I Give You Maryland State Senator, Nancy King

[aquatroy]

Just wonderful. When educrates are having a difficult time getting kids to read, let's make fun of those that do.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

Yeah; we were discussing something similar in another thread. This comes around every so often. It’s a comfortable old saw public figures like to dust off every so often. (Like how evil video games are, or how rock and roll will rot your brain....) I think the WORST part of the ad is that they used books that, in all likelihood, the parents you’re trying to scare were fans of.

Don C.

[johnmiic]

When I attended Queens College in New York, I had a professor who taught Communications, Arts & Sciences. He had a whole lesson devoted to Comic Books, about 2 classroom sittings = 90 minutes. His research went up to the mid-1970's.

He chronicled the birth of the modern Newspaper Strip and how it was instrumental to helping immigrants learn English as they tried to become Americans. He explained how Comic Books rose from strips to their own industry and the double standards that followed, ( write and draw a strip-you're a Rock Star, write or draw a comic book-you're a corrupter of innocent young children). He mentioned how soldiers during war-time would keep them around as light reading. How they were often used to boost morale`. Comic Books are something very American as Manga/Anime` now is to the Japanese.

He was one of these people, like Nancy King. He stated that he expected after the purging of the industry during the Dr. Wertham investigations, that comics would go further down the toilet. Instead, he was surprised at the dawning of the Marvel era where the quality of writing and art actually got better. He was not a convert. He didn't read comic books but he gained some sort of respect for the form as it got better. I would have liked to update him on the period from 1975-1994, as it was then, but peer-pressure set in. I kept quiet. It was a really great lecture. It's the type of thing I would like to force Nancy King to sit down and listen to.

[samurainoir]

I'm quite amused by the one kid reading Previews. It's all text accompanying the cover illos. I would be really impressed that a kid that age was reading at that level.

Also, if I'm recalling correctly, that X-Men is heavy on the prose summing up the X-Men back story. Gold Star.

Hand them those big thick Harry Potter volumes and they would be able to handle that no problem.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

One OTHER thing bothers me about that ad.... if there are no teachers, why are those kids in school? Has Maryland become a cyberpunk-esque urban sprawl, where gangs of juvenile delinquents occupy the abandoned centers of education, reading their brain-rotting swill?

>I'm quite amused by the one kid reading Previews.

...she's hiding a copy of "Naruto" behind it.

Don C.

[PNGwynne]

Typical of the ignorant fear-mongering to which modern "poilitics" has descended...

It's like the '50s again in so many ways--long live McCarthy & Wertham.

[saildog]

My experience has been that only cerebral, academic types (nerds...for lack of a better word) read comics in the first place.

If left to their own devices, as the add would imply, kids would do a lot of other things before reading. Had the add shown them in front of a TV or video game....well, it might make some sense. The fact that they are reading comics implies that they can read at a high level.

[Sandman9580]

This illustrates how little respect is given to the comic book form, even now. It's been fifty years since Wertham, haven't we moved past this yet?

[mitchedwards]

My daughter is in 3rd grade and reading past 6th grade level. I give part of the credit to her sitting down and reading the Batman books in showcase comics. It gave her a love of all things printed