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

This link from the blog of Scott King, Executive Editor of Th3rd World Studios, has been getting some play. It seems King had a run in with the TSA after doing some things you shouldn’t do at airports. King admits he hadn’t flown since 9/11, and was out of the loop on how seriously they take such things as not taking off your shoes and (more importantly) leaving your bags unattended while you pee. After rousing suspicion because of these actions, the clincher came when his baggage was searched.

Then another security guard entered and the second guard went through my bags questioning me on almost everything in them. He gave me a really hard time on several items. The first was a bottle of Allegra-D. He wanted to know why I had it and if I could prove it was actually allegra inside of it.

The second problem was that I had several graphic novels with me. I had planned to read them on the plane. I had “DMZ” volumes 1, 2 & 3, “The Nightly News,” and “Artemis Fowl.” The guard flipped through “DMZ” saw a ravaged New York City and them immediately called for two other security guards to join him in the room. I was then questioned for over an hour about the comics and why I had them. I was point blank asked if I was a terrorist or if I ever had desires to harm other. The whole ordeal was completely ridiculous. I can understand them being cautious but going ballistic because of the graphic novels I had with me is taking it too far.

The Eightball #22 case may have faded into the sunset, but commentators just can’t stop mining it. Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow takes a look back, with his own pointed commentary.

Also, Joanne Jacobs at Brittanica.com offers a measured appraisal, and brings up a notable parallel case:

Then again, consider the case of Kaleb Tierce, an honors English teacher (and assistant football coach) in Tuscola, Texas, who was suspended Oct. 15 for loaning a ninth-grade girl a book by Cormac McCarthy, Child of God, for a book report. The book is on the approved list for advanced ninth graders, though it features a murderer and necrophiliac. Tierce, who is 24, may face criminal charges of providing “harmful materials” to a minor.

Pretty much everything of interest in the Nate Fisher/Eightball case has been said, until Fisher himself speaks, perhaps, but a few late comments are worth noting. We found these through our own trackbacks (Our story got Boing Boinged yesterday, sending our hits and trackbacks through the roof.) but if anyone knows of any other USEFUL commentary, send us a link.
First, Eric Reynolds has his final say on the matter. We encourage everyone to read it for themselves, as its quite thoughtful. Nut kernal:

I appreciate any parent wanting to protect their children, but in this case, would the child be any less protected if a solution that didn’t include a police investigation and/or immediate resignation had been pursued? To me, that’s the fundamental question.

Another interesting perspective is from a blog called Minivan Diaries, which the sidebar tells us, is written by a mother of four who once planned to be a children’s advocate:

However, at what cost and to what extremes do we go to protect our children? Isn’t it also our job to be good role models for our kids, especially when they are teenagers and they judge our behavior so scrupulously? By rushing to the police, and notifying school officials, she denied the teacher any opportunity to explain himself. He was guilty way before he even had a chance to prove his innocence, or at least his poor judgement. This was a perfect opportunity for a Parental Teaching moment — to demonstrate how adults work out differences by gathering facts, communicating, trying to understand both sides of an issue, and in this case, realizing that people, even teachers are human and they make mistakes.

After reading all of the hullabaloo, it’s pretty clear that mistakes were made on every side. I don’t think anyone would question the right or duty of parents to protect their kids. Hopefully the next time something like this happens, more private discussion will occur before the media decides to have its own field day.

UPDATE: Based on the news video at the below link, it appears that the issue in questions was EIGHTBALL #22, shown at left. I had originally put a picture of Eightball #2 in this post, which IS NOT THE ISSUE IN QUESTION.
Dan Clowes, perverter of children? The comic given by a teacher to a 13 year old as supplemental reading that was deemed lewd was…EIGHTBALL. What’s most interesting from our standpoint about this story is that it did not take place deep in Red State country, but in CONNECTICUT, one of the most liberal bastions of villainy in America.

Inside Eightball are stories with graphic language and nudity and there’s no question it is a magazine with adult content.

Amy Lindgren is a parent and also drives a Guilford school bus. She can’t believe this has happened in her town.

“If that was my daughter that came home and showed this to me I honestly believe my husband would hurt the man,” said Amy.

Stephen Sang was in Fisher’s class and can’t believe a teacher would give that sort of material to a student.

“It’s pretty odd. I mean, I liked him. My first impression was that he was pretty cool,” said Sang.

Fisher may have been too cool for his own good and that’s not what they want in a teacher.

“They were being taken advantage of, in a way,” said Jenny.

The headline of this UK Observer article would appear to be the beginning of a long awaited graphic novel backlash as literary pundits grow resentful of having these comics sprinkled over their Wheaties on a daily basis: I get the picture: comics can be cool . And it starts out bad:

I used to think that graphic novels were for geeks: written by geeks and read by geeks. The geeks in question were all male, obviously. They had long hair and wore Marillion T-shirts, and they lived in sock-like basements where they spent too much time on their own, furtively picking their noses and watching Star Trek videos.

Uh oh! She hates us. BUT NO! In a surprise twist ending, SHE TURNS OUT TO LOVE COMICS!

In the years since, graphic novels have gone mainstream. They have clever, cool fans (Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Nick Hornby), respectable publishers (Cape, Penguin), and sell in decent numbers (or at least far more than many first literary novels). Most important of all, they are good. What I like about them, apart from the pictures, is their immediacy, wit and sly brevity, and the way they can deliver quite dazzling changes of tone without ever seeming clunky. To me, it feels as if there is nothing they cannot do: that, as Dave Eggers has put it, far from being literary fiction’s halfwit cousin, the graphic novel is actually its ‘mutant sister, who can often do everything fiction can, and, just as often, more’.

All this is prelude to a Random House UK competition for “Graphic Short Story Prize.” Judges include Nick Hornby, Posy Simmonds, Paul Gravett, Rachel Cooke, Dan Franklin (Cape), and Suzanne Dean (Random House), and first prize is £1000.

Oh boy, literary prizes. So what are you waiting for???

TheEU parliament has refused delivery of Will Eisner’s THE PLOT a graphic novel discussing the long running anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The European Parliament has refused to distribute to MEPs a book denouncing the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, an anti-Semitic literary forgery.

Produced by the Okhrana, the Russian Czar’s secret police, in 1905, the Protocols accuse the Jews of plotting to rule the world.

Last month, the Transatlantic Institute, a Brussels-based think-tank fostering ties among the EU, Israel and the US, sent copies of “The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” written by American Will Eisner in a comic-book form, to the 785 members of the European Parliament and their staff.

A MEP is a member of the European parliament. The book was refused “due to the nature of its content” and because “the parliament don’t allow advertisement and that the book had no relevance with the parliament’s legislative agenda.”

Just to clarify, essentially a lobbyist sent a bunch of the books to the EU Parliament, which refused to distribute them to members. This has nothing to do with the book’s sale or distribution throughout Europe.

Mothers react with shock to the discovery of a copy of HOW TO MAKE MONEY LIKE A PORN STAR buried among the legit children’s comics at a Singapore Book Fair, and some suggest even grater scrutiny.

Books like these have upset some parents, who also complained that some graphic novels, clearly intended for mature readers, were available at the National Library.

Mrs A Chen, 40, a housewife and mother of three boys aged 8, 11 and 15, said such books should be kept in a separate section which is not accessible to children.

Another parent, Madam Haslinda Putri Harun, 36, a mother of two daughters, aged 7 and 4, said: ‘If this happens to me, I will be shocked. I think the library has to play its part and have more stringent guidelines.’

However, the director of a dental clinic added that ‘parents should also be more pro-active and check the books and programmes their children are reading and watching’.

Mr Roger Ong, 42, a counsellor with Care Corner Service Centre, agreed that parents must take an active role in supervising their children, and not just leave it to the authorities.

He said his daughter was only 2 1/2years old when she asked him: ‘Daddy, can I have sex with you?’

She had learnt the words from television. He and his wife had left the TV on and had left her unsupervised for a few minutes.

Evidently a few minutes exposure to TV radiation is all it takes to create a lifetime of shame.

UPDATE: Via Kevin Melrose, news that THe Punisher: Barracuda, and Punisher Max have both been pulled off the shelves in Singapore. And it may not end there.

However, The Punisher: Barracuda was not the only book with explicit content available there. We also found other comics from the same series with similar content. We borrowed one of them.

The comic had the words ‘explicit content’ in small print in bold on the back cover.

We alerted the National Library Board (NLB), which said it has since pulled The Punisher series from its shelves. An spokesman said that they have found the series unsuitable for loan.

She said: ‘Meanwhile, we are reviewing all the other titles in the existing adult comic collection to ensure that they meet our criteria for inclusion. We are re-examining our processes to ensure that such incidents are not repeated.’

She apologised for the slip-up but did not explain how it occurred.

In case you missed it, here is the full story from the Marshall Democrat-News on the new Marshall, MO library policy and the fate of FUN HOME and BLANKETS which were removed from shelves following complaints over adult content. The books have been returned to circulation but will be shelved in the Adult section instead of the YA section.

And just like that, democracy and intelligence reign.

More in the link.

Meanwhile, back in Marshall, MOthe new library policy has its first reading and two citizen-democrats showed up to have their say.

Hird was wearing a button that said, “I read banned books.” He brought up the fact that several books that are vital to education have been challenged. They include “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, “1984″ by George Orwell and others.

“There is nothing wrong in challenging books,” Hird said. He said he read the two books that have been pulled from the library’s shelves.

The other fellow felt different.

Blakely also applied the proposed policy to the banned books. According to Blakely, “Blankets” and “Fun Home” only meet one of the general criteria for selection — the timeliness of the subject matter.

The books go along with the timeliness of the gay/lesbian movement and you would find these types of trash along I-70, Blakely said.

As you all know, it is the Age of the Graphic Novel, a time of peace, harmony and awards being heaped upon the comics. But even among the approbation, there are still a few doubters. It’s always good to remember the few that have resisted conversion to Our Way.

For instance, we saw this recent story from Arizona Central on the Guardian line of Christian comics but didn’t link to it because it seemed like a typical piece on the efforts to get Christian comics into the lucrative religious market. However, it seems we missed this clear cut example of comics dissing:

Not everyone agrees that God and his teachings belong in the same medium occupied by the Hulk. The Rev. Oscar Tillman, president of the Maricopa County branch of the NAACP, said comics can cheapen the message.

Tillman, who had not seen the books but had studied the Guardian Line’s online site, said he was disappointed by the examples he saw. He was particularly distressed by the character of a young boy who is told that God took away his father.

Children, Tillman said, should learn about the Bible in Sunday school, not the comics.

“We have other ways to responsibly address religious and moral values,” he said. “These do not get my stamp of approval.”

CHEAPEN! Oh dear. Regular reader “Birmy” also sent us a quote from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the proposed revitalization of a local shopping strict that contained this gem:

Bob Greenstreet, the city planning director, calls the revised, $50 million plan “a real step forward, using very sound urban strategies.”

If it fails, he says, “I’m afraid we’re dangerously close to check-cashing stores and comic book shops.”

Check cashing shops! What century is this? Pow! Sock!