"Did her child read the Boys issue 4?"
Pal Dorian pointed out to me that there’s a Newsarama message board thread discussing that “comic book stores are dens of sin” article I’d Googled up the other day.
Some reactions are as follows:
“I used to have a friend growing up whose mom would take a Sharpie to his comics and edit out anything she found ‘offensive.'”
“My kids read some of my comics and if there’s anything that I think might be a bit much for ’em( I know my kids so I have a good idea what that is in regards to the 11yo and 17yo) I just talk about it with them first and if they want to read the book still I leave it up to them.”
“what a minute, this article is 4 years old!”
“Someone please tell me that this woman [note – some posters in this thread seem to think the article was written by a woman] is not complaining that comics, which really haven’t been targeted towards children in years, are not for childish enough. Please tell me that she isn’t complaining about something that she comics to be, due to her own unwillingness to accept change. This is like someone writing a letter explaining they’re outrage because they went to the South expecting there to be slaves, and found none.”
“Did her child read the Boys issue 4?”
“The hard core fans have had years to become accustomed to, and even rather jaded about, things that a great many people, especially parents, would find very shocking. While I wouldn’t use the sort of rhetoric this article contains, I do believe parents could use some warnings about what sorts of things are likely to be found in comics, so they’ll know that they need to supervise their children’s reading of them.”
“As a librarian, I thought you’d value the idea of letting people decide about materials for themselves. Certainly if these weren’t comics, you’d feel differently.”
“I didn’t say anything at all about advocating censorship. I said that parents are often deeply ignorant about the content of today’s comics, and that they need to be made aware of them so that they will know to keep a closer eye on their childrens’ exposure to them.”
“I know this is a stretch, but perhaps parents should actually LOOK at what their kids are interested in and police the material themsleves. […] Of course, its much easier to blame others and act like the entire world should be sanitized just in case a 10 year old gets his hands on something.”
“Protecting children means censorsing adults. Didn’t you know that?”
“I think it’s funny too,that some folks have insinuated that the problems with education and the youth are all the fault of parents. Couldn’t be the fact that many (not all) people today under 30 have absolutely no sense of personal responsibility and have to blame evryone but themselves for what’s wrong with them.”
“no one is attacking all parents in general. Just the ones who don’t want to take responsibility for their kids, or how they turn out. Sorta like blaming your kids delinquency on some mythical generational flaw.”
“Yes parents need to keep track of what their kids are reading, but that doesn’t dismiss the fact that many comics are almost blatently dishonest with their rating systems. And this going to come back to haunt the industry someday.”
“It’s worth repeating – this article was written in 2002. The stupidity of it is timeless, though.”
