We can put it in its proper perspective by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed at printing only comic books.

Hutchins invokes Gutenberg to dramatize a familiar cultural critique: a transformative medium can be squandered if its dominant use is trivial. By imagining the printing press devoted only to comic books, he frames a mismatch between a technology’s potential (mass dissemination of learning, civic debate, and serious literature) and the uses a society chooses to prioritize. The remark is less an attack on comics per se than a warning about cultural and educational priorities—suggesting that the value of an invention is realized not merely by its existence but by the intellectual ambitions brought to it. It fits Hutchins’s broader concern with liberal education and the stewardship of mass media.