Banned Books Week and CBLDF

I initially had planned to make recommendations on Banned Books Week and as I usual, I started to do some research and I found out that A) I hadn't read all that many banned books, which is bizarre to me since I don't ever filter for content in my life which is why I wasn't aware of the banned books

B) there is not that many superhero books that have been banned or challenged and that's what I mostly read.

C) The books that are typically banned or challenged are pretty common library books. Sandman, Persepopolis, Y the Last Man, Maus, and Bones just to name a few.

D) and this is the most important one of all, Comic book Legal Defense Fund(CBLDF), already has a pretty extensive list and they're better experts about censorship than I am. This is literally all they do is fight censorship and legal issues revolving around comics. So, they'd be the people to look at when it comes to Banned Books more so than me. I read comics and I'm a huge fan. I'm an advocate for comics and comics in libraries obviously, but I don't worry about censorship of comics and I certainly have never dealt with a challenge of a comic (or any book, working in a college system it's less common than a public or school library setting). So yeah.. check them out. Here are their resources for 2017.

Meanwhile.. circle back to last weeks blog and remember that EVERY comic book was challenged at one point. The entire medium was under assault and barely survived only through massive self-censorship that "saved" the industry in the short term, but nearly destroyed it in the long term especially as Marvel and DC (dubbed the "Big 2" because well they're the two biggest comic publishers) were slow to change and adapt to the changes in society and ditch the code. It's also why comics got a stigma as being "kids stuff" for a long time because it was and HAD to be.

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