Yes, Mythbusters will try and build Captain James T. Kirk’s cannon, with which he took on the deadly Gorn.

Can the world handle this clash of geekery?

[posted by mark coale]

Even as our previous story on the Jessamine County Library LoEG controversy was getting Boing Boinged — on Alan Moore’s birthday no less — and stirring up a whole new round of observations, events were heating up at a library board meeting, as reported by Amy Wilson. And this time, we even got the money shot of an evangelist angrily holding up a comic and yelling “If this is not pornography, what is?”

The library board heard speakers — limited to two minutes each — on both sides of the case, which involves two library workers who felt that LOEG: BLACK DOSSIER should not fall into the hands of an 11-year-old girl and took it upon themselves to remove the book from circulation, thereby violating library policy and getting themselves fired. Although the traveling evangelist, a homeschooling mother and over 200 kids who signed a petition begging for books to be censored all seemed to think that others should decide what they can read, the other half of the speakers felt, as Bobbi Stout, herself the daughter of a preacher, that “It’s dangerous to democracy when an interest group imposes its views on another,” she said. “Stand up for the Constitution.”
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Amy Wilson in the Lexington Herald-Leader has an in-depth story on just what went on when two Lexington, KY librarians library workers were fired for withholding a copy of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: BLACK DOSSIER from an 11-year-old girl.

What followed has become a battle of principles that is larger than the women ever imagined.

It has become a question of what public libraries are enshrined to do, what role they are to play in monitoring children and whether they get to decide what people get to read.

What complicates this is that the graphic novel in question meets no standard of obscenity by the law.

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R. Crumb’s appearance at Virginia Commonwealth University last week has led to a campus controversy, with his comments on rape and misogyny igniting complaints from students and statements from officials:

Timothy Patterson, a Richmond College senior, cited a quote from Crumb’s speech in his response to The Collegian: “Every woman has a rape fantasy. Every man deep down…hates women.”

Andrew F. Newcomb, dean of the school of arts and sciences, sent a campus-wide e-mail on Nov. 1, stating that although the university made Crumb’s dialogue possible, it doesn’t mean it condoned the dialogue’s content.

At the heart of the controversy is associate professor Bertram Ashe, who assigned the Crumb documentary and his short story, “My Troubles with Women”, as part of his class American Misfit: Geek Literature and Culture. Patterson questioned Ashe’s right to assign such material, while Ashe responded at length:

If Patterson had come to talk to me I would have shared with him that I, too, was offended by aspects of Crumb’s work. I would have showed him where and how Crumb grapples with feminist critiques of his work right there inside his work. I would have demonstrated for him how well the text fits into our semester-long discussion of geeks and nerds. I also would have shared with him the fact that I routinely assign edgy and provocative texts that have the potential to offend students. For more evidence, just ask students in both sections of the 20th Century American Fiction class I’m teaching this semester. Or ask students in my Blackface seminar last spring (a course I’ll be teaching again next spring). “Edgy and provocative is what I do, Mr. Patterson,” I would have said, and yes, academic freedom protects me.

Although Crumb’s early track record is of, well, trouble with women, his new version of Genesis draws heavily on Feminist Bible scholars, particularly Sarah Teubal, and the struggle between patriarchal forces and a presumed more matriarchal Goddess culture. Jewish Week examines this aspect of Genesis and finds some dissension even among scholars.

Still, by citing the work of scholars to buttress his claims of textual accuracy, Crumb invites questions about his own credibility. And many feminist scholars hold Crumb’s sources at a critical distance.  “My own view is that the Teubal book is admirable in attempting to recover positive aspects of women’s lives in biblical antiquity but flawed in its assumptions about the historicity of the ancestors,” said Carol Meyers, a leading feminist biblical scholar at Duke University, in an e-mail response. By historicity, she meant knowing conclusively the realities of life in biblical times.

A couple of stories spotlighting the matter of graphic novels in libraries– GNs remain among the most popular books to check out, and libraries have been a major force in getting younger readers exposed to comics. But their popularity is not without controversy, as this story shows: Two Kentucky librarians were fired for not allowed a child to check out LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN.

“Residents in Jessamine County do not realize that these books that are so graphic are available in the library let alone to their children,” former Jessamine County librarian, Beth Bovaire, said.

Beth Bovaire worked at Jessamine County Public Library up until a month ago. She and Sharon Cook worked as librarians- the two were fired last month when they say they didn’t allow a child check out a book from the league of extraordinary gentleman series.

“My friend Sharon had brought it to me on Wednesday, and she said ‘look at this book it’s filthy and it’s on hold for an 11 year old girl,’ and I said well okay, lets take it off hold.”

A follow up shows local opinion divided.

§ On the PLUS side, the New Jersey State Library has awarded $3000 grants to 14 libraries to “assist them with establishing and growing graphic novel collections.”

This grant was specifically designed to help smaller libraries in the state with their graphic novel collections.

“We recognize that our smaller libraries face funding challenges when it comes to providing their customers with the variety of products they’d like,” said Norma Blake, New Jersey State librarian. “Although it’s rare for the State Library to fund a core collection like this, we believe it’s important to bring this popular genre to smaller libraries who otherwise couldn’t afford these books.”

As part of the grant, the State Library conducted workshops featuring experts discussing various aspects of graphic novel collection development, and furnished a core graphic novel bibliography for the librarians to use to purchase books for their collections. Workshop panelists were John Cunningham, vice president of marketing for DC Comics, Laverne Mann, librarian with the Mercer County Library, David Inabnitt, librarian with the Brooklyn Public Library, and Sophie Brookover, librarian with Eastern Regional Senior High School, Audubon.

[Both links via Kevin Melrose.]

You’re one of the world’s most revered but reclusive cartoonists and you’ve just put out a book that confronts the biggest human enterprise of all: religion. So how to do you promote your book tour?

If you’re R. Crumb, hardly at all, as this statement at his website shows:

Robert, in accordance with his agreement with W.W. Norton Company (the publisher of his latest book), will spend much of this autumn promoting Genesis. In late September he will hold a two day press event in Paris, and in the middle of October start his press tour of the US in New York City. From there he is headed to Richmond, Virginia. From there he attends an event in L.A. where all 200+ pages of the original art which comprises the book will be shown at the Hammer Museum. From L.A. he goes up to San Francisco where he will do some interviews but also take some time off to visit friends. In the middle of November he goes to the University of Texas in Austin to finish the tour. Upon his return to France, he looks forward to beginning the new book he and Aline plan to do together.

While the listed itinerary for the Contractual Obligations Tour may be a bit light, our Intern Kate dug up the complete schedule, which kicks off TOMORROW in NYC at B&N:

10/23: New York BARNES & NOBLE/Union Square
In conversation with Francoise Mouly
7:00 PM
33 East 17th Street
New York, NY 10003
212-253-0810

Pre-signed copies available for sale.

10/24 — Los Angeles: Hammer Museum’s exhibit of all of Crumb’s art for GENESIS goes on display.

10/27: Richmond UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND/Modlin Center for the Arts
In conversation with Francoise Mouly
7:30 p.m.
28 Westhampton Way
University of Richmond, VA 23173
(804) 289-8592

Technorati Tags: Crumb, Religion

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Ever since the manga revolution hit American shores, comics industry observers have been writing for parents to catch on to the fact that their kids are reading stories about passionate gay love affairs and teachers seducing their students, and a full-on book burning crusade taking place.

Fortunately, that hasn’t happened. Outcry has been limited to isolated incidents where parents found out their kids were reading something beyond their age-appropriate level; there have been a few library board meetings, a few local TV news stories, but nothing approaching a movement.

And the latest incident will probably end up the same way. A father in Salisbury, MD was surprised to find his son reading DRAGONBALL Z by the great Akira Toriyama, and, after complaints, the school library pulled the book. Although DRAGONBALL has been shown on American TV and was the subject of a secret movie earlier this year, it was the sexual content that the dad found objectionable:

In one, the protagonist, a young boy, pats the covered crotch area of a sleeping teenage girl before removing her panties. The same boy later appears naked in the bathtub and is naked when he performs flying jump kicks.

In another scene, a Peeping Tom watches a naked teenage girl as she takes a shower. Furthermore, the novel shows a teenage girl flashing a bearded man; and another man asking a girl about her bra size.

The book, published by Viz, is rated T for Teen, and that sounds pretty saucy, but as J. Caleb Mozzocco reports, it’s not quite as bad as an ad for GIRLS GONE WILD:

If you’ve read Toriyama’s Dragon Ball comics, you’re no doubt familiar with the scenes in question (Yamcha’s the peeping tom, Bulma’s the girl and Master Roshi is the bearded man). You might also be scratching your head that this is something that even needs discussed at the level of a county government.

Goku is drawn with the body of a Valentine’s Day cherub, and while he’s occasionally nude, it’s the innocent nudity of naïve childhood. His penis is drawn on the page here and there, and it consists quite literally of two semi-circles. Fourth-graders will see more detailed male nudity in your average book of renaissance art then in Dragon Ball….The peeping scene could be considered sexual, as could a later scene where Bulma flashes the panties-obsessed Master Roshi (readers just see her butt) but there’s nothing even vaguely sexual about a Mowgli-like little orphan boy who lived his whole life in the woods running around naked here.

In short, this wasn’t quite the smoking gun you’d think. Mozzocco includes scans such as this:

And that’s about the same level of nudity as you will find in an average Go Daddy ad.

Simon Jones has more:

The early volumes of Dragonball did have a great deal of sexual (or I guess, what puritanical individuals would percieve as sexual) comedy, much of which actually played on Goku’s complete and utter naivete of gender roles and boundaries; Bulma’s no-pants flash and constant incontinence, Goku’s predisposition for free-balling, Roshi’s dirty old man persona, and a certain memorable match in the first tournament come to mind. But disgusting? Imagine if some of the more risque Bugs Bunny cartoons were made today. Would Holloway say they promoted transvestism, bestiality, and sexual sadism (re: Little Red Riding Rabbit)?

We love it when two memes come together.

Sometime in the night, the marvelous Gail Simone went on Twitter and spoke thusly: Do We Need Tabloid And Gossip Comics Journalism? which Rich Johnston picked up at the above link. Simone is no stranger to the message board, so the debate continues in the link and its very own Twitter topic.

Now, I haven’t read all of the forum replies at Bleeding Cool, but I did read Simone’s first response and she writes:

And when you ask him about it, he always points to two or three helpful stories he’s posted (like Josh Hoopes) then goes right back to the gossip. It’s weird how Rich can say anything he likes about a comics pro, but if someone dares raise the question, without malice, of whether or not this stuff is worthwhile, that is somehow being ‘butthurt’ or some other dumbass accusation.

Oh my god! Erik Larsen has a disagreement with Neil Gaiman! Really? Mark Waid had a disagreement with a friend…really? I wonder who cares, but even more, I wonder why anyone who can actually write would waste their time pimping that drivel. And Rich CAN write.

Rich is one part of a big dumb cycle of gossip, of fake ‘celebrity’ news, but it is far from the only such practitioner, he’s just the one most visible and the one most desperate to make himself part of the story. The same rules apply, guys. If you laugh at the idiots who read the Enquirer and follow Perez Hilton, but love petty comics gossip, you are in the glassest of glass houses. It’s the same exact useless crap.

As much as I ADORE Gail, I find this awfully thin-skinned and lacking in a sense of the bigger picture.

Can anyone REALLY equate what Rich writes to Perez Hilton? I MEAN, COME ON NOW. I could spend 10 minutes googling around to people’s public Facebook photo pages and find more personal gossip, embarrassing photos, and scuttlebutt than Rich has posted in an entire year.

Erik Larsen posted some trash talk about Gaiman ON A MESSAGE BOARD IN PUBLIC VIEW. People were emailing and IMing that link within a few minutes…is that really “gossip”?

It’s a far cry from paparazzi stalking people getting lattes at Starbucks and personal gossip about who’s banging the babysitter that “real” celebrities are subjected to. Since even people on reality shows are now considered celebrities, comics folks are just lucky they haven’t come in for any level of scrutiny.
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Those of us who are San Diego bound are gearing up for many things, including the inevitable oceans of pedicabs swarming like seagulls over every scrap of pedestrian. But a lengthy LA Times report on the pedicabs of San Diego reveals that the city is acting to curb these ubiquitous peddlers:

But the tourist tradition has become a civic nuisance as the number of pedicabs has soared in recent years. Competition for customers can get ugly, and some operators are breaking traffic laws, prompting calls for stricter city regulation.[snip] Drivers from San Diego grumble about increased competition from foreign students who come to town on four-month visas to operate pedicabs. The students — mostly from Turkey and Russia but also from Brazil, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Croatia and elsewhere — worry about making enough money to pay their rent or next year’s tuition.

According to the piece, the number of pedicab licenses issued has soared from 338 in 2007 to 643 in 2008, to 917 in 2009 already.

Apparently more focus was placed on these “beggars on bikes” after a 60-year-old Illinois woman died after tumbling from a pedicab.

Let’s face it, if there one thing we don’t want to read in our obituary, it’s “died in a tragic pedicab tumble.” We’re planning to carry a pedicab swatter and stick to gasoline-powered hired cars.

Via his Twitter feed, writer Mark Sable reveals that he was detained for 30 minutes prior to a flight by the TSA after a random search turned up a copy of his script to UNTHINKABLE. In the BOOM! series, a government think tank spends its time thinking up possible terrorist scenarios. Read Twitter backwards!

# Just hope TSA writes a spoiler free review for Unthinkable.9:55 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# My privacy, a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium.9:53 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# I hope the TSA enjoyed the waterboarding in issue 3.At least they know comics aren’t just about superheroes.9:52 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# Nothing like starting the day explaining you’re not a terrorist, but writing about them.9:50 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# Talk about life imitating art imitating life. I ouldn’t make this up if I tried.9:48 AM May 10th from Tweetie

# Wow.Just detained by TSA for over half hour.They read and questioned me about the script for Unthinkable9:41 AM May 10th from Tweetie

More reax in the link.

A painting by Glen Tarnowski refitting Da Vinci’s Last Supper to include Bugs Bunny, the Grinch, and other toons has offended some passers-by in Old Town, San Diego.. The painting is hanging in the front window of the Chuck Jones Gallery, and provoked a mixed reaction from the locals:

“We never intended to offend anyone,” said Mike Dicken, national sales director for the gallery at 2501 San Diego Ave. “Most people think it’s fun and amusing, but 5 percent are pulling their hair out.”

Left unsaid is whether the hair-tearing is due to offense at the sacrilegious nature of the painting, or because the colorful, surreal characters remind San Diegans that Comic-Con is just a few months away and grown humans dressed as these characters will soon be shopping at Ralphs.

Link via Cartoon Brew

As reported late last week, a mother in Millard, Nebraska was shocked by the sexual undertones in a Spider-Man graphic novel that her six-year-old son checked out of the local school library:

“It has a lot of sexual undertones in here, as far as sexuality goes,” she said. “They can learn this through any other place, but it’s not something I allow them to learn, in my house at least.”

Svendsen said she’s actively involved with her four children’s educations and said comic books like the one in question hold little literary value. She said she’s especially concerned about her 6-year-old son, who’s still developing reading skills.

The exact nature of the undertones was not mentioned, in the news report; however, more than likely the culprit was once again…an underwear-type thing, as Mary Jane was romping around in a bikini. It’s safe to say that this mother is almost certainly correct in suspecting that her young son will eventually show great interest in a sexy redhead with giant gazongas bending over in a bikini, so give her a point on that one, okay?

ICV2 identifies the actual GN as
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VOL. 2: REVELATIONS, written by J. Michael Straczynski, and points out that the age rating on the book is PG — for age 12 and up.

In this case Marvel’s own age rating indicates that book is not intended for 6-year-olds and would be more appropriate in a junior high school or high school library.

UPDATE: Does anyone want to wade into the 13 pages of comments on the original story, because today we sure don’t have time for it.

We’re on a hiatus today while we deal with pressing matters, but we thought you would like this subtext-laden Wolverine blow up toy, and the ChristWire article that blows it up:

It looks like our homo supporting friends over at Marvel have created a new toy to encourage young boys to perform mouth to mouth in a non holy way to a blow up toys twiddle rompus!

We don’t know what twiddle rompus is, nor if we have ever participated in it, but we’d like to change that–FAST.

We might as well line our children up and burn them ourselves! If we make these types of devil pleasing acts ok they will all be burning in the fire lakes anyways!

We’ll be on the lookout for devil-pleasing acts all day!

We received a note the other day about Time’s Top Ten of Everything being far from everything, since it doesn’t include Graphic Novels. It does have a (rather unimaginative, we think) Top 10 Editorial Cartoons, and Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book made the Top Ten Books.

It’s a little sad, considering that last year, Comics got their own top ten , led by ACHEWOOD, and in 2006, FUN HOME was named the Best Book, period. Why the diss? Could it be the continuing vacuum left when regular comics reviewer Andrew Arnold departed a few years ago? (Comics-friendly Lev Grossman is still on board, however.)

The loss of a single comics mole can signal a serious crimp in any media outlet’s comics coverage. For instance, we haven’t noticed as much comics coverage at Entertainment Weekly since Nisha Gopalan left.

This could all be a coincidence. Or maybe comics just aren’t the cool new thing, any more, or not as cool as eating goat meat, anyway.

We’ll live.

New scandal: The SKIM snub.

The ruckus started last week when Chester Brown and Seth wrote an open letter to the Canadian Governor General Literary Awards committee. The letter, also signed by such luminaries as Lynda Barry, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, and other heavy hitters, was to protest that the awards committee had nominated the graphic novel SKIM, for an award in children’s literature, but had seen fit to recognize only writer Mariko Tamaki; artist Jillian Tamaki isn’t mentioned, and she isn’t even invited to the awards ceremony.

The letter writers think this is an injustice:

We’re guessing that the jury who read SKIM saw it as an illustrated novel. It’s not; it’s a graphic novel. In illustrated novels, the words carry the burden of telling the story, and the illustrations serve as a form of visual reinforcement. But in graphic novels, the words and pictures BOTH tell the story, and there are often sequences (sometimes whole graphic novels) where the images alone convey the narrative. The text of a graphic novel cannot be separated from its illustrations because the words and the pictures together ARE the text. Try to imagine evaluating SKIM if you couldn’t see the drawings. Jillian’s contribution to the book goes beyond mere illustration: she was as responsible for telling the story as Mariko was.

However, despite the eloquent plea, the Canada Council for the Arts, won’t add Jillian to the list of nominations:

The Canada Council for the Arts won’t add Canadian illustrator Jillian Tamaki’s name to the official list of nominees in the text category for this year’s Governor-General’s Award for children’s literature. “We’re a little bit late in the game” to either discuss the issue or make the addition, Melanie Rutledge, head of writing and publishing for the Canada Council, said Wednesday evening. But “we’ll take it under consideration going forward. … We’re always wanting feedback like this.”

The story has been picked up by numerous news outlets, both Canadian and comics-related. Jillian Tamaki remains gracious under the circumstances:

“I’m not going to say much about it beyond that I appreciate their letter,” Tamaki said Friday, from her apartment in New York. Tamaki, who is in her mid-20s, grew up in Calgary and graduated from the Alberta College of Art & Design in 2003. “The people that co-signed and those two creators are my heroes,” she says. “It definitely was surprising. I knew the letter was going to be coming out, but I was floored that the comics community was so caring. I was flattered and touched.”

The awards will be presented tomorrow night. The insights of artistry of the Tamaki cousins’ collaboration have already received much attention and acclaim. SKIM’s nomination for the prestigious award speaks to its literary merit and depth; sadly, there are still a few people out there who think that pictures somehow make things less literary, and that’s a damned shame.

Did this happen to anyone else? We had three different people we know send us a link to yesterday’s CUL DE SAC by Richard Thompson.

Also, you should get the first CUL DE SAC collection. As Tom would likely tell you, it’s one of the best newspaper strips around these days.

posted by Mark Coale

While some think that the Potty Mouth Batman variant may be the trigger to a new comics witch hunt, it’s more likely that THIS kind of thing will be more alarming if someone wants to make a big meal of things.

Anybody who doubts the rapidly growing influence of Japan’s erotic cultural imports in the U.S. only has to spend a little time playing with a Hello Kitty vibrator while reading a fan-created pornographic Pokemon comic — or visit a “maid café” (now available near Los Angeles and Canada) where the waitresses all dress in costume — to realize it’s not just a fringe subculture anymore.

There is a good argument to be made, based on those characters alone, that we are all “turning Japanese” as the ’80s song goes — especially sexually.

That’s Brian Alexander at MSNBC. Brigid has some needed perspective:

You know that any mainstream-news story that leads with the Hello Kitty vibrator is going to be bad news, and this MSNBC column by Brian Alexander does not disappoint. Did I miss the moment when maid cafes became mainstream in the U.S.? Maybe Boston is just behind the times. I don’t have all day to take apart the fallacies in this article, but let me point out one obvious howler [snip]

To be honest, we long thought that the anime/manga menace might become some pol’s election year crusade, but since we have actual serious problems to deal with, and the national elections seem to have become entirely personality-driven, unless it turns out Obama once dressed as Kenshiro for Halloween, or Sarah Palin bought a complete run of …But, I’m Your Teacher for her kids, this is unlikely to come up.

The Hyatt Boycott Controversy has raged for a bit now, with Chris Butcher saying yes here and Chris Williams saying no here.

Tom Spurgeon said the argument was spinach and to hell with it:

As tends to be the case with comics folk post-1990 or so pressed to make some kind of simple decision that doesn’t directly benefit them, the flailing about can be fairly awesome to behold. The issue as presented seems clear to me: whether or not to patronize a business when you learn the owner is supporting a stance on public policy that upsets people with whom you work and are thus asking you to consider another option. That seems like a clear decision to make with simple options in response: yes, no, I don’t care. Even better, which bar to drink in is maybe the lowest set of stakes for a decision possible in this world. Easy, right?

I strongly disagree with this in that comic book folks aren’t all that much more confused and confusing than any other random group of 100,000 people. A person is smart; people are stupid.

As for our own feelings on boycotts, we feel that any actual economic impact will doubtless be nil, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a stand to make yourself feel better about yourself, either. Is there?

As for us, we’ll be doing what we always do, hanging out outside the Hyatt being as obnoxious as possible.

Every once in a while we feel a little bad for picking on DC around here, then we read something like this and we have to put on one of those ruffled collar things to keep from scratching our head to the bone. It seem DC refused to let Lynda Barry put an excerpt of Paul Pope’s BATMAN 100 in the BEST AMERICAN COMICS anthology. Tom Spurgeon reports:

As for the cartoonist and creator of the well-received mini-series, Paul Pope further confirmed the refusal and described what he saw from his perspective on the negotiation. “I know there were people both at DC and HM who campaigned very hard to convince DC as to the benefits and soundness of having my Batman pages appear in the collection,” the popular artist and designer wrote to CR The benefits would seem rather obvious to most. I have since found out it was not because of licensing money that DC refused (I don’t know the actual reason to be honest, but it wasn’t money, the only thing I could legitimately see as being an impediment in this case…).” He added, “DC’s formal refusal letter was one line.”

Calling all Kremlinologists!

If you do go to the link we just listed for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s day of superhero fashion, you will see a rather telling indication of what the Met REALLY thinks of these superhero fans:

In many ways its comforting to know that as far are we’ve come, there are still some barriers.

UPDATE: a reader points to this disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

Super Heroes is a trademark jointly owned by DC Comics and Marvel Characters, Inc.

Which, actually, is true! They’ve owned it since 1981, but rarely enforce it. Unless you wants us to write “super-hero™” every time.

Jeet Heer examines both side of the Wertham legacy in a piece in Slate.

So, who is right, Hajdu or Beaty? Did Wertham have a point? Beaty’s revisionism is valuable in forcing us to see Wertham as a complex historical figure, not an easy-to-dismiss cardboard crank. Still, Hajdu is right to point out that Wertham’s ideas of proof were extremely primitive, more forensic than scientific. (Wertham had often testified in court cases, which skewed his sense of evidence.) Wertham thought he could prove his point by stringing together many anecdotes collected from his clinical research, making his claims virtually unverifiable.

More: Pop Culture Safari.

While Fredric Wertham is the archetypal real-life bogeyman of comics, his legacy is not all black and white. Bart Beatty, author of Frederic Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture and Jeet Heer debate Wertham’s portrayel in David Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague at The Globe and Mail
Beatty for the defense:

Hajdu’s portrayal of Wertham substitutes a stereotype of the uptight German intellectual in place of the facts. In order to portray Wertham as a censor, the author ignores his long history as an anti-censorship expert witness. To present him as a dilettante obsessed with comic books, he has to mask his accomplishments as one of the foremost psychiatrists of his day. Most important, to depict him as a foe of children, he has to entirely ignore the monumental role Wertham’s research played in public education reforms, in particular desegregating U.S. schools in the 1950s.

These are the facts that work to undermine Hajdu’s thesis, and which made me a “defender” of the man.

Heer responds:

Alas, Beaty’s apologia is not completely convincing. True, Wertham didn’t favour censorship and the rating system he advocated was eminently sensible. Still, Wertham used language so inflammatory as to give aid and comfort to censors and book-burners. “I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry,” Wertham argued. If Superman and Tales from the Crypt were more dangerous than Mein Kampf or Triumph of the Will, then it might make sense to have comic-book burnings, as happened in the Wertham era.

As for the conflation of children and teenagers, that’s Wertham’s fault. He constantly talked about protecting children, obscuring the fact the most violent and salacious comics were too wordy for pre-teens and were largely read by high-schoolers.

It seems to us that both are right. Wertham may have been scattershot and unscholarly in his attack on comics, but he did a lot of other good things. Life is not always like a comic book.

This post by Molly Flatt in the Guardian has been linked to by several bloggers, starting with Tom. Flatt is definitely of the “Think! Feel! Comics are a great medium!” school, but the comments get a bit lively, although some of the Newsarama-esque ones were removed before we could cut’n'paste. (Damn you, polite literate newspapers!)
A poster named ‘Anytimefrances’ takes point on the rebuttal:

my mottoe is now - people who read comic books also puff the ‘magic’ dragon and listen to bands for hours on end. nothing personal M, you know, but that was the way I found it, and it’s a fool’s paradise. going back, always going back, to childishness, grieving over the lost innocence, recovery, salvage, the joys, the absence of responsibility, always gulping at the jug of delight, free, delighting the senses.

was it St Paul who said, now that I am and adult, i have given up childish things.

Harumph. Must comments are more supportive, such as ‘Alarming’ of Manchester :

If you take a comic strip like Zippy the Pinhead - the writing is very literate and takes in philosophy, social comment, high and low art references, toe curling puns and makes unexpected connections whilst the drawing is very beautiful. The fact that he can carry on producing high quality work in a daily comic strip which doesn’t dumb things down but which is also not too intellectually remote is something to be admired.

Hint: The comment thread is definitely much more fun if you imagine it being read like those letters of complaint on Monty Python.

Book Forum runs an excerpt from David Hajdu’s upcoming The Ten Cent Plague, a history of the persecution of comics books in the ’50s as the source of all juvenile delinquency.

The progressing crusade against comics on multiple levels provided Harry Wildenberg the opportunity to light many a cigar in satisfaction by 1949. In the final weeks of the preceding year, the National Parent-Teachers Association had issued a directive for a “national housecleaning” of comic books and had distributed a tutorial to help its local chapters spur municipal and state legislation to regulate the sale of comics, and thousands of PTAs around the country began following the plan. Around the same time, the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers distributed a set of guidelines for enacting comic-book controls. “The criminal and sexual theme of these tales have [sic] been the direct contributing cause of many incidents of juvenile delinquency and to the imbedding of immoral and unhealthy ideas in the minds of our youngsters,” wrote the general counsel for the institute. “It is inconceivable that a workable plan cannot be evolved. The police power can and must be exercised so as to eliminate the vice of objectionable comic books.” Shortly thereafter, the United States Conference of Mayors published a ten-page handbook, Municipal Control of Objectionable Comic Books, and the municipal-government trade journal, American City, reported, “Comic Book Control Can Be a Success.”

This looks to be an essential volume for the shelf on comics history. Oddly, we were checking out the Amazon page for the book and saw this plug from one Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton University:

“Every once in a while, moral panic, innuendo, and fear bubble up from the depths of our culture to create waves of destructive indignation and accusation. David Hajdu’s fascinating new book tracks one of the stranger and most significant of these episodes, now forgotten, with exactness, clarity, and serious wit, which is the best kind.

“Now forgotten”? Ah, Prof. Wilentz, you must have never met a 40-year-old comic book fan. Fear of a New Wertham is a clear and present danger for those of us who grew up schooled on the Seduction of the Innocent Menace lurking around the corner. Hopefully reading this book will help us say “Never again!” and mean it.

Link via Bookslut