Comic books once stoked fears of crime, but a California city wants to confront that history

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Recently, in Sacramento native Lecho Lopez’s comic book store, his 5-year-old nephew read his first word aloud: “bad.” It was based on a graphic novel.

There was irony in that being his first word, as Lopez credits comics with many positive things in his life. This is why he supports the repeal of a municipal ordinance dating from 1949 which prohibits the distribution of many comic books to children and adolescents. This is not applied today.

“It’s a stupid law,” Lopez, who has a red and black tattoo of the Superman logo on his forearm, said in an interview at his store, JLA Comics. “A lot of good things come out of the comics.”

A City Council committee voted unanimously this week to advance the repeal and designate the third week of September as “Sacramento Comics Week.” It now goes to the full council for a vote. The ban applies to comics that highlight a crime narrative and show images of illegal acts such as arson, murder or rape.

In the mid-20th century, when comic books were booming, fears grew about their impact on children, with some saying they could lead to illiteracy or inspire violent crime. The industry decided to self-regulate, and local governments – from Los Angeles County to Lafayette, Louisiana – passed bans to protect certain comics from young people. Although some cities like Sacramento still have these laws in place, they are rarely, if ever, enforced.

Today, supporters of repealing Sacramento’s law say it’s necessary to reflect the value of comics and help protect them against a modern wave of book bans.

Comic book writer Eben Burgoon, who started a petition to overturn the Sacramento ban, said comic books “have this really valuable ability to speak truth to power.”

“These outdated laws kind of create a danger where bad actors could work hard to put this media outlet in jeopardy,” he said during a hearing Tuesday held by the City Council’s Laws and Legislation Committee.

Sacramento is a great place to dedicate a week to celebrating comics, Burgoon said. The city has a “wonderful” comic book community, he said, and annually hosts CrockerCon, a comic book showcase at a local art museum.

Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, said “there is no good reason” to impose a ban like Sacramento’s on books, saying it “goes against modern First Amendment standards.”

The comic book censorship movement decades ago was not an aberration in U.S. history, said Jeff Trexler, acting director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which fights to protect the free speech rights of people who read or create comic books.

New York, for example, created a commission in the 1920s to review films to determine whether they should be allowed for public viewing based on whether they were “obscene” or “sacrilegious” and whether they might “corrupt morals” or “incite to crime,” according to state records.

“Every time there is a new medium or a new way of distributing media, there is outrage and an attempt to suppress it,” Trexler said.

The California Supreme Court ruled in 1959 that a Los Angeles County policy banning the sale of so-called “crime” comic books to minors was unconstitutional because it was too broad. Sacramento’s ban probably won’t pass for the same reason, Trexler said.

There isn’t much recent research on whether there’s a link between comic books and violent behavior, said Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University in Florida. But, he added, similar research on television and video games has not shown a link to “clinically relevant changes in youth aggression or violent behavior.”

Flipping through comics like EC Comics’ “Epitaphs from the Abyss” and the DC-Marvel collaboration “Batman/Deadpool,” Lopez showed an Associated Press reporter images of characters smashing a car windshield, punching someone in the face and attacking Batman with bows and arrows — the kind of scenes that could be regulated if Sacramento’s ban were enforced.

But comics whose plots include violence can contain positive messages, said Benjamin Morse, a media studies professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Spider-Man is a very mature concept,” said Morse, who became a fan of “X-Men” as a child and later worked at Marvel for 10 years. “He’s a kid who lost his parents, his uncle dies because of violence, and he swears he’s basically responsible.”

Lopez’s mother bought him his first comic book, “Ultimate Spider-Man #1,” when he was about 9, he said. But it was “Kingdom Come,” a comic book featuring DC’s Justice League, that changed his life at a young age, with its “hyperrealistic” art that was unlike anything he had ever seen before, he said.

He said his interest in comic books helped him avoid getting involved in gangs growing up. They also improved his reading skills as a person with dyslexia.

“The only thing I was really able to read that helped me absorb the information was comic books because you had a visual aid to help explain what was happening in the book,” Lopez said.

And a comic book can offer so much more, Burgoon said at this week’s hearing.

“It gives rise to imaginative thinkers,” he said. “It doesn’t cause widespread crime. It doesn’t cause societal harm.”