Comics Censorship

20th CENTURY COMICS Resources:

• Comic Book Legal Defense Fund / History of Comics Censorship

• ALA: “Frequently Challenged Books”
• 
  The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (David HAJDU)
• FREDRIC WERTHAM’S PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF COMIC BOOKS – LEADING THE ANTI-COMICS MOVEMENT OF THE LATE 1940s —  Archived by Archive.org from the old Panelology.info site article compiling resources on Wertham’s work & legacy.
• SOTI’s Anti-Comics Crusade Timeline >> + Anti-Comics Articles >>
• The Humor of the Colored Supplement (RALPH BERGENGREN, The Atlantic, August 1 1906) — “Ten or a dozen years ago… an enterprising newspaper publisher conceived the idea of appealing to what is known as the American ‘sense of humor’ by printing a so-called comic supplement in colors. He chose Sunday as of all days the most lacking in popular amusements, carefully restricted himself to pictures without humor and color without beauty, and presently inaugurated a new era in American journalism. The colored supplement became an institution. No Sunday is complete without it,—not because its pages invariably delight, but because, like flies in suummer, there is no screen that will altogether exclude them.”
•  “A National Disgrace…” (Sterling North, Chicago Daily News, May 8 1940)
• “Horror in the Nursery” (Collier’s, March 1948)

• New Fun (1935)
•  Action Comics #1 (1938)
•  Crime Does Not Pay
•  Crimes by Women
•  Wonder Woman + Sensation Comics [@wikipedia]
  +  Profile of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston @ CBR >>
•  “1948: The Year Comics Met Their Match” (CBLDF)
• EC Comics >>
• CBR brings you “Judgement Day,” from the LAST comic book EC published! (Scroll down to find it…)
  

• 
  CODE OF THE COMICS MAGAZINE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC. (Adopted October 26, 1954)
  [History @ CBLDF.org]

• 
  “Tales From the Code: You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” = Effects of the code on romance comics (CBLDF.org)
• 
  “ACG’s Recycled Romance” = Code-based revisions of romance covers — BEFORE and AFTER! (CBR)

• HORROR COMICS @ wikipedia

•  “Cool Covers” @ RTS >> = Archive.org mirror of RTSUnlimited.com‘s gallery detailing of the Comics Industry’s path to censorship…
•  Black Cat #50 (June 1954) = a fine example of the disconnect between gruesomely sensationalist cover art & a thought-provoking story inside…

• Seduction of the Innocent – the influence of comic books on today’s youth (Frederic Wertham, 1954)

•  Fun Home Challenges @ CBLDF >>
  “South Carolina legislators cut university funding over gay-themed books” (Feb. 2014)
  “Bechdel Reacts to ‘Fun Home’ Controversy in So. Carolina” (Feb 2014)

You think the COMICS CODE was rough?
Wait ’til you learn the horrors of…

THE MAYAN APOCALYPSE

• For general MAYAN COMICS resources, see also:
  

  ANCIENT MAYA Comics Workshop page >>

• Maya Codices ~ [Dresden] [Madrid] [Grolier]

• 
  “July 1562: The Mayan Apocalypse” >>
• Diego de Landa >> [suppression of the maya >>]
• Bartolomé de las Casas >> [Apologism >>]
• Popol Vuh (history of the Maya people) / About the Popul Vuh >> [@wikipedia]
• …

BAYEUX TAPESTRY

This embroidered history comic [read it! >>] has a long & gripping history of suppression, secret messages, mystery, & danger, and teaches us much about the relationship between visual narratives & political power…

• For general Bayeux Tapestry resources, see:
  

• Ducarel‘s account of viewing the Tapestry in 1752…
• Lambert Leonard-Le Forestier = the “Savior of the Bayeux Tapestry” during the French Revolution >>
• Nazi Ahnenerbe / Interest in Bayeux Tapestry >>
• The strange tale of the Bayeux Tapestry, archaeology and the Nazi party (Shirley Ann Brown)
  “The Bayeux Tapestry is an extraordinary artwork. It was also a propaganda tool for William I and Napoleon, a focus of rival French and British theories in the 19th century and, in the 1940s, the subject of intense research by German academics.”
• Orderic Vitalis’ Account of the Death of William the Conqueror = William’s condemnation of his half-brother Odo, Earl of Kent sounds awfully similar to later critiques of comics publishers… Was Odo the originator of the Bayeux Tapestry, or was it a gift of reconciliation from Eustace II?

• For more Bayeux stories & mysteries, see:

  1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry (Andrew BRIDGEFORD)