This week Comics Editor Carol watches The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and thinks about Fredric Wertham and William Moulton Marston.

I had a strange flash of insight while watching The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). I had intended to use the film with my article about comics’ new crime wave, but I was haunted by resonances, so many that once I started writing I had almost two articles worth of material. So his month I offer a strange mix of mad scientists imagined and real—a fictional psychoanalyst and real mental health professionals seeking to perfect or protect society: Dr. Mabuse on one side, Dr. William Moulton Marston on the other and Dr. Fredric Wertham right in the middle. All with manifestos they believe will change–or destroy–the world.