 
existing crime to the comics. The dimmest-witted convict 
learned to moan, “It wuz comic books done this to me.”

     Meantime, the violence of an industrial and mechanical 
environment had to be lived and given meaning and motive in