Comic Books... A Great Threat To Us All.

We can often get so caught up in current media storms as to forget that this is not a recent phenomenon.  Though crime is a common culprit many others have arisen.  One that first came to my mind was Comic Books.  In the 1930s and 40s amid a rise in the so-called "Crime" comic books, along with a erroneous suspicion that crime was on the rise, all comic books came under scrutiny.  At the time comic books were a unregulated market, due to the fact that it was in its infancy.  Soon parent groups and politicians, hungry for votes and issues not revolving around the war, began attacking the comic book industry.  While press coverage may not have been as vast as today, the media of the time certainly kept the public up to date on the horrors of these little books.  This scenario was similar to what Sternhiemer discusses in regard to child abductions.  As with the abductions the number of truly obscene comics was far inferior to the average comics that were just attempting to tell an interesting story to youngsters.  Soon the industry would become regulated with the birthing of the Comics Code Authority in 1954.  After this time almost all comic books began to adhere to the code which hurt the sales for many distributors.  Comic Books are simply another example of how those "in charge of children" often attempt to shape them by prohibiting certain activities perceived to undermine society.