Banned Books Week and the 'Dangers' of the Comic Book

[CBR News]

What makes comic books so 'dangerous'? And how can fans help? Casey Gilly looks at this year's Banned Books Week focus on our favorite medium.


Full article here.

[Darth Board]

Free speech is a wonderful thing, and we should do everything we can to protect it. That being said, one example in the story is of an 11-year-old girl checking out The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. That's insane! Much of the material in TBD is effectively pornographic. CBR wouldn't post a lot of that imagery on its own site without censoring it, and the notion that there is something depraved about disallowing an 11-year-old from checking it out of a public library is itself more than a bit depraved.

Restricting a book to age-appropriate patrons is not "banning" it.

[kcorstel]

Free speech is a wonderful thing, and we should do everything we can to protect it. That being said, one example in the story is of an 11-year-old girl checking out The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. That's insane! Much of the material in TBD is effectively pornographic. CBR wouldn't post a lot of that imagery on its own site without censoring it, and the notion that there is something depraved about disallowing an 11-year-old from checking it out of a public library is itself more than a bit depraved.

Restricting a book to age-appropriate patrons is not "banning" it.

They weren't restricting a book to age-appropriate patrons. They were restricting it to EVERYONE because they objected to the content, and didn't agree with the decision that their board had made after carefully following the appropriate processes. Those employees willfully disregarded that process, denied the public access to the book to circumvent a decision they didn't like, and were rightfully fired. It's not THEIR right to decide whether or not something should be checked out by anyone. It is that person's right -- and their parent's right -- to make those decisions for themselves. There is no indication that the 11 year-old was actually the one checking it out anyway. It could easily have been her parents placing the hold using the card. A librarian can and should advise patrons on what they are checking out, but it is absolutely NOT their role to refuse an item to anyone.

[Tupiaz]

It would be nice if CBR wanted to make a story about EC comics and how DC and others wanted the code to get EC out of business. The comic code was voluntary decided among the publisher where word like weird, horror, terror and crime was banned from the titles (all words was part of EC books). The also chose to ban the violence and gore that made EC comics so popular. It wasn't the government making censorship on comics it was the comics publisher censuring themselves, a very important difference.

It wasn't only because the book Seduction of the Innocent nor the comics hearings it was also because some publisher saw the change to get EC out of the way.

You can skip to the 28th min however I will recommend to watch the whole show.

[Spike-X]

It would be nice if CBR wanted to make a story about EC comics and how DC and others wanted the code to get EC out of business.

Or, they could talk about what's going on today, not stuff that happened sixty years ago.

The comic code was voluntary decided among the publisher where word like weird, horror, terror and crime was banned from the titles (all words was part of EC books). The also chose to ban the violence and gore that made EC comics so popular. It wasn't the government making censorship on comics it was the comics publisher censuring themselves, a very important difference.

Censoring. Censuring means something completely different.

[Brian Cronin]

The Milo Manara variant covers have nothing to do with this discussion. Don't bring it up here.

[Tupiaz]

Or, they could talk about what's going on today, not stuff that happened sixty years ago.

If you don't care about the mistakes made in the past you it is much easier to do them again.

[Michael P]

The CBLDF makes presentations about the history of censorship in comics all over the country.

Also, it's something everyone already knows.