Banned Book Week 2015: So Who Bans a Book Anyway?

I went to my local library today to drop out some books due. I'm on staycation, so I thought I'd check out their Banned Books Weeks display. It was a fairly decent little display, 6-sided, but nothing really eye-catching- except for a very information info sheet on the top of the display.

   I was very surprised to learn that of the challenges to books in the past year, only 18% of those who sought to ban a particular book were politicians, religious groups/ clergy, pressure groups, or other governing bodies. The majority of people who attempted to have a book banned were patrons/ customer and parents at 58%.

    To be fair, almost a quarter of legal challenges to banned books were kept confidential or of another criteria that didn't fit in any other category, so there could be some pressure groups or senators or priests lurking in that category unaccounted for. But still, it's a lot smaller percentage than I thought it would be.

  I think the reason behind this is that the news is more likely to cover a story about censorship if it involves a politician or religious group. Why is this? Mostly because sensationalism brings in viewers and readers. CNN doesn't want to devote time to a patron who bought a book and didn't like it and is trying to get it removed from stores. The media would rather cover a group of angry politicians and preachers seeking to have a book not just banned but burnt to a crisp than over a group of mothers irate that little Johnny saw Dr. Manhattan's dingle when he read Watchmen.

  Another issue that makes Banned Book week so important is that there were more challenges toward banning books last year than in any other year in the past decade. So what is the cause for this?

I think it can be broken down into 5 ways:

1. Public mores has changed. Alternative lifestyles are more accepted. Also, People are way more sensitive towards discrimination than ever before. and that leads into #2
2. We are a social media culture. It's a lot easier to get people to rally behind a cause like Black Lives Matter because you have the internet to spread your message more quickly. That leads to #3
3. Companies are afraid of losing money more than ever before. When a variant cover depicting the Joker holding Batgirl hostage, people went to their mobile devices and started a campaign demanding that DC Comics cancel the cover or face a financial boycott. The economy might be better than it was a decade ago, but one major slip in profits is enough for a media giant like DC to have nightmares.
4. Speaking of nightmares- parenting is another reason for why we see so many challenges in the legal system about banning books. Parents, these days are either A) not engaged enough or B) too engaged to the point that they put their child in a bubble. (I was more of a B-child, my sister 12-years younger than I, was more of an A-child.) Anyway, you get these hyperactive parents who see things in books like Harry Potter practicing witchcraft or an alien mom breastfeeding her child and parents go nuts. This leads to my final point...
5. There aren't enough people trying to educate readers on age appropriateness. 

    A favorite story I like to tell folks is how I found a copy of the ground-breaking miniseries Watchmen in the all-ages section of my local library. The book contains nudity, sex, and lots of swears. There's also some violence, but compared to other comics out in the 80s, it's mild. 

   See, I know from experience what's in this book! But the librarian who processed it did n;t. She thought because it was about superheroes, published by DC, and soon to become a movie, then it was okay for all readers. Interestingly enough, she thought I wanted the book banned. I just wanted it put in a more age appropriate place so that we could avoid this from being an issue when a child brought this home to a family who would petition for the book to be banned from the library. 

   So, I encourage you adults out there to please look at the books out there on the market and review them for age appropriateness. That's completely fine to say that my 6-year-old can read Batman Adventures but must be 14 before I'll let them read The Killing Joke. Just don't look at a book and say that because it doesn't fit you views that the book should be outlawed. 

   You may not agree with Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto, but this is a country where freedom of speech is protected. Plus, the countries where those works were published had a lengthy and bloody history on banning books and eventually began targeting those who thought differently to those viewpoints with imprisonment, torture, and death.

     Remember folks, when we fail to remember history, we are more than likely doomed to repeat it.
  
   Just a little food for thought on this Tuesday of Banned Books Week, 2015.

  Happy Reading!!!

Banned Books Week, 2015: Some Suggested Readings

Today marks the beginning of Banned Books Week. It's one of my favorite weeks of the year as it gives me a chance to speak out against censorship while pointing out some great books that you might have overlooked. I'll be posting more about BBW, with links, suggestions, and more. 

   Today, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund issued a list of banned graphic novels that fans of the comic book medium might have overlooked. Below is a link to the suggested titles that the CBLDF listed on their Facebook page. 

   Thanks to them and their ideas, I think this might very well be the week I finally read Art Speigelman's Maus (#15) a comic account of the Holocaust in which Jews are portrayed as Mice and the Nazis as Cats. 

   Happy Reading!!!

 

Weird Science-Fiction Fantasy Annual #2 (Banned Comics Week)

My final selection for Banned Comics week is a unique time capsule of the changes that EC Comics would have to endure after the Juvenile Delinquency Senate hearings and with the coming of the comic’s code. Sales of comic books had been plummeting across the board. To spare jobs and to keep from closing, EC cancelled its horror comics and began to merge other titles together. For instance, Weird Science and Weird Fantasy were merged together after both published their final issue #22. The new title was called Weird Science-Fantasy.

The new title was still edgy with bizarre aliens, screaming femme fatales and twist endings that stunned the reader back into reality. But when the CCA formed in 1954 one of the rules stated the word “Weird” could not be used in the title of a book. Thus, Gaines and Co. changed the name of the series to Incredible Science Fiction at issues #30. This book has the distinction of the being the very first comic to be approved by the CCA (as according to the reprint editors of this annual.)

ISF is tepid. The stories are no longer thrilling. The endings still have a twist but EC’s stunning style had been neutered. Incredible lasted 4 more issues but thanks to an confrontation with the CCA, Gaines decided to stop publishing comics altogether.

Before issue 34 was published, William Gaines sent a reprinted story for approval called “Judgment Day!" (Weird Fantasy  #18). This anti-racism story, was rejected because Judge Charles Murphy, the Comics Code Administrator, demanded that the star of the story, a black astronaut, be changed into a white hero. Gaines refused and threatened to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court. The CCA, not wanting an early case of more unwanted publicity, backed down.  Gaines went on and  printed the story both without any changes or the CCA approval stamp. It would be the last comic printed by Gaines who would go one to devote his energies to the now magazine formatted MAD Magazine. Yes Mad would be just as subversive but because the book was no longer published in the size of a comic book, it was free from the intrusion of the Comics Code.

I’m not so much a fan of this treasury of latter day EC reprints. But for their historical value, this collection is priceless. You can see through volume 1 and later this second volume how EC’s style was slowly reined in to fit an Ozzie & Harriet lifestyle. Ultimately, by focusing on MAD, Gaines got the upper hand, thumbing his nose at American society all the way to the bank.

Worth Consuming.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Tales from the Crypt #2, (Banned Comics Week)

 This doubled sized reprint from Russ Cochran contains issue #34 of Crypt and Crime Suspenstories #15. Though I mention Gemstone as the publisher of the most of the EC Comics reprints in my collection, it was actually Cochran from Missouri who first obtained the rights to reprint the entire EC line. (Other EC reprints exist before this but Cochran was the first to reprint the entire line of EC Comics comics.) The collection was very popular, but it was a niche market.

 The Russ Cochran Company found itself unable to recoup its losses and sold the rights to newly established Gemstone. Gemstone got the brilliant idea to reprint in small batches and later reissue as needed. Thus, back issues of past copies could either be ordered through mail or replenished in comic shops nationwide. It’s this method that’s held on for over 25 years and helped keep the EC Comics from fading into obscurity.

   In Tales, our first story is by the Crypt Keeper in segment called “The Crypt of Terror” which was Tales’ original title. That story is based on the cover image in which a mad scientist creates a Frankenstein type monster and it goes on the rampage at a carnival. Then the Vault Keeper spins a yarn about two con men who dupe a small town into believing their sitting on the next oil boom. The Crypt Keeper then returns in his signature segment “Grim Fairy Tales” which are fanciful fables with gruesome endings. This go-round, the Crypt Keeper regales us with a story of a king who goes too far when he learns about taxation.

The last story is by the Haunt of Fear’s Old Witch. It’s rather interesting as it’s adapted by Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 fame. It’s a fairly light tale in which an old woman filled with salt and vinegar doesn’t want to die so badly that her spirit storms the mortuary in which her body is housed and demands it back.

  What I found so intriguing about this ghost story was that it’s basically by a well-known author. When Fredic Wertham testified before the Senate during the Juvenile Delinquency hearings, he claims that there was no ‘artistic merit’ to the prose found in comic books. Bradbury is such a big deal that not only did my wife read some of his work in high school for her English classes, I read it too! And I went to a strict anti-anything secular Christian school! So when ever anybody tells you that comics are rubble- you can point out that the great Ray Bradbury was featured in comics as was Harlan Ellison, Stephen King, and even Doctor Seuss!

Before I close, let’s examine the Crime Suspenstories reprint. The first tale is a film noir-type love triangle between a wife with a bad heart, her husband, and his best friend who happens to be her lover. Take about Double Indemnity! Then Ray Bradbury returns! This time, his tale ‘the Screaming Woman’ stars a little girl who hears a woman begging to be released from a shallow grave but nobody will believe the tyke’s warnings. Next, we get an interesting story told in two parts in which the same man must suffer through thirst an dehydration first on the high seas and then in the Sahara. There are plenty clever twists in ‘Water, Water Everywhere…” as well as a unique story structure that clearly influenced some of the greats of the Silver Age like Julie Schwartz, Gardner Fox, and Stan Lee. Finally, the Old Witch guests to recall the bickering marriage of a hen-pecked husband and his meddlesome wife.

The Crime comics of the 1950s were a thing of the past by 1959. Crimes of the heart in which implied sex, adultery, and murder were considered taboo. Thus there was a rise in crime digests like Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen. Those mags contained the occasional illustration but were considered so wordy that it wouldn’t appeal to kids. Crime Magazines were still available where kids could reach them and they still had graphic covers. But the changing format was considered enough to prevent kids from going into a wanton frenzy like un-coded comics were said to have inspired.

True, it was 30-years later, but in the 80s I remember walking into a newsstand and buying crime mags as a gift for my mother who loved a good mystery. I was never carded. I couldn’t have been- I was 8! Still, the view towards comic books as low culture is proof of the hypocrisy of censorship. The next time someone tells you comic books are kids’ stuff and for the uneducated, ask them if they watch The Walking Dead, or have seen Men in Black? When they say “yes” tell them it was based on a comic book and watch their face drop. Argument won in your favor!

Worth Consuming

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Tales from the Crypt Presents the Vault of Horror #5 (Banned Comics Week)

The main horror titles of EC Comics were Tales from the Crypt, the Haunt of Fear, and the Vault of Horror. The most well-known of these titles is obviously Tales from the Crypt thanks to a 1990s TV series on HBO, hosted by the delightfully funny, Crypt Keeper. But my favorite of the EC horror anthologies was the Vault of Horror.

It was hosted by the Vault Keeper and featured tales of deception, corruption, passion, murder, and intrigue. There was always a twist ending to these tales but the bad guys didn’t always get their just desserts. Sometimes, the hero took the fall! For the American government, that just couldn’t do! Thus, when the Comics Code Authority was established, titles were required to tell stories in which the villain got punished for his crimes. An allowance was allowed for stories to have cliffhangers throughout several issues as long as the villain received punishment before the story was captioned ‘The End.’

In this issue, a young wife who’s trapped in a loveless marriage takes advantage of a sinkhole on their family farm. We then meet a talented surgeon who loses his arm and conducts dangerous experiments in an attempt to make himself whole again. Then a young man meets the woman of his dreams at a masquerade ball. But when it’s time to unmask, it becomes his worst nightmare.  Lastly, a weight loss remedy bears some dangerous fruit.

The masquerade story, entitled “the Mask of Horror” is such an example of a story in which a rather innocent man meets a tragic demise. The man is spurned by his finance whose is cheating on him with an older gentleman. Determined to get over the harlot, the bachelor goes to a party only to take his troubles off his failed relationship. It’s when a drunken friend introduces him to a woman dressed as a miserly vampire does things go sour. The guy forgets his troubles and feels that this woman is his true love. But the only thing he feels at story’s end is her fangs in his neck.

  The only thing that guy did was fall in love with another woman. But, I don’t see him as immoral because his first relationship was destroyed by his fiancé. Just because the guy didn’t end the relationship while his girl was in another man’s arms, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t kaput. Still, I am sure that the message of the story was a misogynistic “beware of wanton women” that was the moral of many of EC’s stories involving passion. In the sinkhole story, the woman falls in love with a handsome health inspector but he turns out to be married. The wife had previously killed her husband, faking his death in a sinkhole, but she is forced to be with her loveless hubby forever, when his bloated corpse rises from the household well and snatches her into the underground river below that formed the giant crevice.

EC was as nourish and ghoulish as they come and I loved it. I still do. My dad until he died took pride in how I saved my money doing odd jobs to buy the complete Vault of Horror Collection from Gemstone in the late 80s. It was the first time I ever set a financial goal and made smart decisions with my hard earned cash. Nowadays, I continue to save my money trying to collect the entire EC library that Gemstone reissued continuously from circa 1988-2000.

Along with the reprint of Vault of Horror #18, this edition also reprints Weird Science #11. In those pages, the great Wally Wood regales us with a futuristic story in which a uranium company condemns both the earth and the moon with its questionable mining practices. Then a computer system learns about love for the first time and gets terribly confused. Then a ship is stranded on a planet of giants while a man goes back in time and ends up becoming his own father in a head-scratcher that makes Terminator seem plausible.

Worth Consuming

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Frontline Combat #3 (Banned Comics Week)

My first selection for Banned Comics Week is one of the less controversial books published by EC Comics. FrontLine Combat showed the gritty face of war for what it was. It didn’t pull any punches. But unlike the crime and horror titles of EC, the war titles were nowhere near as gory or visually graphic. That didn’t mean that they pulled any punches either.

  In the opening tale “Tin Can’ a young sailor assigned to latrine duty likens Christ’s parable on how every member of a church is like a part of the body to the role of soldiers on a boat. But this young ensign’s role is tragically down-played when his destroyer is hit by an enemy mine. The next tale involves a group of American POWS trying to survive a long trek during the Korean War. Their decisions will mean life, death, or freedom. Then an old French farmer reflects on the many wars that have ensnared his native land while Joes trying to liberate his village during World War II.

But it’s the final story that is perhaps the most controversial. In the Desert Fox, artist and writer Wally Wood parallels the German General’s glorious time in Africa to the atrocities in Europe at the hands of his fellow Nazis. The final two pages of the story recall dozens of heinous murders of Jews, anti-Nazi sympathizers, and other minorities while reflecting on Rommel’s last week in Germany. Considered a national hero to the German people, Hitler was jealous place that Desert Fox had in the hearts of Germans nationwide and saw him as a possible usurper to his role as Furher.  Thus, Rommel was framed for an attempt assassination on Hitler and forced to commit suicide by poison, much like Socrates. Only, Rommel’s death was covered up and made to look like a stroke had taken the General’s life.

  These sorts of expose stories were what eventually led to EC Comics becoming a target of the American government and other civic minded peoples. In issue #26 of Weird Science-Fiction Fantasy, the entire issue was devoted to the ‘cover-up’ of UFOs by the American military. More than likely these flying saucers were experimental aircraft being tested by the Army and Air Force. But these if these sightings were confirmed then top secret projects would be in danger of being exposed. Thus, the military would do its best thing to dismay the American populace- deny, Deny, DENY. But by publically challenging the US Air Force with an entire issue of documented reports of flying saucers, it’s sure to not win you very many influential fans. (They also hired a decorated marine pilot by the name of Keyhoe to help with the publication of this issue and it almost led to the soldier’s court-martial.)

EC Comics was known to continue pushing the social envelope with morality plays and damning reports that hoped to challenge how people saw not only themselves but their government. This issue is just a small bit of evidence of how the publishing company and its owner William (Mad Magazine) Gaines were considered subversive and in need to be quieted. The first step to ending the rein of EC was slowly underway…

Worth Consuming

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

I read Banned Books (Comic Book Edition)

Tomorrow is the beginning of the annual American Library Association event Banned Books Week. This year, the ALA is focusing on comic books and graphic novels. Their reason is ' "despite their serious literary merit and popularity as a genre, they are often subject to censorship,” said Judith Platt, chair of the Banned Books Week National Committee.'

  All week, I'll be reading and reviewing selections from my favorite banned comics of all-time; the EC Comics. Considered gory, brutal, and undeserving of any merit, these comics have stood more than the test of time- the withstood perhaps one o the greatest witch hunts of the 20th Century- the comic book scare of the 1950s.

   EC Comics were the primary target of the Juvenile Delinquency Senate hearings of 1954. A quack psychologist named Fredric Wertham in his book "Seduction of the Innocent" blamed comic books on just about anything wrong with kids and teens in the 1950s. His accusations were based on doctored data and led to a majority of publishers, writers, and artists of the comic book genre to lose their jobs and their passion- as many of these workers never worked in comics again.

 
   I'll be controversial to suggest that the fact that Wertham was German and the majority of the comic book working class was Jewish at the time, is not lost on me. the pandemonium that surrounded the comics scare is eerily similar to 1940s Nazi Germany. Community groups inspired by Wertham 'encouraged' children to collect their comics (and those of their buddies) and held mass burnings. My wife's uncles recall having to participate in these community improvement projects.

   The comic book industry might have failed completely if it wasn't for the few surviving publishers to team-up and create a self-governing committee that would insure standards and practices in the comic book industry. That group was the Comics Code Authority. Though the CCA is no longer used to determined if a comic is 'child friendly', it's place in pop culture history makes it still a vital and important tool in the comics industry. Like the music industry, comic book publishers now self-regulate their own ratings systems for their comics.

   Another important resource is the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. This fund, which I actively donate my spare coins to at comic book shops nationwide, was established to provide legal representation to publishers, authors, and writers who find themselves targets of the next community action to ban comic books.

 
  I hope this week, you'll participate in Banned Books (and Comics) week. But don't just read them for fun. Try to also reflect on the freedoms of speech and assembly we as Americans have the privilege to experience. This week is also time to reflect on the potential dangers of censorship. As the Jewish German writer Heinrich Hesse once wrote "Where books are burned in the end, people will be burned."