Sex And Your Comic Book: Part 2 Would You Take Your Child Into Today’s Comics Shop?

When I was a young lad ( wow, I can­not believe I just typed that! ) of about seven, I had my first encounter with a comic book.

My grand­fa­ther had taken me to the local candy store, and on the cir­cu­lar mag­a­zine rack were many dif­fer­ent comics, and a few feet away from those cir­cu­lar racks were a few stand­ing mag­a­zine racks with the usual mag­a­zines along with a few black and white Mar­vel comic magazines.

And to be hon­est, I’m not sure what was the most impor­tant thing here…seeing these comics for the first time„,or the place I was to see them for the first time.

In my day, this ” Comics Store ” was actu­ally a candy store, where you could get things like a pack of ” Tops Base­ball ” cards with that lit­tle stick of gum included inside the wax pack, ” Bazooka ” bub­ble gum, or a good old ” Egg Cream “, and no there was not a sin­gle drop of ” Egg ” in a Egg Cream.

The atmos­phere was dif­fer­ent too…it was a bit dirty, a bit grimy, and maybe a bit dusty, and to my rec­ol­lec­tion, there was no ” Comic Book Wednes­day ” at this point, but I guess for me there was a ” Comic Book Sat­ur­day “, but in those early days, I was not get­ting comics every Sat­ur­day either.

There also weren’t as many comic titles back then in com­par­i­son to today…and there espe­cially were not any titles back then fea­tur­ing ” Any ” scant­ily clad women on their covers.

Now, we are talk­ing the early sixties…my time…my first intro­duc­tion to the comic book and the candy store/comic shop…flash for­ward at least twenty years ( be nice to your old uncle fan­boy here okay..) and what do I see when I enter today’s comic book store…

Well, first of all, this is not a ” Candy Store ” but rather a ” Comics Spe­cial­ity ” shop.

You will not find Bazooka bub­ble gum here, nor packs of cig­a­rettes , and sadly, there are no ” Egg Creams ” to be found here…but what you can find here are loads of the afore­men­tioned ” Comic Book “…

But today there are just loads of titles to choose from, and as I browse around my local comics shop, I have to wonder…if I had a young, impres­sion­able child, would I want to take my child into today’s comic book store?

Pos­si­bly not…because of what I see on today’s comic book covers.

Okay, so your say­ing to me, Uncle Fan­boy, didn’t you just say in your last post that you ” appre­ci­ate the female fig­ure for it’s beauty and sen­su­al­ity, it’s lines and curves and aes­thet­ics “, so aren’t you being a bit hyp­o­crit­i­cal con­cern­ing this view ver­sus the above statement?

I don’t think so, but this goes to what I think we as Amer­i­cans find accept­able and not accept­able as far as our sense of moral­ity is concerned.…or are we Amer­i­cans just a bit prudish?

I think if we com­pare our sense of pru­dence to our friends in the far east, and of course I am refer­ring to Japan of course, there might be a marked dif­fer­ence, I mean I have pointed out some of the dif­fer­ences between the east and the west in a pre­vi­ous post called East & West– The dif­fer­ence between Amer­i­can and Japan­ese Comics

I was recently in my localm comics shop, and there was an actual con­cern from the store owner, as a kid was pur­chas­ing a comic ( and I’m not sure just what the issue was exactly) …if it was a mat­ter of the kid try­ing to pur­chase a comic that had adult con­tent, or if the cover was a bit racey.

Now I just found out that Mar­vel Comics is releas­ing a new Psy­locke series and here is the new cover to that issue…

Okay, what do you say to your ten year old when he grabs a hold of this comic..or how about you your­self come home with it and your wife or girl­friend is not as under­stand­ing as say one of your fel­low X-Men comic col­lect­ing friends?

I can just hear the com­ments now..” Is that what they are sell­ing in comic book stores now? “, ” That girl is just about naked on that cover! “, ” I can’t believe you let our son even see this comic! ”

Okay, so maybe I’m over­stat­ing things here a bit…and maybe I’m not but only you and your own set of moral­ity can answer that ques­tion as you and your child enter your local comics shop

Com­ing up… The ” X ” in your comic books.. just what do they add to the tale?