BW Media Spotlight

If you’re curious about the full story of what happened in the Canadian bill we discussed yesterday I came across this thesis by Joseph Tilley going over the history of the Fulton bill. It chronicles the attempts by the Canadian PTA to ban crime comics, notes some admittedly legitimate reasons why they went extreme on comics, and that they were less willing to lump superhero comics with crime and horror comics, their actual targets. Basically despite PTA chairperson Eleanor Grey using Wertham as a mentor she and Mr. Fulton weren’t as extreme as Wertham was.

One thing I did notice on my own (the piece is relatively neutral) is that most of the people against comic books were of the cultural elite, growing up well-to-do and not poor on the streets. Mrs. Grey also believed all kids should be reading books and that comics were somehow taking kids away from books. As someone who grew up with and still loves both I have to disagree. One of the Canadian officials grew up on a farm and thought kids weren’t causing trouble if they were doing chores. There was even a Communist sympathizer on the anti-comic side…which is amusing when you figure the “Red Scare” was one of the reasons brought up to fight crime comics. It’s worth reading and less frustrating than what we’ll be looking at today as Wertham looks at his anti-comic friends overseas.

Read along so you know the context.

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