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Home > Comic Books > Gaiman’s Newbery Medal Brings The 1950’s Comics Scare Full Circle

Gaiman’s Newbery Medal Brings The 1950’s Comics Scare Full Circle

By: tony-dillard on January 28, 2009

In : Comic Books
- 3 Comments

While he didn’t win for his work in the comics, Neil Gaiman’s prestigious John Newbery award gave the industry a boost of long deserved credibility. On January 26^th, the American Library Association awarded Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book as the recipent of the 2009 Newbery Medal for the most outstanding children’s book. This is something that never would have happened 50 years ago.

In the 1950’s, parents, churches, and other social groups blackballed comic books, staging protests and forcing kids to burn their comic books. This resulted in anyone who worked in the industry having either to work in anonymity or face public scrutiny. Many of those who worked in comics at that time did so because it paid much better than the more respected field of children’s literature. But should someone with a work history in comics have a desire to write a childrens book, libraries and book publishers would have either vetoed the project or protested its release and forbid it a place on their shelves.

This history makes Gaiman’s victory so very ironic. Neil Gaiman has made a name for himself writing such classic comic and graphical novel titles as Sandman, Black Orchid and Death: The High Cost of Living. His works focus on supernatural beings, who deal with their own immortality and morality while battling demons, murderers, the undead, sex offenders, and things too disgusting to print for an all-ages website. These also happen to be the subjects in comics that caused schools, churches, and libraries to ban comic books and those who created them in the 1950s.

It seems the late William Gaines, creator of Mad Magazine and a leading defender of comics during the scare of the 1950s, was right when he claimed that comic books help introduce children to the joys of reading. Comics and graphic novels are now considered high culture, thanks in part to Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Gaiman’s work on the Sandman series. In the past 10 years, libraries have realized this and begun to carry comics and graphic novels on their shelves. According to librarians at the Orange County Public Library in Hillsborough, NC, graphic novels are the third most requested titles, behind mysteries and cook books. Libraries are even attending comic book conventions trying to advertise their graphic novel collections to attendees and entice new members. And now, with Gaiman’s book being honored by the American Library Association, the glass ceiling has been cracked for a graphic novel to win the Newbery Award. How long will it take is anybody’s guess.

Comments

Robin B.

I also invite you all to check out the Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, now presenting it’s third annual list.
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/greatgraphicnovelsforteens/09ggnt.cfm

Librarians are embracing comics, and comics are embracing librarians (as a librarian is now regularly included on the judging panel for the Eisners, as I was in 2007). We can only help each other out!
Torsten Adair

And yet, both Wally Wood and Jack Davis, who became famous for their work on EC Comics, both illustrated children’s books. (Wally Wood illustrated a Henry Ford biography, while Davis used his historical skill in illustrating a work on Native Americans.) They did not depict garish or violent imagery, and thus nobody cared what they had done in the past.

It is true that a book like “The Graveyard Book” would not have been published in 1954. Not because the author wrote comicbooks, but because of the content. Children’s books then did not deal with death or violence. (“The Egypt Game”, published in 1967, was one of the first to break those taboos.) True, the author’s link to comicbooks would have been used as criticism, but then one could also have criticized Dr. Seuss for his “Seven Lady Godivas” and college humor illustrations. Shel Silverstein, noted for “Where the Sidewalk Ends” also reported for Playboy, and wrote many songs Not Appropriate For Children.

When you mean “Full Circle”, you mean that we have returned to the starting point of 1950s censorship. I would argue otherwise, although the CBLDF is constantly fighting every challenge. Perhaps a better headline would be “Graveyard Book Award Exorcises Ghosts of Comics’ Past”

(And it’s a common mistake, but the correct spelling is “Newbery”. Even Mr. Gaiman made the error.)

A graphic novel has already broken the glass ceiling you mentioned. “American Born Chinese” won the Printz Award (the “Newbery” for young adult fiction). As for the Newbery… it’s a long-shot, as any graphic novel will most likely win a Caldecott Medal for illustration. Both “Tuesday” and “Black and White” are de facto graphic novels.
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Kat Kan

While more libraries started carrying comics and graphic novels around 10 years ago, there were a number of them that started doing so much earlier. The Hawaii State Public Library System started carrying graphic novels (with such titles as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Elfquest) back in 1984; I also added lots of other graphic novels, including lots of superhero titles as well as Sandman back in the 1980s – I worked in HSPLS at that time. There were other libraries across the country that were doing this even earlier.

Librarians have served as Eisner judges since 2005; I was the first one selected by Jackie Estrada, Robin Brenner mentioned she was an Eisner judge in 2007, Eva Volin was an Eisner judge in 2008, and for 2009, Mike Pawuk is the librarian judge.