Classics Censored
Classics Illustrated 50 (O)
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COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Classics Illustrated 50
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Grade:
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8.5
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
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Certification #:
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0223281008
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Owner:
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GAM
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Classics Illustrated #50 is referenced in Fredric Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” (SOTI) in the text on page 37. Wertham found little redeeming value in comics based on classic literature. In general, on page 36 of the SOTI, he describes this class of comics as follows: “Comic books adapted from classical literature are reportedly used in 25,000 schools in the United States. If this is true, then I have never heard a more serious indictment of American education, for they emasculate the classics, condense them (leaving out everything that makes the book great), are just as badly printed and inartistically drawn as other comic books and, as I have often found, do not reveal to children the world of good literature which has at all times been the mainstay of liberal and humanistic education.” With regards to the Tom Sawyer story found in Classics Illustrated #50, Wertham describe it as follows: “An adaptation from one of Mark Twain’s novels has the picture of two small boys in a fight, one tearing the others hair, a scene not the keynote of Mark Twain’s novel. Inside, three consecutive pictures show a fight between two boys (‘In an instant both boys were gripped together like cats’) and the last picture shows one boy with a finger almost in the other’s eye (the injury-to-the-eye motif again).”I have included a scan of the fight scene as described by Wertham.
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