The medium is the massacre in the epic finale of U.S v. Comics: The Senate Effort to Censor Comic Books, which examines how televised U.S. Senate comic book hearings in 1954 led to the creation of the infamous Comics Code.…
Tag: comics code
New series: U.S. vs. Comics
Check out the first episode of a new weekly webcomic on the 70th anniversary of the Senate comic book hearings – and what they teach us about censorship today!
Jeff Trexler and the Freedom To Read on the More To Come Podcast
CBLDF interim director Jeff Trexler appears in the latest episode of Publishers Weekly comic podcast, More To Come. In episode 506: “The CBLDF and the Right to Read,” host Calvin Reid sat down with Trexler to discuss the rise in book bannings and…
Panelists Announced for Recoding Censorship
Join us this Thursday, June 24 at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern for our June Membership Meeting Recoding Censorship. We are pleased to announce the stellar panelists that will be joining us for our event. Guest panelists include Terry Anderson (Cartoonists…
History of Comics Censorship, Part 2
Editor’s Note: This resource is the second of a six-part series based on one of CBLDF’s most popular presentations about the history of comics censorship. We’ll be posting a segment each week leading up to and including Banned Books Week, September…
Listen to CBLDF’s Charles Brownstein Discuss Censorship Trends (& Get More In-Depth Information)
Earlier this month, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s Executive Director, Charles Brownstein sat down with Barry Lynn, host of Culture Shocks on KCAA, NBC News Radio for Southern California. From the Comics Code to the recent Walking Dead ban, Charles…
Beyond Nazi-Punching: How Superhero Comics Grappled With Their Fascistic Roots
When the first draft of the self-imposed Comics Code was drawn up in 1954, virtually every clause directly addressed some point of criticism that had come up in that year’s Senate hearings, which probed for some causal link between comics…
Looking Back on Oklahoma’s War on Comics
With the conclusion of Wizard World Tulsa, local news outlet Tulsa World took a look back on the war Tulsa and neighboring Oklahoma cities waged against comics in the mid-1950s. From book swaps exchanging comics for perceived “higher literature” and independent review committees organized by…
“Smut and Trash:” A Brief History of Comics Censorship in Germany
The United States wasn’t the only country that harbored a crusade against comics this past century. Germany, too, has had its own sordid history with the medium, complete with public fears over an alleged increase in juvenile delinquency and subsequent…
A Brief History of Movie Censorship
The 1950s may have saw the implementation of the Comics Code, which literally censored comics off the newsstand and all but destroyed the comics industry, but before that even some of the earliest forms of movie entertainment—the Nickelodeon and moveable…