


The aptly titled Teen-Age Terror shows a lurid, youth gone wild, over the top image of a highly sensationalized girl gang initiation. In this oil-on-masonite cover painting, American illustrator James Alfred Meese captured the moral panic over juvenile delinquency that was a focal point of American culture in the 1950s, most notably explored in films like Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle. The work was created as the cover of a purported “true crime” expose into “the inside story of juvenile delinquency told in actual cases of violence and sex,” and the image is a masterpiece of scandalous pulp-fiction paperback art.




