We’ve all heard stories of comic book burnings from the ’40s and ’50s. We know these stories were more than merely apocryphal—but how many burnings actually took place?

Nicholas Yanes is trying to answer that question.

As part of his dissertation on the history of Mad Magazine and EC Comics, he’s been reviewing primary sources in search of accounts of those public protests, and has been able to find 16 documented cases.

But there were more, weren’t there? Or … do we just think there were more?

He’s put out a call in hopes that the Internet group mind can locate any others that exist. So if you have any info, reach out to him on Twitter or Facebook.

So there I was in a checkout line at Walmart (which I know many of you have an objection to that reaches an almost religious fervor, but let’s leave the discussion of that for some other time, OK?) when I noticed something intriguing about the latest issue of Cosmopolitan. You know all about the brouhaha over the magazines, right, how many stores hide most of the covers, leaving only the logo visible, so cleavage doesn’t offend the unwary?

One example—my local supermarket, which only let me see Zooey Deschanel from the lips up this afternoon.

Walmart, on the other hand, was OK with letting me glimpse Deschanel’s cleavage, as you can see from the U-shaped shield below— (more…)

Back in the mid-’80s, I wrote seven Ethics columns for The Comics Journal, which proved to be a very cathartic experience. But two additional columns were never published, both bounced by TCJ.

One of them, about my relationship with Jim Shooter, was in retrospect so personal that it was probably best that no one other then me and Gary Groth ever read it. The other, about a case of advertising censorship at The Comic Buyer’s Guide, was so of its time that it’s probably no longer of interest.

But one small part of that latter column shouldn’t vanish, and that’s a letter I received from Bill Gaines, publisher of MAD magazine. I wrote to ask what he thought about the banning of the word “sex,” considering that he once plastered it on one of his own covers, and this is what he had to say.

Gaines wrote:

“Well, I deplore it—but can understand CBG’s desire to avoid controversy. If, in fact, they followed their ad policy of censoring ads, you pays your money & takes your chances! Personally, I wouldn’t advertise there!”

My apologies to Bill’s ghost for not letting this quote out into the wild until now. (more…)

It was revealed in this week’s online chat with Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten that the paper refused to publish the January 19 installment of the comic strip Candorville.

Here it is for those of you in the DC area who had to settle for a replacement that day. (Click to see the strip at a more readable size.) I have no idea whether any other newspapers took the same action.

Participants in the chat took both sides, with a few mentioning that different versions of the joke had been made previously by comedians Dick Gregory and Dave Chapelle.