Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 13:04:23 +0100 From: [g--l--n] at [falcon.bgsu.edu] (Metroplex) Subject: FTP 530 ADMINISTRIVIA: It's finals week here at Bowling Green State University, which means that this will be the final e-mail of FtP for the next couple of weeks until I can get settled into a routine over the summer. Again, I just want to reiterate what I said last week, and that is that FtP (this version of it anyway) IS NOT going away for the summer, it just won't be mailed out on a regular basis, as it has been for the better part of the past year. I appreciate all of your patience as I move from one part of my life to another, and I thank cat for allowing me to distribute her column to the "masses". Until next time... Greg Pallenik ==== FIT TO PRINT by cathrine yronwode for the week of May 1, 1995 THIS IS FIT TO PRINT NUMBER 530: In Fit to Print #517 i wrote about a 1950s-era California state law, still in effect today, which states that: "Every person who, as a condition to a sale or consignment of any magazine, book, or other publication requires that the purchaser or consignee purchase or receive for sale any horror comic book, is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprison-ment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both." Well, i received an intriguing coda to this, from Tom Nespeco of Albany, New York: "By sheer and bizarre coincidence, on the very same day I read FtP #517, I also finished Seduction of the Innocent. I've enclosed a few pages that might help clarify that California law you mentioned. "According to Wertham, druggists were often forced to carry certain comic books by distributors; those who refused would have their shipments of higher class magazines cut. Of course, Wertham doesn't cite any of these claims; indeed, the most entertaining aspect of Seduction of the Innocent it that there's not a footnote or reference, not even an index. "What was even more jarring, however, was that Wertham, toward the end of the book, denounces comic books for containing stories suggesting the 'United States Govern-ment is carrying out secret researches on bacteriological warfare and that ut is practiced on colored natives.' "As I am sure you're aware, the U. S. gov-ernment did conduct biological experiments on blacks, such as the deliberate failure to inform or treat blacks with syphilis... And then there are the dozens hundreds thousands of citizens the government performed radiation experi-ments on in the '50s. I'm sure Wertham would have denounced comic books suggesting such perfidy as propaganda as well." Tom copied pages from SOTI relating the travails of the National Association of Retail Druggists, whose unnamed president is said to have declared at an unspecified and un-dated convention: "It is a tragic fact that many retail druggists are peddlers of gutter muck. The charge can be held against them with jus-tice; their only defense is that it has never occurred to them to check on the comic books." Wertham tells a similar scary story of the pressure placed upon an unnamed "proprietor of a small book-shop in New Jersey" to sell comics. He contrasts this man's plight with the more sinister comics racks at "a small candy store frequented almost entirely by Puerto Ricans who had moved into the district." The candy store customers "cannot even speak English," according to Wertham, but "late in the evening, and into the night, child-ren collect at this store, which is also a place for that much hushed-up phenomenon child prostitution of the youngest and lowest paid kind." [As opposed to child prostitution of the highest-paid kind, which involves kids who can speak English...???] As Tom notes, Wertham condemned comic books as subversive propaganda because they "instructed" children about secret U.S. gov-ernment biowarfare experiments. But there is even more to this thanTom indicates: Not only were the Tuskeegee Institute syphilis study and civilian radiation tests underway in the 1950s, but-as extensively documented during the 1980s-our govern-ment was also testing the airborne spread of influ-enza germs on unsuspecting civilians in San Francsco and New York City and funding cancer research in Puerto Rico by an American doctor who injected tumour cells into healthy clinic patients and wrote letters home claiming that Puerto Ricans were lower than animals and he wished he could kill them all! Which leaves us to ask: if these 1950s biowarfare tests were so secret, how come comic book writers knew about them and spilled the beans? It's the same question i ask about Don't Let It Happen Here trading cards, which in 1938 revealed the existence of "Horror Camps in Nazi-Land," when the New York Times refused to print what they called "rumours" of German concentration camps. If, as a certain television series reminds us, "The truth is out there," sometimes it seems that only popular culture has the energy to get up, open the door, and let it in. ==== Fit to Print appears in print each week in Comics Buyers Guide and is available via e-mail. Tell your friends! To subscribe to Fit to Print via e-mail send a request with the words "Subscribe FtP" in the subject header and your address in the body of the message to [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu.] You will be added to the list and receive the next available issue. Back issues are available. FTP to nspace.cts.com and look in the Comics/About Comics/Comics News/Fit to Print directory. FtP is also available on the World Wide Web at http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~91mithra. Responses are welcome and should be directed to [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu.] Fit to Print is Copyright Cathrine Yronwode. All rights reserved.