True crime writer Harold Schechter and comics creator Eric Powell take on pop-culture villain Fredric Wertham in their new graphic novel, Dr. Werthless (Dark Horse/Albatross Funnybooks, out now). And while they don't exactly rehabilitate the famed psychiatrist and anti-comics crusader, they do present a more nuanced picture.

Best known for his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, which claimed that reading comics led to violence, Wertham was a complex figure who cared deeply about his patients, including the Black children who came to his pioneering Harlem clinic and murder suspects whom he evaluated for the courts. He was also not afraid to buck popular opinion, not only by scaremongering about comics but also by defending accused spy Ethel Rosenberg and testifying in two cases that overturned school segregation in Delaware. At the same time, he was egotistical and difficult to work with, fond of being in the spotlight and bitter when excluded.

Schechter and Powell first collaborated on the 2021 graphic novel Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?, about the infamous murderer. Now, working from contemporary sources, including Wertham’s own papers, they have produced a multifaceted portrait of this complex man who talked to murderers, cared for children, and hated comics. We spoke with the duo about Werthem’s legacy and telling his life story through a medium he despised.

Why is Wertham of interest to modern readers?

Harold Schechter: I knew about Wertham from a very young age. One of my cousins, who was very highbrow and hated comic books, had a copy of Seduction of the Innocent in her home, which I borrowed and never returned.

When I was researching my true crime books, I learned that Wertham played a very central role in those cases. He was the head of the psychiatric division in Bellevue in the 1930s, and one of his functions was to evaluate any criminal convicted of murder. I had already done a lot of research into Wertham and his life and his career when I was writing those books, and I realized there was much, much more to the man than the stereotype of him.

Eric Powell: Wertham was a boogeyman, especially if you liked horror comics, and that was my opinion of him for most of my life. Little bits of information would come to me—his role in the civil rights movement, things like that—which made him a little bit more complex than my original opinion. When Harold mentioned the idea of Wertham as a subject for a book, bells—it's the only way I can say it—bells just went off, because there's so much there. The idea of doing something that covered comics history and American history and the civil rights movement and also true crime—that was just too good to pass up.

Wertham was both a public figure who loved the spotlight and extremely private about his personal life. How did you approach telling his story?

EP: Harold had mountains of research already from his previous work, and we'd gone to the Library of Congress to go through his papers and then compiled all of our information. Harold laid out the structure of what we wanted to do, the main points we wanted to hit and the details about those, and then it was my job to make that work in a comic format. It was really hard, because it wasn't just a straightforward biography. At one point I actually thought about having the book just be chapters of people who were influenced by Wertham, because there was so little information on Wertham's actual life. He was a really private guy, and it was hard to find anything.

HS: Supposedly he was working on an autobiography that never got published. We were not able to find it among his papers. Even if we had wanted to do a full-fledged biography, there just wasn't that much information. I was interested in redeeming Wertham's reputation a little bit, or at least offering some kind of counterbalancing story about it, because in many ways, he was a very humanitarian, very liberal, even kind of progressive thinker. You think of him as this Carrie Nation, wielding an ax to the comic book industry, but even that was motivated by his sense, misguided as it was, that it would be possible to eliminate violence in human behavior.

I discovered this writing my true crime books: with any factual subject, you have to figure out a way to make it into a compelling story. Otherwise, you just have thousands of pages of documents. So we really hashed these things out.

EP: The goal we had with this book was to give an honest representation of Wertham, and I think, because of our give and take and tug of war on some of these issues, we succeeded at that.

How did telling this story as a comic accomplish your goals better than text alone?

EP: In a visual medium like this, I can add nuance to expressions and things like that. The characters glance at each other, and there's that little bit of extra nuance there to sell an idea. As a comic book creator, I feel really happy about taking something that Wertham and the other anti-comic people of the time saw as just plain trash and showing that this is an art form, and it can be elevated. Hopefully we've done that.

How did working on this book change your opinion of Wertham?

HS: In many, many ways, Wertham was a really admirable person. For example, with [his patient, the sculptor] Robert Irwin. After Irwin was imprisoned [for murder], Wertham made sure to stay in touch with him and provide him with artistic materials. Once his professional obligations towards Irwin ceased, he maintained this human connection to him that was very important to Irwin.

And also, the complexity of the man: even while he was so derisive of popular culture, he was also exploiting it. He liked being on TV. He liked the idea of his books being made into movies. There was a deep ambivalence, I think, at the core of Wertham. It's also important to place him in the context of the time, because there was, at that time, this moral panic about juvenile delinquency. He could jump on that bandwagon and make himself into a very prominent public figure. I think the complexity of Wertham, both as a human being and as a man of conviction, was something I came away with a much stronger sense of.

EP: Complex is, I think, the only way to describe him. For every point you want to make about him, good or bad, there seems to always be a counterpoint. And I think that goes to the heart of the book. We're all complex individuals, and we all contain good and bad. However much I disagree with his points of view and some of his tactics, I do believe he very much cared about his patients and he cared about children. At the same time, I think a lot of his motivation was completely self-serving, and a lot of times I think his need for self-promotion outweighed his more noble motives. Even after doing this book, I don't think I have a clear-cut assessment of the man. I think he's just an individual to ponder rather than put in a box.