A climactic event in The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a 1954 Senate hearing overseen by the Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, also known as the Senate Comic Book Hearings. These hearings did in fact take place, with psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham serving as the chief witness against the burgeoning comic-book industry. Wertham had made a splash earlier that year with the publication of his book Seduction of the Innocent, which claimed that lurid images of violence in popular comic books were exerting a pernicious influence on American youth. In this period, comics depicting often violent clashes between superheroes and criminals were rapidly gaining popularity, and the rise of this new genre coincided with a rise in youth crime so that many parents and educators saw a causal link between the two phenomena (González). Wertham’s book became the flashpoint for a moral panic.

In the hearings, Wertham drew a direct comparison between comic books and Nazi propaganda, stating, “I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry. They get the children much younger” (94). This incendiary claim offers a direct contrast with Joe Kavalier’s own view of his work.