Regarding Kathryn’s brief touching upon comic books the other day. The history of comic books can be divided into several ages with the Golden Age being from the 30’s to the 50’s. The reasons for it being referred to as the Golden Age is that there was a great degree of freedom when it came to story as well as a willingness to use more explicit imagery (Tales from the Crypt by EC Comics being the best example of this). However, with the restrictions imposed by the Comics Code Authority in 1954, said stories became more difficult to make and actually killed off a number of companies (again with EC Comics as an example) until Marvel and DC were the only large comic book companies left. Thus leading to the Silver Age. The reason I gave this little history lesson is that I would like to share an example of a story from the Golden Age and that this story is one I feel can be easily used in a classroom setting due to both it’s short length and deeper themes touched upon.
Here is the link to EC Comic’s “Judgement Day” from 1953.
Thank you for sharing this Dylan! I definitely plan on using this comic – so easily paired with dystopic novels in addition to censorship issues. I do have a set of Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man stories that this seems to be based on – they are definitely an old set, but man, was he ever clairvoyant.
I liked this too! Students in my class were really interested in censorship–I think that’s another angle this could be looked at from what you were saying in your post. It’s a cool story, a lot of good allegory.