I recently did some product reviews for my friends at Wet Paint. Since they are the best and the friendliest art supply store I have ever been to, and since they have generously supported the Cartoonist Conspiracy for a number of events (including most of the 24 Hour Comics Days), it was a pleasure to do it. You can read them here, if you’re interested.
THE PEANUT GALLERY: The Author Meets The Critics Round 2: Frederick Wertham Versus Edwin J. Lucas
I mentioned in a previous post about Frederick Wertham debating Al Capp on The Author Meets The Critics that Wertham appeared also on another episode… I recently listened to it. You can do so here.
Wertham gets completely destroyed in the debate by Edwin J. Lucas, who makes good use of Wertham’s own words in discrediting him. As stupid as Wertham sounds, he is joined by another even less coherent person apparently also making a career out of disparaging funny books, a miss Virginia Peterson… she does a lot to make his case even weaker.
In spite of being squarely on his side in the debate, I disagree with the fundamental argument Mr. Lucas makes, though.
Personally, I am a first amendment extremist… but I no longer buy the argument that is often made by other first amendment extremists that a reader’s behavior is not affected by media that they intake.
To claim that a child is always unaffected behaviorally by a violent image unless they were previously maladjusted seems deeply disingenuous. Few would argue that a child can not be positively influenced by media (after all, textbooks are media, right?)… so why wouldn’t they be able to be negatively influenced by it?
The real issue… which, strangely, no one seemed to be arguing at the time… is that artists and writers should be able to make any sort of art they damn well please without having to cater to censors or worry about what effect it will have on their readers. Their job is to make the art, not to worry about what effect it will have.
If the media consumers do not like something they read, watch or listen to, they can choose not to read, watch or listen to it. If they are children, their parents should be taking responsibility for what media they are exposed to. Obviously, no parent can monitor everything that a child sees… nor should they attempt to. But to censor media out of concern that children could potentially be exposed to it is reprehensible, as it comes at an enormous cost to freedom of expression.
This cost of this sort of censorship can be easily evidenced by reading a sampling of comics made before and after the comics code was implemented. Before the code, there were many vibrant and entertaining comics… after the code entertaining comics were few and far-between. Readership plummeted. The art form was effectively neutered for years until the underground comics brought it back from the dead with a vengeance… and that was for a comparatively microscopic audience.
The effect of the censorship is still felt… comics have not sold in anywhere near the same numbers as they did before the code to this day. In the mid-fifties, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories had a monthly circulation of over three million copies. Almost every kid read comics… needless to say, literacy rates were much higher. Now 100,000 copies sold of a comic book is considered wildly successful. While obviously censorship is not the only reason for this, I would guess it may be one of the biggest ones.
CRUMBLING PAPER: Pussy Pumpkin and That Family Next Door
There are a number of old comic strips that I have scanned and cleaned up a bit that have not yet appeared on this site. I recently shared them with my friend Allan Holtz at his wonderful blog The Stripper’s Guide, and offered to let him post any of them he was interested in writing about. I’m much more interested in hearing what he has to say about them than what I would cobble together. Allan has a vast knowledge of comic strip history, and is currently working on an enormous encyclopedia indexing every American comic strip he has been able to see examples of in his many years of research.
So far he has posted two of the strips I scanned.
First of all, he posted an example of The Strange Adventures of Pussy Pumpkin and her Chum Toodles by Grace Drayton (creator of the Campbell’s Kids), which you can read about here.
I previously posted about Pussy Pumpkin here and here (the strip at the first link did not appear on the Stripper’s Guide).
Next he posted the example of That Family Next Door by Jean Knott which I posted previously here.
Here is what Allan said about that strip, and here is a follow-up post with more examples.
THE PEANUT GALLERY: The Author Meets The Critics: Frederic Wertham Versus Al Capp
Tom Spurgeon linked to this interesting interview with Frederic Wertham and Al Capp from an old radio show called The Author Meets The Critics on his Comics Reporter blog the other week. I got around to listening to it today. It was recorded when Capp was at the height of his popularity in the fifties, and the focus of the discussion is largely on the Schmoo. Capp decimates Wertham, but you kind of end up wishing he used better arguments. Capp is ill-informed about what is in the comics on the newsstands, and is under the impression that the majority of comics published at the time are reprints of newspaper comics, which was not the case (as Wertham correctly states). Capp believes the comics have all been thoroughly censored (since in his mind, they are reprints of comic strips, which he knows are thoroughly censored)… which, strangely, Capp seems to have little problem with, or if he does he does not elaborate on it. Wertham makes much more inaccurate, spurious and poorly articulated arguments, though… hearing him talk, it is actually hard to believe anyone could have ever taken him seriously. Must have been the accent.
You can hear the interview here.
I just noticed that wasn’t the only episode of The Author Meets The Critics Wertham appeared on either… I haven’t listened to it yet, but here is another one.
Rogues’ Gallery #9: “COLD BILL” PATTERSON
It was ridiculous how long he had been in the otherwise-empty waiting room. His tooth hurt like hell.
Nothing to read but an old Cosmo and an issue of Highlights. What child likes the Timbertoes, anyhow?
He felt mild pity for the receptionist as she chased him into the office, but really she was as culpable as anyone in wasting his afternoon. As he went to work on the dentist, he marveled at the array of tools at his disposal. Extraction was easy.
Still, it looked like a doorknob and a piece of string was in his immediate future.
Note: I wrote this today for a contest. The theme is “found in space.” Wish me luck! I’ll need it.
Apna Desh 1972
HEY! KIDS! COMICS! Wertham Memorial Funnybook Collection Update #1: Read Seduction of the Innocent Online!
Thanks to Sinous on the Comics Journal message board, the biggest omission to the Wertham Library has been found. He points us to two different locations on the web that you can read Dr. Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent… here and here.
THE PEANUT GALLERY: Where I Wish The Wild Things Weren’t
HR Pufnstuf image courtesy of the Life Magazine image archive on Google.
This is not a review of the Where the Wild Things Are movie. I haven’t seen it. I’m not going to. So, if you are inclined to see it, you may very well want to ignore this rant.
I love Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are… but I have no interest in seeing it turned into any full-length movie, regardless of whatever quality said movie may or may not have. Two hours of rampaging fursuits could never be as charming to me as Sendak’s sparse 48-page masterpiece.
While the filmmakers sound considerably more well-intentioned than the evil shits who have made “adaptations” of Seuss in recent years (the adaptation is written by Dave Eggers, the instigator of the wonderful McSweeney’s), the concept of turning Wild Things into a full-length, live action movie just doesn’t work for me.
The trailer, which I regret morbid curiosity beckoned me to watch, made me kind of queasy to look at (the atrociously inappropriate music didn’t help). Maybe if it was animated and 15 minutes long, it would be more appealing. And unmarketable, of course.
There is always the argument (a good one) that however awful an adaptation, the book is still on the shelf… which is true enough. Certainly, some works are enhanced by different interpretations… Alice in Wonderland, for example, has been reinterpreted hundreds of times and is much richer for it.
Wild Things is too personal of a vision to be improved on by this sort of reinterpretation, in my view. It seems sad to me that some kids will grow up with memories of this movie instead of the brilliant book.
Fallcon is this weekend!
Fallcon, The Twin Cities biggest and best comic convention is this weekend! Come and join me in the “Cartoonist Conspiracy Lounge” to doodle and shoot the breeze.
FALLCON
October 10 & 11, 2009 – 10AM to 5PM Both Days
Minnesota State Fairgrounds
IN THE GRANDSTAND
Hope to see you all there!
HEY! KIDS! COMICS! The Dr. Fredric Wertham Memorial Funnybook Collection: The Comics Featured in Seduction of the Innocent
This week was Banned Books Week. I decided to celebrate by seeing how many of the comics featured in Fredric Wertham‘s notorious book Seduction of the Innocent I could find floating out on the internet to share with the world in one convenient location.
CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO GO TO THE DOWNLOAD PAGE.
Wertham’s writings on comic books were very influential in the senatorial investigation into juvenile delinquency in 1953, and Seduction of the Innocent went on to become a best-seller, outraging parents across the nation.