WERTHAM, FREDRIC 683
science fi ction writer Philip K. Dick (#17), each produced in what had become Crumb’s
increasingly distinctive “late” style, marked by intensifi ed cross-hatching and realistic
detail. Crumb also illustrated popular songs and fairytales (including in #11 a contem-
porary “Goldilocks and the Th ree Bears”) in similar, jarringly realistic style. However,
for the fi nal issue Crumb provided one of his most shocking strips in an often shocking
career, the two part “When the Niggers Take Over America!” and “When the Goddamn
Jews Take Over America!” Apparently created following a return trip to America once
he had moved to France, the willfully off ensive strip blurs the thin line between out-
rageous satire and genuine racist paranoia. Most (but not all) of Crumb’s We i r d o work
has been collected and reprinted, but it is worth seeking out issues of the magazine to
appreciate them in their original, often messy context, rubbing shoulders with the more
elusive comics and creators collected by the magazine.
While We i r d o appears less unifi ed in its origins and function than either the
underground comics or humor magazines it derives from, it is no less a product of its
own time, staging a milder but still persistent protest against the return to conserva-
tism marked by the Reagan administration in the United States, which it almost exactly
paralleled. Redeploying a schoolyard taunt for its title, We i r d o off ered an rare space
for strange and even disturbing comics when the mainstream, once home to a range of
genres, had narrowed to a near-exclusive focus on superhero titles and just before inde-
pendent comics and the rise of the graphic novel would expand to off er unconventional
artists additional venues for their uncompromising work.
Corey K. Creekmur
WERTHAM, FREDRIC (1895–1981). Born in Nuremberg, Fredric Wertham received
his MD from the University of Wurtzburg in 1921; he trained under Emile Kraepe-
lin, the founder of contemporary psychiatry, in Munich, then left Germany in 1922 to
join the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. In Baltimore, Wertham
established a friendship with journalist H. L. Mencken and worked with famed attor-
ney Clarence Darrow, becoming one of the fi rst psychiatrists willing to testify on behalf
of indigent black defendants. During this time Wertham married Florence Hesketh, a
distinguished artist and sculptor, published studies on the eff ects of mescaline, devel-
oped a mosaic test to evaluate a patient’s mental state, wrote Th e Brain as an Organ:
Its Postmortem Study and Interpretation (1934), and received the fi rst psychiatric grant
made by the National Research Council.
During the 1930s Wertham moved to New York City where his expertise as a
forensic psychiatrist became well known. With the encouragement of prominent
African American writers Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright, Wertham enlisted a mul-
tiracial, volunteer staff to establish in 1946 a clinic in Harlem dedicated to alleviating
the “free-fl oating hostility” affl icting many in that community and to understanding the
realities of black life in America. Named in memory of Karl Marx’s son-in-law, Dr. Paul
Le Fargue, the LeFargue Clinic became one of the most noteworthy institutions to serve
poor Americans and to promote the cause of civil rights. As a result of his work at the
