An Introduction. All Introductions.

Hello Press in Americans.

Welcome to It's Still Murder. The title may seem a bit morbid but it's related mostly just related to a favorite media critic of mine Frederic Wertham . He was something of a crusader against  comic books in the 50s and wrote a book entitled Seduction of the Innocent that demonized comic books. The censorship of comics went to the Supreme Court because of Wertham's insistence that Batman and Robin were gay and Wonder Woman was a lesbian (amongst other outlandish claims) and that coupled with comic book violence, funny books were singlehandedly ruining the youth of America. His ideas and the threat of greater censorship led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority that banned violent images and the printing of words like "terror" or "zombies." Luckily comic book creators found a way around the ban on werewolves and created Sauron, a man who can transform into a humanoid pterodactyl.

Wertham has become something of a point of interest for me. He eventually wrote a book about television called   The War on Children that was never published. But his ideas about racial segregation were used as evidence in the case of Brown v. the Board of Ed. Despite his attitudes against comics, Wretham always said that he had nothing against them but rather the effects of them and in one of his works he said that they did promote imagination. Although, as a comic book fan, he should be someone that I consider an enemy of the art form, I am kind of intrigued by his ideas. I don't agree with him but it's interesting. Almost the same way Glenn Beck is interesting because you can't help but say "Holy shit, how does someone think like this?"

At the moment, the comic book industry is in trouble. It isn't because of censorship. iPads and illegal downloading (you can laugh but it's true) are killing it. No matter what you think about comics in general, tons of Hollywood projects are based on comics or graphic novels. Of course almost all of the super hero movies owe themselves to comics but here are some movies and TV shows you may not have realized were based on comics: 30 Days of Night, The Walking Dead, Road to Perdition, History of Violence, Constantine, Ghost World, Red, V for Vendetta. There are more. But it's interesting that so many great stories are coming from a medium that many deem only the domain of geeks and children.