Monday Moaning
The rise of the comic book, the Great Comic-Book Scare, comic-book censorship, and remembering a far more innocent age. Neat short piece. Excerpts:
[Following the censorship, b]etween 1954 and 1956, the number of comic-book titles plunged from about 650 to 250. One unemployed artist went looking for a job–any kind of job. “If you said you drew comic-books,” he recalled, “it was like saying you were a child molester.” . . .
Every honest consumer of 1940s and 1950s comic books can recall protagonists like Tarzan and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, who guided ignorant and obedient “natives.” Even Will Eisner's brilliantly illustrated Spirit featured a dim-witted black henchman named Ebony White, who spoke like a walk-on in an Amos 'n' Andy show. As for misogyny, helpless (and invariably large-busted) young women were the favorite target of innumerable criminals and extraterrestrials. Artists spared no pictorial detail in rendering their humiliation and terror. . . .
Yet in a coarsening culture, high values could not endure. Decades after the Code was imposed, underground films pushed vulgarity and celebrated violence. Standards gave way to the anything-goes atmosphere of the late sixties. All too soon, expensive underground comic books, with X-rated scenes undreamed of half a century ago, replaced the banished ten-cent periodicals.
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Big selection of bizarre "facts." The citations give them an air of credibility, but heck if I know whether they're accurate. Sample:
Zach Dunlap, a 21 year old Oklahoma City man, was declared brain dead. Doctors were preparing to remove his organs for transplant when he began to move his foot and hand. He slowly regained consciousness and was sent home to continue his recovery. - CNN.com, 3/24/08
A Sicilian court has ruled that an accused Mafioso can go home because he was too big (462 lbs.) to fit through prison doors and in an prison bed. - MSNBC, 3/12/08
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Put Barbie in a house that your kids should be playing with: Transforming that ugly plastic pink thing into a faerie tale house.
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That's it for today. Blogging might be light for awhile. Lots of stuff going on.
