The Evils of Comic Books

Comic artist/blogger Neal Van Flue ran across a 1954 encyclopedia entry about comics which includes, amidst the fairly accurate historical background, some fairly strong accusations about the bad effects of comic books on children. The source of their power, according to the original article's author, was the combined use of words and visuals, which "no other kind of literature" does. The two main arguments against comic books are ones I heard repeatedly throughout my youth in the 1950s. First, some of them dealt with crime and "other wicked acts"and might influence young readers to imitate them. Second, low-quality comic books do not help children "develop good taste in literature". It cheers me considerably to note that the encyclopedia was absolutely right in his appraisal of the inspirational power of comic books. The opening scene in Stephen Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (co-authored by George Lucas) was based on Disney artist Carl Banks' Scrooge McDuck comic "The Seven Cities of Cibola". My brother and I read that comic until it was ragged, and apparently so did Lucas and Spielberg and a whole bunch of kids who grew up to be film critics and spotted the similarity when the movie came out in 1981.

Comic books, of course, have been replaced by new multimedia evils since 1954: television, music videos, computer games and MySpace. And I am sure that tragedies such as Columbine and Virginia Tech will continue to prompt cultural critics to decry the "dark side" of those amusements. But bear in mind that Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus has probably inspired a few copycat crimes in its 400-year existence, as well.