Here’s a local story here in Utah. A mom bought a package of comic books for Easter at a local dollar store. The recipient was her 10-year-old son who got an eye full when the first two pages contained “naked ladies” in The Spectre.
Linda Hurst bought the comics to put in an Easter basket. She didn’t feel comfortable being on camera but said, “It really embarrassed me because I’d given it to a 10 year old boy.” She bought the comics from a Dollar Tree. Everything made her believe it was meant for children. She says they were placed in the kids isle of the store, the wrapping seemed “G” rated, and the back of the wrapper says, “All comic books inserted in the “Superhero Comic Book Spectacular” are family friendly and will bring hours of enjoyable reading.”
ABC4 news notes that the packaged comics were “a random selection of out of print comic books.”
Although cliche, the “you can’t judge a book by its cover” applies to comic books too.
?Uhhh, oh my gosh.? — Dollar Tree manager.
“Heh-heh-heh.” ? Comics guy thinking he’s being funny by slipping an adult comic into the stack set aside for bags to be sent to Dollar Tree. After all, not to include it would be censorship, right? It’s time the comics industry thought less about censorship and more about responsibility.
This is a pretty common problem because of irresponsible dealers like Beckett Media.
Dollar Tree is more like one of those 99 Cents Only stores, only even more tacky. I’ve been to one in Culver City, CA and from the looks of it, I’m about as surprised about this as I would be if I discovered that the cartoon DVDs they sold were actually recorded off of old VHS tapes. Well, that actually is the case, but I’m surprised that a dollar store actually sells comics.
Nothing warps the mind quite like images of the human body.
Would she have complained if they had been images of war atrocities instead?
“Nothing warps the mind quite like images of the human body.”
Especially when it’s a comic book human body and the girls’ boobs are enormous. What’s wrong with this 10-year-old little boy?!?
Helllloooooooo??? It’s UTAH…..amen.
I’m far more worried about the damage done to a child if he was given any candy or food products in an Easter basket bought at a Dollar Tree.
I was in one last month and they were selling Hershey bars promoting the “Batman & Robin” movie. You know, the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Made in 1997. I wish I was kidding.
Wow. That movie being 13 years old just hit me. Anyone remember “Demolition Man?” 1993. That’s the one that always gets me. What were we talking about? Oh, right. Comics. And children. I’m old.
I’ve gotten pretty good Worchester Sauce at Dollar Trees. Give the canned Vienna Sausage a pass, though.
I’m surprised more people aren’t upset over the kid?s awesome grammar.
It never fails to surprise me when I see or read about people blithely assuming comics are for kids. I know, I know, it’s a separate subculture that lots of people know nothing about, and more generally people are very often inexplicably stupid, but still. It’s been 25 years since “Watchmen” and “The Dark Knight Returns”, 20 years since Tim Burton’s Batman freely killed people, more than 10 years since violent 90s antiheroes were the industry norm, seven years since the heroes of X-Men 2 stabbed dozens of people… how oblivious do people have to be to assume that the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip is representative of the genre?
wait till his teacher tries to seduce him
Yeah, the packaging and product placement misrepresented itself as “family friendly” and generally we’ve come to assume this means no nudity. But I’m thinking the nudity was the only thing of value in those comic books. At least that apparently sparked a conversation.
The thought that the lady was completely comfortable with buying crappy, repackaged comic books at a dollar store for her kid — that’s scary.
Keep that child out of any art museum or they might see a statue or painting of a nude woman or man. Lord save us!