The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s by Mariah Adin (review)

Mariah Adin has woven an important argument about the fear generated by comic books in the 1950s into the riveting story of one noteworthy case in New York City. Adin adds to the historiography of the Great Comic Book Scare by examining an incendiary example of the moral panic caused by comics in the early 1950s. She shows the fear juvenile delinquency sparked in adults, who searched for explanations and solutions. At its heart, though, this is the story of four boys in Brooklyn who were held up as cautionary tales to parents. Ultimately, their case led to horror comics being banned in New York, part of the larger movement seeking to address the causes of juvenile delinquency.

Adin begins her book by introducing the reader to the crimes committed by Jerome Lieberman, Robert Trachtenberg, Melvin Mittman, and Jack Koslow. On August 16, 1954, the four friends went looking for “bums,” finding an inebriated Willard Menter and escorting him toward the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After Jack and Melvin beat Menter, he fell into the water and drowned. Jack warned Bobby and Jerry they would be included in any charges as accessories to murder. After a quick arrest, Melvin confessed and turned in his coconspirators.

From there, media and experts on juvenile delinquency descended upon Brooklyn. With four boys arrested for murder without motive, the public and press started to pry into every detail of their lives, looking for reasons why “good” kids fell into depravity. Even Dr. Fredric Wertham, the psychiatrist best known for arguing that horror comics had a major role in juvenile delinquency, came to interview Jack Koslow, finding a poster child for his theory.

Adin links these boys’ crime to Yiddishkeit, the lack of religious education many in the Jewish community felt was necessary. This was a particularly vulnerable time for American Jews, who had traditionally been dependent upon European Jewry for connections to their faith. In the wake of the Holocaust, that connection was severed, and American Jews began to ask if they were “worthy inheritors of the great Jewish cultural tradition” (61). With four Jewish youths on trial for their lives, Brooklyn’s Jewish community reflected seriously on where these boys (and their parents) went wrong.

Adin concludes with the trial and aftermath. Mel and Jack were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison. In the wake of the verdict, the New York legislature restarted an earlier attempt to regulate the comic book industry. In response, the comic book industry adopted its own self-regulating code in October 1954, hoping to fend off any further damage to their business. Instead, New York pushed ahead, banning in early 1955 the publication or sale of horror, crime, sex, or terror comics. By 1958, when Mel’s and Jack’s convictions were overturned and they pled guilty to manslaughter charges, the public’s interest had disappeared. The boys’ case was irrelevant next to the sensation it caused.

Adin has produced a fascinating case study of the mass hysteria caused by comic books in the 1950s. By connecting one case with larger questions about juvenile delinquency, Yiddishkeit, and New York’s laws banning horror comics, she has personalized the fear found in the early Cold War era. She has given it the young faces of four teenagers, who symbolized, to parents and legislators, how far America’s youth had slipped.