It was a one-shot comic book titled YOUR UNITED STATES. And it's literally a page-by-page listing of all of the USA's 48 states -- because Alaska and Hawaii weren't states yet! Each of the pages shared some tidbits -- significant historical events, popular tourist attractions, major economic attractions. Nothing too much though. After all, each state only has one page!
Of course, I jumped forward to check out Iowa's page, as well as Minnesota and Nebraska where I've lived at different points in my life. The middle pages must have gotten ripped out of the surviving copy because Nebraska's page is missing -- as are several M-states!
Iowa's page was interesting. I learned that roughly half of the state's population worked on farms. And not shockingly, we supplied the world with popcorn seed. And we received really basic historical information about the Sac and Fox Tribe/Meskawaki Nation. But most of Iowa's page has to do with farming and food.
As I noted above, YOUR UNITED STATES didn't seem overly controversial -- but you would be wrong if you made that assumption. In 1954, American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham wrote "Seduction of the Innocent" and accused the comic book industry to corrupting America's youth and causing juvenile delinquency. YOUR UNITED STATES received special notice on pages 309-310 of "SOTI":
"Typical is one called 'Your United States'. It devotes one page to each state and, although on bad paper and as smudgily printed as the others, it really contains some instructive information. But practically every state, although it gets only one page, has a scene of violence; if one doesn't, that is made up for in other states where there are two or three such scenes. For instance, a man hanged from a tree by a "vigilance committee"; Negroes in chains; corpses and dying men; a girl tied to a tree, her bound wrists above her head, her skirt blowing up in the wind and a coy facial expression of fright as in a sadist's dream; a girl about to be raped or massacred. Is that what you want your children to think is the history of Your United States?"And to be fair, YOUR UNITED STATES does highlight Native America conflicts. And a lynching image was included -- in California of all states. But Wertham really exaggerated the level of depravity contained within this comic book. And honestly, the level of violence towards America's slave population was completely absent from the comic book -- though maybe it existed in those four missing pages. I doubt it.
Because of Wertham's work, Congress began an official investigation into the comic book industry. This resulted in the industry's creation of the now defunct Comics Code Authority, which is a way for them to self-censor their own content.
Here are a few state pages that I found interesting:
You can find your own state here.