In the 1950s, psychologist Fredric Wertham suggested comic books were corrupting children.

Now, more than 50 years later, comic books are teaching children to read and write.

The Dallas Museum of Art will show University of North Texas alumnus Todd Kent’s new documentary Comic Book Literacy on Saturday.

Kent said the focus of the documentary is how comic books are being used in school.

“One big hurdle with children is to get their attention,” he said.  “Kids are naturally drawn to comic books. It’s engaging.”

Kent said young children learn the idea of sequential narrative from comic books.

“One of the things they talk about in the documentary is the need for visual literacy, being able to decode all of the visual imagery we are inundated with,” he said.  “The story is being told in part by the words, dialogue and narrative, but also in part by the pictures, so kids can learn to identify it and extrapolate from it. “

English assistant professor Carolyn Guertin uses comics in class to help her students create digital narratives. She believes comics should be taught to children because they help them understand information by using a more visual approach to presenting it.

“Comic books are the fastest-growing form of storytelling,” she said. “I think it’s really a good approach to making [information] understandable, and they’re fun. You can never beat the fun factor in learning. It’s very important to making it accessible.”

English graduate student Cliff Garner said he started reading comic books the same time he began learning to read, and that comic books helped him do so.

“When you’re reading comics, you’re still processing text,” he said. “Some comic book writers use fairly sophisticated vocabulary and cultural references that might help you develop your literacy.”

Garner said he began reading comics in kindergarten. He’s currently working on a dissertation relating to the medium.

“I have a background as a visual artist myself, so I’m very interested in the interaction in the textual and the visual,” he said.

Guertin said she uses comic books to teach her Computers and Fiction Writing class.

“My students are learning how to create digital narratives, so we start by looking at visual narratives and the most familiar is comics,” she said. “The oldest form of visual narrative is comics. We can take them back to the Aztec or Egyptian narratives told with images.”

Guertin said understanding visual media is important because it helps people sort through and categorize information.

Kent said he worked on the documentary on and off for about four years when he could get interviews.

The documentary includes interviews with big names in the comic book industry including Art Spiegelman, the creator of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, James O’Barr, the creator of The Crow and Joe Quesada, a former editor-in-chief of Marvel comics.

“I wouldn’t have been able to make the film without the people I interviewed,” Kent said. “It was a challenge because I didn’t want to look stupid in front of them, so I did my homework and research.”

In order for Kent to talk about comic books, he had to look into the history of the medium, including fears of comic books in the past.

The moral outrage that followed the publication of Wertham’s book, Seduction of the Innocent, led the comic book industry to create the Comics Code Authority in the ‘50s to regulate the industry. Comics had to meet certain criteria to earn a seal of approval from the Comics Code Authority. Most retailers refused to sell comics without the seal.

“You couldn’t do much with comics,” Kent said.  “No social commentary, no violence, no sex or drugs; the industry really kind of neutered themselves, and they put out a bad product for several years.”

Kent said while people were scared of comics in the ‘50s, it wore off after a few decades. He said now there are few people actively crusading against the medium.

“I really looked hard for someone like that,” Kent said. “I wanted a villain for this film. People’s opinions on comics these days are either they love them or they are indifferent. There’s really no one waving the anti-comic flag.”

Kent says he hopes the documentary will clear up any misconceptions people have with comic books.

“A lot of people think of comics as a genre and not a medium,” he said. “When they think of comics they think of superheroes. It’s like thinking of television as only cooking shows. It’s not just one thing. It’s a medium that’s capable of going in any direction.”