Dr. Werthless: The Man Who Studied Murder [And Nearly Killed the Comics Industry]

by Harold Schechter, Eric Powell (illustrator)

From the creative team behind the award-winning Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? comes an examination of one of the most polarizing figures in pop culture, Dr. Fredric Wertham.

Reviled by comic book fans as a witch-hunting zealot who stirred up a panic among the parents of America for his own self-promoting purposes, he was also a renowned psychiatrists who, among other accomplishments, opened a clinic in Harlem for disadvantaged African-American patients and played an important role in the desegregation of the nation's schools. Believing that murder could be abolished through a proper understanding of the mental and social roots of criminal violence, he took a genuinely humane approach to some of the most notorious homicidal maniacs of his time, while simultaneously exploiting their stories for his own commercial ends.

Acclaimed true crime author, Harold Schechter, and multiple Eisner award winning cartoonist, Eric Powell, present a graphic novel that takes an unbiased look at this flawed and enormously and complex man—whose obsessive dream of freeing the world from violence nearly murdered the comics industry.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, History, Historical, Graphic Novels Comics, True Crime

200 pages, Hardcover

Published July 1, 2025

About the author

Aka Jon A. Harrald (joint pseudonym with Jonna Gormley Semeiks)

Harold Schechter is a true crime writer who specializes in serial killers. He attended the State University of New York in Buffalo, where he obtained a Ph.D. A resident of New York City, Schechter is professor of American literature and popular culture at Queens College of the City University of New York.

Among his nonfiction works are the historical true-crime classics Fatal, Fiend, Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved. He also authors a critically acclaimed mystery series featuring Edgar Allan Poe, which includes The Hum Bug and Nevermore and The Mask of Red Death.

Schechter is married to poet Kimiko Hahn. He has two daughters from a previous marriage: the writer Lauren Oliver and professor of philosophy Elizabeth Schechter.

Reviews

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Powell dropping two great books this year!

This is his followup to Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? also co-written with Harold Schechter.

There's basically three parts to this. Fredric Wertham as a psychologist to a couple murderers, Wertham assisting with the dismantling of school segregation, and then the thing we comics fans know him for: creating the environment for the Comics Code to come into play and shut down EC Comics. Ushering in a sanitized superhero comics are for kids environment. Which really didn't change until the late 80s excepting some really great underground comics. Meanwhile Japan and Europe continued to create classic literature in the medium.

The first part was way too grotesque for me. Holy. The snapshot of a certain X-ray will stay in my nightmares for years to come.

I really loved the second part. Wertham's work to help Black Americans and his testimony that helped end school segregation. It's pretty inspiring, and helps to paint Wertham as an actual person - flawed but not evil or anything like that.

It was interesting to see that the scientific community finally started to deny Wertham's claims about comics. Nowadays, it feels so silly that he was taken so seriously. His research seems very unethical to me, surely he knew the great leaps in logic he was taking (correlation is not causation is a pretty rudimentary principle).

With a title like Dr. Werthless, and it being a comicbook about the guy that destroyed comics... I really wasn't expecting this to be as well-rounded and respectful as it was. Fantastic work. I'm excited to see what these two decide to tackle next. Hopefully not something too grotesque.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tolerable study of the life of Fredric Wertham, a man despised by most people in or around the comic book industry.

The first half of the book uses Wertham's life as a clothesline upon which to hang profiles of four murderers: Jesse Harding Pomeroy, Albert Fish, Robert George Irwin, and Anthony Cianci. Wertham wrote books about Fish, Irwin, and Cianci that were ostensibly about his psychological treatment and study of them but apparently veered from the strictly academic into true crime territory. (The co-author of this book, Harold Schechter has also written several true crime books with sensationalistic titles about Pomeroy, Fish, and Irwin.) For this graphic novel, the gory details are mostly left to the word balloons and captions (so much text!) but a few bloody panels of art sneak into the midst of the sea of talking heads.

The middle section delves into Wertham's involvement in the Civil Rights movement. He provided low-cost mental health care at the Lafargue Clinic to the residents of Harlem who otherwise faced financial and discriminatory barriers. He gave key testimony in one of the cases that was ultimately combined into the Brown v. Board of Education decision that struck down "separate but equal" school segregation.

Having established Wertham's credentials and his brittle, fame-seeking personality, the final third of the book finally tackles his crusade against comic books. He firmly believed that the violent and racist imagery they contained were influencing the impressionable minds of America's youth and creating a wave of dangerous juvenile delinquents. And writing about this belief happened to gain him lots of interviews and opportunities to testify as an expert witness, occasions when he could mention his books available for purchase.

I appreciated the irony of turning a book about Wertham into a study of his own glorification of violent killers in print. It's timely too, since I've heard rumblings against the current surge in true crime books and podcasts, with people wondering about the morality, ethics, and psychology of the murderinos driving its popularity.

But I'm not a big fan of true crime. I picked this up for the comic book aspect, and I found that section to be too small to be really satisfying, though the tidbits provided were tasty.

Overall, it's a decent effort. The ratio of words to images is often way too lopsided, though, resulting in this book taking me three times longer to read than I expected based on the number of pages.



FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Special Thanks -- Prologue. The Dead-eyed Boy -- Chapter 1. The Doctor and the Werewolf -- Chapter 2. Of Madmen and Murder -- Chapter 3. Legend in the Dark -- Chapter 4. In the Basement of St. Philip's -- Chapter 5. Cheap Dime Store Hoods -- Chapter 6. Werthless and Woody -- Bibliography -- Sketches + Extras: Notes from Eric Powell -- Biography

[Sara the Librarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there is a more perfect pairing in the graphic novel world than Harold Schechter and Eric Powell I would love to hear about it because so far these two are totally unmatched.

The genius author and illustrator behind Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? have spun a harrowing but fascinating yarn out of a very strange chapter in true crime/psychiatric history, that of the enigmatic Dr. Frederic Wertham a polarizing figure from the early days of psychiatry. Dr. Wertham was a tireless advocate for mental health, particularly with regard to children and by all accounts a truly gifted practitioner who cared deeply about his patients. He worked tirelessly to assist with the desegregation of public schools and personally opened a clinic in Harlem to offer psychiatric services to the hugely underserved people who lived there.

He was also, apparently, a self important dick bag who considered himself the final word on any diagnosis and spent a huge portion of his life advocating like a madman to have the comic book industry destroyed because of his truly bizarre belief that comic books were single handedly responsible for every type of juvenile delinquency known to man.

In the midst of all that he also personally interviewed and built relationships with some of the most horrifying killers and criminals in the history of the United States and made incredibly valuable contributions to the study of mental health in the criminal justice setting.

I read this in one fevered sitting and I can't wait to do it again. This is a riveting story about a truly fascinating man so convinced of his own inestimable brilliance that he destroyed his legacy with one misguided crusade. Harold Schechter's brilliant writing is paired so perfectly with Eric Powell's haunting illustrations I almost want them to go back through Schechter's macabre back catalog and tell every story all over again together.

It seems like such a basic thing to understand, that one man could do so much good and still be capable of doing so much damage because of blind arrogance, but Schechter and Powell, much like Wertham did himself when he saw through to the humanity inside even the most horrifying of monsters, show us both sides of genuinely remarkable man. Remarkable and grievously, deeply flawed.

Its fascinating to get a window into a time when our country sat on a precipice so similar to the one it balances on right now, when men so sure of their own rightness and drunk on their own power tried, and almost succeeded, in destroying art and literature in the name of "protecting the children." There's a cold comfort in that ancient adage, "the more things change the more they stay the same" though I can't say it actually makes me feel better to know that we seem doomed as a species to constantly repeat our history rather than learn from it.

[Alex Sarll]

A comic about the sanctimonious old fraud who nearly killed comics? Co-written and illustrated by Eric Powell, who makes exactly the sort of comics that would have Fredric Wertham turning in his grave? Guaranteed hatchet job, right*? Well, as it turns out, not exactly. Wertham was not the blanket reactionary one might assume: away from the mass media, he even campaigned against censorship in other cases. He knew Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, saw the corrosive effect of racism on mental health when that was far from mainstream in white America (if, indeed, that's changed), worked to bring about a free psychiatric service in Harlem, played a part in ending school segregation...and yet, even in these laudable causes he was proscriptive, thin-skinned, eager to claim credit, apt to alienate natural allies (just as he would with the horror comics where, whatever their other failings, EC were also staunch if gruesome anti-racists). Still, showing his career in the round (we're more than halfway through before comics even get mentioned) does make more sense of the man, clearly scarred by his dealings with a number of proper psycho killers, of whom 'the Werewolf' in particular is still truly appalling despite decades of culture fixated on murderers in the interim. But equally, the fact of having seen that up close makes it all the more stupid that he could, rather than blaming profoundly disturbed individuals themselves, or society at large, put the blame entirely on comics and later TV, when human violence clearly preceded them and most readers and viewers, as Wertham's slanted and unreliable 'research' so utterly failed to acknowledge, don't go on killing sprees. In summary: OK, his time on Earth wasn't entirely destructive, but I'm still glad he died unable to find a publisher for his last mendacious screed The War Against Children, and knowing he was loathed. And even better that this biography of his life, while sticking to the facts (and, by often favouring illustrated narration, avoiding many of the pitfalls of clumsier graphic biographies), has ended up as exactly the sort of lurid publication to really get him frothing at the mouth.

*Possibly a hatchet like the one on the infamous cover of Crime Supenstories #22. No matter how many times I read the quote, for all that obviously Wertham and the committee were wrong and Bill Gaines was right, I always crack up at how spectacularly Gaines walked right into it there: "This seems to be a man with a bloody ax holding a woman's head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?"

[Luke Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly nuanced portrait of a complex man with a complex legacy. I was completely unaware of how noble and important his life and career were before his bizarre anti comics obsession. Don't go in lightly tho, the book contains some extremely frank and distressing discussion of a plethora of horrifying crimes, including direct accounts of the worst imaginable crimes against children by their perpetrators.

[Bracken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is marvelous. The legit only thing I knew about Fredric Wertham was his role at the center of the anti-comics moral panic. I had no idea he provided testimony that was influential in overturning Plessy v. Ferguson, that he did anti-racist volunteer work trying to help Black people in Harlem heal from trauma, and that he was essentially a narcissist who believed in his own intellectual superiority to all of his peers, but was unfailingly compassionate to people who suffered from mental illness (including violent psychopaths like Albert Fish). What an interestingly complex (and terribly flawed) person. This is 100% worth the read!

[Amanda [Novel Addiction] · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning of this was quite graphic, and I was not prepared.

Honestly, it takes until about 75% into the book for it to finally get to how he nearly killed the comics industry, which I expected to see more of, considering it's part of the subtitle.

But overall, and intersting story.

[Andrew Shaffer]

Based on his anti-comic crusading, I expected Wertham to be a rightwing religious zealot. Instead, he was a progressive liberal whose testimony was instrumental in desegregating the nation’s schools (!). He opened a free psych clinic in Harlem. He argued against the death penalty. So how did he wind up as comics’ number-one boogeyman in the 50s? The story is all here, plus several long digressions into murder cases he treated or was consulted on (including Albert Fish, which was physically sickening to read…even for this true crime junkie!). I had some issues following the story at first, as it jumps around between characters—wish the book had used color or a different art style on certain panels so it would have been easier to follow the dueling stories. Later on, the storytelling settles down and progresses in a linear fashion.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fredric Wertham was a pioneer in 20th century psychiatric medicine. He was involved in examining convicted killers like Albert Fish and Robert Irwin, was instrumental in ending segregation in America’s schools, and played a key role in the censorship of comics, particularly crime and horror comics, leading to the creation of the Comics Code Authority (boo!).

Harold Schechter and Eric Powell reunite to follow up their brilliant book on the strange case of Ed Gein with a book on… a disagreeable psychiatrist? It’s an odd choice although Dr Werthless turns out to be a pretty decent book - mainly as it doesn’t totally abandon the true crime angle.

The first half is definitely the best. This is focused almost entirely on true crime cases, like serial killers Jesse Pomeroy, Albert Fish and Robert Irwin. I’d have liked it if the whole book was only on killers as I think this is what the creative team do so well and is what made their first collab stand out for me.

The second half is much less compulsive reading. While the perspective of a comics fan/creator on Wertham would likely be quite negative for what he did to the medium, Schechter/Powell provide a more rounded view on the man. Though very difficult to get along with on a professional level due to his unpleasant personality, he was clearly a kind person who treated even repugnant murderers like Fish and Irwin with dignity and politeness.

He also had a progressive mindset for the time. He worked hard to end segregation in America’s schools with his testimony playing a big part in bringing this about. He also set up community clinics to allow poor minorities to access mental health services for a quarter a session. He also stood up for Ethel Rosenberg, despite this being the height of the Red Scare and he might’ve even faced dire consequences by being labelled a commie himself.

Then, for whatever reason, he became fixated on comics as the reason for why da yoof of America was “acting out” and began his lifelong crusade against comic books. Unfortunately, his actions did gain traction leading to a decades-long censoring of the medium via the formation of the thankfully long-defunct Comics Code Authority. Wally Wood, an artist on MAD magazine, gave Wertham the nickname that is the title of this book: “Dr Werthless”.

Obviously this idea of “(blank) is popular with kids and must be what’s making them do bad things” is an endless, ongoing obsession with modern society. It’s why the book opens with the case of Jesse Pomeroy, the 13 year old who was eventually convicted of killing 2 kids in the 1870s (decades before comic books were invented) but was suspected of killing more than 9, with his actions being attributed to his fondness for trashy dime novels about cowboys and injuns.

Dime novels, comics, TV shows, the “Satanic Panic” of the 80s, rock music, video games, and now social media - sure, maybe some kids are influenced to do bad things because monkey see monkey do, but most aren’t. It’s just weirdly naive, almost absurd, that an intelligent man like Wertham would have such a simplistic view of the unfathomable complexity of the human mind and think that with his brand of enlightened psychiatry he could rid humanity of criminal violence.

That elementary perspective then is rather tedious to keep reading about for nearly half the book. And, while I appreciate Schechter/Powell showing the different facets of Wertham’s character, reading pages and pages of scenes set in court about segregation and morality becomes quite wearying and slow going, particularly in comparison to the first half of the book. This is a text-heavy comic, especially the second half, with huge blocks of text on nearly every page and all of it, while informative, very dry to read.

Powell’s art is excellent. I’ve been a fan of his for years and his style is very skillful and expressive. It’s mostly pencils and the whole book is in black and white, to befit the time period. He especially nailed the disturbing look of Albert Fish and he showed range with imitating art styles from the 40s and 50s in certain sequences.

I would’ve preferred instead if Schechter/Powell did away with Wertham entirely and produced another true crime comic because the true crime parts of this book were riveting while the Wertham parts were the polar opposite. As it is, for those interested in comics history, here’s half a book on one of the chief architects of censorship in 20th century comics, although, if you were somehow expecting it, don’t expect compelling reading. But if you’re after more of the morbidly fascinating stuff Schechter/Powell gave us in Ed Gein, the first half of the book is worth checking out.

Not entirely worthless then - satisfying and unsatisfying in equal measure, Dr Werthless is a middling follow-up to Schechter/Powell’s Ed Gein book.

[Rana Biswas · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the reality - art imitates life or life imitates art. On surface level this might appear a simplistic matter to form an opinion about, but in deep down it might be a much more complex issue to disect and conclude, especially if you consider each human mind and psyche as unique and separate from each other. This book doesn't only explore Dr. Frederick Wertham's life (Wally Wood named him Dr. Werthless in one of his mad magazine strips, hence the name is within inverted commas in the title), his beliefs and his crusade against comics industry, it also tells us about so many other issues that impacted his life and contributed to so many contradictory viewpoints. He was a problematic man no doubt, but the lesson we shall learn from his life is that - when you see everything in the world with limited 'monkey-see-monkey-do' view of human behavior, you are ignorantly and ironically undermining the underlying human as well as societal psyche. The most damaging error from his judgement was probably his belief in utopianism, where his denial to believe that human brutality or aggression is innate in human nature and hardly a product of social or environmental forces.
The fact that Dr Wertham did a remarkable work in desegregation of racial school system in America as well as fought against the systemic racism in those days and treated poor black Americans in Harlem, NY, for without any fees (or just for a quarter in some cases) - totally get shadowed when you see the double standard and hypocrisy in his character when he charges thousands of dollars for his stories to be shared or charges commission for appearing as an expert witness in court trials or how he appears to be progressive liberal and against capitalism but how every move he makes was influenced by financial motivation (a trait so relevant in today's progressive world and society).
Long story short, it's a remarkable book, even better than their previous book (Did you hear what Eddie Gein Done), and I am not exaggerating. And everyone should read this. But I won't recommend this to everyone. If you have an interest in human psychology, criminal psychology, pls read this book. If you have an interest in history, how society gets impacted if you form your opinions based on selective issues and outrages and closed minds, pick up this book. If you are only looking for a fun read, don't read this.

[Kevin Duvall · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s bold concept for a comics work: Write a sympathetic portrayal of one of the most hated figures in American comics history because, overall, he was not a bad guy. I felt like the arc from Wertham’s study of serial killers and his civil rights work to how those experiences influenced his moral panic over comic books was really well thought out and presented. The book has a fair portrayal of Wertham’s positive actions (founding psychiatric clinics for underprivileged communities, giving court testimony that helped overturn segregation laws) and negative aspects (holding petty grudges against other psychiatrists, using faulty reasoning in his anti-comics arguments).

The one area where I felt like the book stumbled a bit is that too much of the first 60-70 pages is focused on the tangentially related serial killers. After my first sitting with this book, I felt like I learned more about the crimes of Albert Fish and Robert Irwin than about Wertham himself. The second two-third ls certainly made up for a slow start, though.

[Maura · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone with an interest in both comic books and moral panics, I was of course, familiar with Dr. Werthham as the jagoff who hamstrung the American comic book industry in the 50s.

But Schechter offers a far more nuanced picture, showing Werthman as someone whose heart was in the right place and who we would now judge to be on the right side of history about a lot of other things, but whose stuborn nature stunted his career and led him to develop a fixation on comic books. In fact, his story almost reads as a tragedy, about a good man who is destroyed by one flaw.

Be forwarned, the book also depicts some of the serial killers who were Wertham's patients (Schechter is a true crime author after all), and that part is rough, if you are not someone who consideres yourself to be a huge fan of true crime, but I think relevant to explaining how Wertham became interested in solving the problem of violance.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really well-balanced account of the life of Dr. Wertham, the man who nearly killed the comic book industry in the 50s with his vendetta against them, even testifying before congress on their evils. I think it's ironic that this is a comic book. But this is played straight. It shows the good he did like the fact that he was instrumental in ending segregation in schools. There are also some gruesome stories of insane people that he testified for, so be forewarned. He was a very complicated individual who thought he was never wrong and rarely got along with people.

Eric Powell adopted a bit of a different style for this comic. It's full black and white and he was trying to emulate the pop art style of the time. I think Powell can do no wrong with his pencils. They always look fantastic.

[Trey Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting book about one of the main villains in the real life world of comics book Fandom. But everything is not as it seems! Before he turned his focus into abolishing comic books, Fredrick Wertham had a pretty important and meaningful career in psychiatry. He was advocating for African American mental health, helping to desegregate public schools, and took a more gentle approach in attempting to understand notorious serial killers.

I recommend this book to all comic book readers who enjoy history, true crime, and a little behind-the-scenes about our favorite hobby. The pacing and artwork is really fantastic here. the story flows very well and doesn't get bogged down with too much text.
Schechter and Powell knocked it out of the park with this one!

[Andrew Clem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eric Powell has don’t it again. The story of Dr Fredric Wertham the notable psychologist who condemned comics for there violence and graphic details in from of a congressional committee, had the nickname Dr Werthless. That was given to him from Wally West. The amount of baggage Dr Wertham created by his action alone contributed to his reputation and combative nature. I highly recommend this book.

[RJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great stuff, especially if you liked Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done. This is a great book for fans of true crime as well as people interested in the comic industry. It's deeply ironic that the only thing that might paint Frederic Wertham in a sympathetic light to comic book readers is indeed a comic book, a medium he essentially tried to destroy.

[Mee Too · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like the title was a bit tabloid clickbait. It did offer some unfortunate and bizarre historical stories of American psychopaths but i didn’t feel it was much of a story. It was just kind of dull and horrific. Felt like reading a historical document.

[Tim Rooney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was not a big fan of this one. Well researched, the creators do a good job articulating Wertham’s complexities. The meticulous depiction of the crimes Wertham studied up front felt…excessive. The lettering was often difficult to read.

[Bo Malpas · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent, didn't know the whole story but now I do, a complicated character

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great research, but it feels emotionally disconnected.

[Gabriel A · Rating 4 out of 5]

fuckin great read

[Dave Timney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible look into a very controversial individual within the world of psychology

[Kurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would be more like 4 1/2 stars. I wonder if Dr. Wertham would be stirring in his grave if he knew if his life story got turned into a comic graphic novel?

[Jay Dougherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

extremely well written and researched but to the point it should have been a non fiction book and not a graphic novel. The text overwhelmed the images to the point of distraction.

[Julie Kirby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Who cares? Art always has adversaries, and this one seems particularly weak. I know! The next book could be about a convicted rapist intent on defunding the CPB.

[Brett buckner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite what I was hoping for, but still insightful and entertaining.

[Michael Daines · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Dr. Werthless” is a nonfiction graphic novel focused on the life of Dr. Fredric Wertham. This includes some background on famous cases that led to new ideas about psychiatry. Wertham was a complicated figure whose history now is deeply tied into his antagonism to comic books, which led to the comic code in the ’50s. But he was also associated with Richard Wright and other more progressive individuals.

The art and lettering in the book are excellent, suiting the tone quite well. This is dense material, and readers should be warned that the descriptions of crimes borders on graphically nauseating at times.