WaP!: “The Politics of Cowardice” Part 5 (Conclusion)

The Forgotten Activist Prozine: Part 9

This is the final installment of my serialized essay on ratings and censorship, which concluded in Wap #6—cover, below—and having completed this serialization of “The Politics of Cowardice” today, we’ll backtrack next week and fill you in on the complete contents of the respective issues of WaP! my essay appeared in. I’ve got a corker in line for Monday, so stay tuned.

WaP! #6 was a key issue, as it was WaP!‘s self-publishing issue. I’ll be sharing a bit more of that issue’s contents than others, given the role it played in my own decision to finally self-publish fully in the 1990s.

OK, then: back to my own serialized article “The Politics of Cowardice” in its final installment, as it originally ran in WaP!#6 (September-October 1988; pp. 20-22). This was the toughest portion of the article to write and whittle down to bite size, given the enormity of the movie industry’s waltz with the Code and the Ratings system, and the pervasiveness of the arguments that the comics industry should adopt such a system.

I kept it short and sweet, as best I could, though I could have said more—and no doubt will, another time, another place.

Also note: the correct spelling of Jan Strnad‘s name is Strnad, not “Strand.” Apologies, Jan; not my typo.

Evolution of the MPAA Ratings system, 1968-1990: It’s largely forgotten today that the original 1968 MPAA ratings were quite straightforward: G, M (for Mature), R, X—that was it. Mainstream studios released X films initially, one of which—Midnight Cowboy (1969)—won the Best Picture Academy Award. The M rating was revised to GP by 1970, and then PG; the heated 1984 controversy over three Steven Spielberg productions—Poltergeist, Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom—resulted in the PG-13 rating being created. The stigmatizing of the X rating led to the revisionism of the NC-17 rating, which accomplished nothing, really.

And so concluded “The Politics of Cowardice.”

Monday: Alan Moore, “A Letter from England.”

To be continued!

________

Repeating: This material has never been seen online before, anywhere.

I’ll continue sharing it, as long as the following groundrules are honored.

This serialized essay is ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette. The individual archival images are ©1988 their respective authors and creators.

Note: I have not granted permission for these posts to be shared at Goodreads.com or any other thieving sites that cull blog content from non-participating creators; if this post is appearing anywhere but at the genuine Myrant blog/site (http://srbissette.com), it is stolen and should be immediately shut down and reported.

_________

Some ground rules: Please respect these rules, and please report to me (via comments thread or email — msbissette@yahoo.com) any breaking of these rules.

If all goes well, I’ll do more of this at Myrant; if the virtual archives are robbed, so to speak, this will be the last and only time I get into these kinds of archival materials at Myrant.

Please:

1. Post links to the relevant Myrant posts; please do NOT lift the graphics to place them on your own blog, journal or website.
2. Please do NOT lift these posts, and my text, verbatim and place them on your blog, journal, flicker pages or whatever.
3. Please note all copyright notices at the end of each post, and respect them. I do not own this copyright material, nor do I claim to; I am sharing it here (with correct copyright ownership noted) to share this material with fans, scholars and researchers.
4. If there are any problems, I’ll just tear this all down and abandon the project.

PS: I have removed subscription info from all images/text; the WaP! address is no longer active, subscriptions/copies are obviously no longer available (and no, I don’t know where/how you can find copies, sorry).

Let’s see where this goes. Thanks!

_________________

“The Politics of Cowardice” ©1987, 1988, 2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. All WaP! images, content ©1988, 1989 the respective creative contributors and proprietors. All other cover art or comics images © respective year of original publication their original creators and/or proprietors. Excerpted essays ©2009, 2010, and this text material ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. Permission to link, post pingbacks granted, but please do not quote excessively or post these essays on your own blogs, websites or venues; it’s not yours to play with. NOTE: All images are posted for archival and educational purposes only, under applicable US Fair Use laws.

WaP!: “The Politics of Cowardice” Part 4

The Forgotten Activist Prozine: Part 8

My serialized essay on censorship continued in Wap #5—cover, left—and as noted on Monday: once I complete this serialization of “The Politics of Cowardice,” I’ll backtrack and fill you in on the complete contents of the respective issues of WaP! my serialized essay ran it.

Continuing “The Politics of Cowardice, Part 2,” uh, Part 2—technically, the third installment—as it originally ran in WaP! #5 (August 1988; pp. 13-14; complete pp. 11-14).

To make sense of all that follows, you might want to read and/or revisit the 2010 Myrant overview of the 1986 DC Ratings debacle. Then again, you might not. There’s a lot of reading there.

Any one, or (if you’re ambitious), all of the following chapters will give you the backstory:

• SpiderBaby Archives: The DC/Marvel Ratings Debacle, Prologue;
• SpiderBaby Archives: The DC/Marvel Ratings Debacle, Part 1;
• Part 2;
• Part 3;
• Part 4;
• Part 5;
• Part 6;
• Part 7;
• Part 8;

(whew!)

• Part 9;
• Part 10;
• Part 11;
• and the ill-timed Part 12 (conclusion).

Proceed at your own risk!

Here’s the final stretch of the WaP! #5 installment:

To be continued!

________

Repeating: This material has never been seen online before, anywhere.

I’ll continue sharing it, as long as the following groundrules are honored.

This serialized essay is ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette. The individual archival images are ©1988 their respective authors and creators.

Note: I have not granted permission for these posts to be shared at Goodreads.com or any other thieving sites that cull blog content from non-participating creators; if this post is appearing anywhere but at the genuine Myrant blog/site (http://srbissette.com), it is stolen and should be immediately shut down and reported.

_________

Some ground rules: Please respect these rules, and please report to me (via comments thread or email — msbissette@yahoo.com) any breaking of these rules.

If all goes well, I’ll do more of this at Myrant; if the virtual archives are robbed, so to speak, this will be the last and only time I get into these kinds of archival materials at Myrant.

Please:

1. Post links to the relevant Myrant posts; please do NOT lift the graphics to place them on your own blog, journal or website.
2. Please do NOT lift these posts, and my text, verbatim and place them on your blog, journal, flicker pages or whatever.
3. Please note all copyright notices at the end of each post, and respect them. I do not own this copyright material, nor do I claim to; I am sharing it here (with correct copyright ownership noted) to share this material with fans, scholars and researchers.
4. If there are any problems, I’ll just tear this all down and abandon the project.

PS: I have removed subscription info from all images/text; the WaP! address is no longer active, subscriptions/copies are obviously no longer available (and no, I don’t know where/how you can find copies, sorry).

Let’s see where this goes. Thanks!

_________________

“The Politics of Cowardice” ©1987, 1988, 2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. All WaP! images, content ©1988, 1989 the respective creative contributors and proprietors. All other cover art or comics images © respective year of original publication their original creators and/or proprietors. Excerpted essays ©2009, 2010, and this text material ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. Permission to link, post pingbacks granted, but please do not quote excessively or post these essays on your own blogs, websites or venues; it’s not yours to play with. NOTE: All images are posted for archival and educational purposes only, under applicable US Fair Use laws.

WaP!: “The Politics of Cowardice” Part 3

The Forgotten Activist Prozine: Part 7

My serialized essay on censorship continued in Wap #5—cover, above—and no worries, please: once I complete this serialization of “The Politics of Cowardice,” I’ll backtrack and fill you in on the complete contents of the respective issues of WaP! it ran it. Believe you me, my contributions were the least of WaP!‘s contents.

Back to my own serialized article “The Politics of Cowardice, Part 2,” uh, Part 2—technically, the third installment—as it originally ran in WaP!#5 (August 1988; pp. 11-13+). This is the first two pages of that lengthy installment (to be continued Wednesday, with some background refresher material for full context).

• You might want to read “CBLDF [Comic Book Legal Defense Fund] Case Files — Illinois v. Correa; ‘The Friendly Frank’s Case’”

before you take the plunge into the following:

_____________________
More pro activism: Denis Kitchen at Kitchen Sink Press was the only publisher to step up to the plate initially to fight the mid-1980s wave of comic shop busts, and founded the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund with this benefit portfolio—you can see the names of the contributors:Sergio Aragones, Hilary Barta, Reed Waller, Steve Bissette, Bob Burden, Richard Corben, Robert Crumb, Howard Cruse, Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Mitch O’Connell and Don Simpson, and Eric Vincent. The folio sales raised $20,000; as noted at the CBLDF website, “…While the portfolio was out raising funds, a trial was held. On January 1, 1988 he was found guilty, fined $750 and sentenced to one year of court supervision. Kitchen, now in possession of the funds from the portfolio took charge of recruiting a lawyer for the appeal and found First Amendment pioneer Burton Joseph, co-founder of the Media Coalition & Playboy Foundation willing to take up the case. Joseph won the case…” Thus, Denis Kitchen—himself a vet underground cartoonist/creator—and fellow creators were the first to fight back, as Marvel, DC, etc. remained complacent and did nothing. This, too, was part of the activism WaP! emerged within and from. Cover art ©1987, 2013 Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

_______

To be continued!

________

Repeating: This material has never been seen online before, anywhere.

I’ll continue sharing it, as long as the following groundrules are honored.

This serialized essay is ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette. The individual archival images are ©1988 their respective authors and creators.

Note: I have not granted permission for these posts to be shared at Goodreads.com or any other thieving sites that cull blog content from non-participating creators; if this post is appearing anywhere but at the genuine Myrant blog/site (http://srbissette.com), it is stolen and should be immediately shut down and reported.

_________

Some ground rules: Please respect these rules, and please report to me (via comments thread or email — msbissette@yahoo.com) any breaking of these rules.

If all goes well, I’ll do more of this at Myrant; if the virtual archives are robbed, so to speak, this will be the last and only time I get into these kinds of archival materials at Myrant.

Please:

1. Post links to the relevant Myrant posts; please do NOT lift the graphics to place them on your own blog, journal or website.
2. Please do NOT lift these posts, and my text, verbatim and place them on your blog, journal, flicker pages or whatever.
3. Please note all copyright notices at the end of each post, and respect them. I do not own this copyright material, nor do I claim to; I am sharing it here (with correct copyright ownership noted) to share this material with fans, scholars and researchers.
4. If there are any problems, I’ll just tear this all down and abandon the project.

PS: I have removed subscription info from all images/text; the WaP! address is no longer active, subscriptions/copies are obviously no longer available (and no, I don’t know where/how you can find copies, sorry).

Let’s see where this goes. Thanks!

_________________

“The Politics of Cowardice” ©1987, 1988, 2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. All WaP! images, content ©1988, 1989 the respective creative contributors and proprietors. All other cover art or comics images © respective year of original publication their original creators and/or proprietors. Excerpted essays ©2009, 2010, and this text material ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. Permission to link, post pingbacks granted, but please do not quote excessively or post these essays on your own blogs, websites or venues; it’s not yours to play with. NOTE: All images are posted for archival and educational purposes only, under applicable US Fair Use laws.

WaP!: “The Politics of Cowardice” Part 2

The Forgotten Activist Prozine: Part 6

My serialized essay on censorship continued in Wap #4—an issue particularly timely in 2013, given its headline feature (see above), which I’ll be getting into next week.

Back to my own serialized article “The Politics of Cowardice, Part 2″ as it originally ran in WaP! #4 (July 1988; pp. 15-16):

To be continued!

________

Repeating: This material has never been seen online before, anywhere.

I’ll continue sharing it, as long as the following groundrules are honored.

This serialized essay is ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette. The individual archival images are ©1988 their respective authors and creators.

Note: I have not granted permission for these posts to be shared at Goodreads.com or any other thieving sites that cull blog content from non-participating creators; if this post is appearing anywhere but at the genuine Myrant blog/site (http://srbissette.com), it is stolen and should be immediately shut down and reported.

_________

Some ground rules: Please respect these rules, and please report to me (via comments thread or email — msbissette@yahoo.com) any breaking of these rules.

If all goes well, I’ll do more of this at Myrant; if the virtual archives are robbed, so to speak, this will be the last and only time I get into these kinds of archival materials at Myrant.

Please:

1. Post links to the relevant Myrant posts; please do NOT lift the graphics to place them on your own blog, journal or website.
2. Please do NOT lift these posts, and my text, verbatim and place them on your blog, journal, flicker pages or whatever.
3. Please note all copyright notices at the end of each post, and respect them. I do not own this copyright material, nor do I claim to; I am sharing it here (with correct copyright ownership noted) to share this material with fans, scholars and researchers.
4. If there are any problems, I’ll just tear this all down and abandon the project.

PS: I have removed subscription info from all images/text; the WaP! address is no longer active, subscriptions/copies are obviously no longer available (and no, I don’t know where/how you can find copies, sorry).

Let’s see where this goes. Thanks!

_________________

“The Politics of Cowardice” ©1987, 1988, 2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. All WaP! images, content ©1988, 1989 the respective creative contributors and proprietors. All other cover art or comics images © respective year of original publication their original creators and/or proprietors. Excerpted essays ©2009, 2010, and this text material ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. Permission to link, post pingbacks granted, but please do not quote excessively or post these essays on your own blogs, websites or venues; it’s not yours to play with. NOTE: All images are posted for archival and educational purposes only, under applicable US Fair Use laws.

WaP!: “The Politics of Cowardice” Part 1

The Forgotten Activist Prozine: Part 5

Then, there was my serialized essay on censorship, which began in Wap #3. This, I can share with Myrant readers in full. It’s especially relevant this week in 2013 given the very recent Myrant conversation about Apple and Comixology’s undue influence on the digital comics market, and this week’s news about Saga #12 being banned from the iOS version of the Comixology app. Much has changed—but in other ways, we’re still back to the same core issues, as long as distributors (Apple, Comixology) are censors.

Ready for some hefty mid-week reading? Here goes—to be continued Friday (and into next week), along with further WaP! retrospective materials:

Above: The Johnson State College campus; below: interior, Dibden Auditorium stage, where Paul Bartel’s Private Parts was projected (with the screen in place, natch) and the auditorium doors chained shut after much of the audience was seated.

One of the most tasteful passages of Mattioli’s classic Squeak the Mouse; a short history, via the publisher Catalan Communications: “In 1985, the U.S. Government, after New York Harbor Customs Officials confiscated 250,000 copies of this book from a ships hold, declared the printed book as pornographic materials and refused to return the books to Catalan Publishers in New York. This book was then brought to trial on a charge of obscenity on September 26, 1985. After two days of testimony, a jury voted unanimously that Squeak the Mouse was not obscene and the shipment was release to the claimant, Catalan Communications…”

_______

To be continued!

My old JSC pal Dave Booz still has a collection of my hand-drawn movie posters used to promote the 1974-1976 movie showings Terry Williams and I orchestrated/managed for Johnson State College. The original sensationalistic poster I drew for our Halloween showing of Private Parts is the one in the lower right-hand corner. Photo ©2012 David Booz, posted with permission. Sorry for the quality of this photo, but it’s the best I’ve got!

________

Repeating: This material has never been seen online before, anywhere.

I’ll continue sharing it, as long as the following groundrules are honored.

This serialized essay is ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette. The individual archival images are ©1988 their respective authors and creators.

Note: I have not granted permission for these posts to be shared at Goodreads.com or any other thieving sites that cull blog content from non-participating creators; if this post is appearing anywhere but at the genuine Myrant blog/site (http://srbissette.com), it is stolen and should be immediately shut down and reported.

_________

Some ground rules: Please respect these rules, and please report to me (via comments thread or email — msbissette@yahoo.com) any breaking of these rules.

If all goes well, I’ll do more of this at Myrant; if the virtual archives are robbed, so to speak, this will be the last and only time I get into these kinds of archival materials at Myrant.

Please:

1. Post links to the relevant Myrant posts; please do NOT lift the graphics to place them on your own blog, journal or website.
2. Please do NOT lift these posts, and my text, verbatim and place them on your blog, journal, flicker pages or whatever.
3. Please note all copyright notices at the end of each post, and respect them. I do not own this copyright material, nor do I claim to; I am sharing it here (with correct copyright ownership noted) to share this material with fans, scholars and researchers.
4. If there are any problems, I’ll just tear this all down and abandon the project.

PS: I have removed subscription info from all images/text; the WaP! address is no longer active, subscriptions/copies are obviously no longer available (and no, I don’t know where/how you can find copies, sorry).

Let’s see where this goes. Thanks!

_________________

“The Politics of Cowardice” ©1987, 1988, 2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. All WaP! images, content ©1988, 1989 the respective creative contributors and proprietors. All other cover art or comics images © respective year of original publication their original creators and/or proprietors. Excerpted essays ©2009, 2010, and this text material ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. Permission to link, post pingbacks granted, but please do not quote excessively or post these essays on your own blogs, websites or venues; it’s not yours to play with. NOTE: All images are posted for archival and educational purposes only, under applicable US Fair Use laws.