The Four Color Media Monitor

Looks like left-wing feminist site Book Riot is trying to make a case for censorship based upon the insinuation that right-wingers are responsible for comics being subjected to it:

Comics are a target because it’s a medium that requires a unique literacy to understand. Comic books make for easy targets because a person who has been infected by right-wing rhetoric can print the pages sitting on RatedBooks, Take Back the Classroom, or their predecessor BookLooks, and claim the comics are inappropriate without any context about the where, why, or how of that image within the book itself. Unfortunately, these people are not interested in learning literacy. By spreading these images without context, they inflame other people who don’t have the time or capacity to develop that literacy and actually “do their own research” on the matter. Comics are a collaborative dance between the words and the art. Young people with access to and exposure to comics are honing crucial intellectual skills while also enjoying creative, clever, fun, and educational stories.

Since 2021, comics have been among the top books banned in America. Many of these comics are far from new; they, too, are averaging the age of the typical high schooler. It’s worth taking a peek at the most banned comics since 2000 and seeing where and how they’re simply copied and pasted in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, with the addition of primarily queer-focused comics and comics by creators of color.

On the one hand, from what I can tell, this is a matter of whether they're stocked in schools. On the other, when I took a look at their list of banned comics since 2000, it shows Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis on the list, and it's actually surprising they allegedly care, considering Iran's one of the worst Islamic regimes still in power now, one that does simultaneously suppress LGBT practice, and so that makes it a contradiction of their whine for the sake of allowing LGBT-themed comics to be kept in school libraries. On which, Book Riot's writer doesn't even explain why they believe LGBT practice should be taught to youngsters, or why they believe it's a better role model than heterosexuality. What's their point?

Making matters worse is how the writer sets out to paint all right-wingers as inherently stupid, literally don't examine the inner content of the GNs in question, and appears to be insinuating they're the sole ones who led all these campaigns to get the comics out of the schools. And the part about comicdom needing a unique literacy to comprehend is also stupid. Whatever they contain is no different from what a plain-text book could in terms of premise and plot.

A look at PEN’s report is a look at where and how comics have been rising in their profile as among the most banned books. While the top nine most banned books did not include comics, the list of most frequently banned authors includes not one, but two comics creators: Yūsei Matsui and Atsushi Ohkubo. Matsui, creator of Assassination Classroom, saw 54 instances of his manga banned. Ohkubo, creator of Soul Eater and Fire Force, saw his manga banned 45 times. Were these one-shot manga, rather than series with numerous entries, Matsui would be the most banned author in America, with Ohkubo coming in at number two. Both would have had their manga banned twice as much as the number one most banned book in American schools for the 2024-2025 school year.

It should also be noted that if these comics/manga books are available in stores, then they're not censored, they're just not allowed in school libraries, that's all. I guess old horror films like Friday The 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street should be pushed into classrooms at all costs too, huh? The title of Assassination Classroom alone can strongly hint it's a violent affair, and we could honestly do with far less of that. Certainly if it's not a comic dealing with a serious real life issue viewed objectively, something Book Riot's writers seem otherwise disinterested in recommending as a subject for comicdom.

There's really nothing educational in what they're serving as apologists for, and if they really care, maybe they should build their own schools and libraries and then see who's interested in sending their children there to read the comics/manga they're sugarcoating. Unfortunately, when their apologia is as unintelligable as it is, you can't expect them to consider trying out such ideas.

Labels: censorship issues, golden calf of LGBT, history, islam and jihad, libraries, manga and anime, msm propaganda, politics, violence