Retooling for Illiteracy

The Influence of Comic Books on Reading

Reading maketh a full man;

conference a ready man;

and writing an exact man.

- Francis Bacon, Meditationes sacræ (1597)

While we were carrying out our investigations on the effects of comic books, gathering more and more cases, following up old ones and analyzing the new comic books themselves, there were changes going on. Not that crime comics got any better - that was believed only by those who did not study them.

One interesting new development was that whole comic books and comic-book stories appeared in other publications that did not look like comic books from outside. Sometimes a comic book would be sold as a comic as usual, but would also appear, without its cover, in an ordinary magazine. Thus, the reader is relieved of the trouble of tackling connected text and can peruse at least some of the stories in the magazine by the simple picture-gazing method appropriate to the comic book format. Or maybe the idea is that the young adult readers of such a magazine have barely graduated from comic books and find regular reading too hard.

A regular twenty-five-cent pulp magazine, for example, has in the middle of it a whole sexy science-fiction comic book, which alone and under a different title sells for ten cents.

When the enticing blonde heroine says:

Keep those paws to yourself, space-rat!

the magazine reader can save himself the effort of reading. It is clear from the picture what is meant. The magazine prints some enthusiastic responses from readers to the comic-book section innovation:

"Your comic section is wonderful," writes one. "Being only 16 years old," writes another, "I just love your illustrated section. Please make it longer."

This undercover extension of the comic book format has also spread to what on the outside appear to be regular magazines in the children's field.

Children's Digest, published by Parents' Magazine at the stiff price of thirty-five cents, contains sections in typical comic-book form with bad colors and crowded balloons. The text has the comic-book flavor, too.

A similar children's magazine, Tween Age Digest, at twenty-five cents, also looks like a regular magazine, but has comic-book sections.

One of these is a super-condensed comic-book version of Don Quixote. You see him lying on the ground:

"The servants beat Don Quixote mercilessly and although he swore vengeance, he was helpless as a beetle on his back."

When a publisher was asked recently about this spreading of the comic-book style to regular publications he answered: That is simple. We are retooling for illiteracy.

Fred’s Video Collection

The 12-inch vinyl and CD Maxi versions of the Prince single included two remixes of Batdance that were done by Mark Moore and William Orbit, The Batmix and Vicki Vale Mix. The Batmix focuses on the chaotic rock section of Batdance, and is supplemented with electronic distortion and sampling of voices, instruments and larger excerpts of Prince's then-unreleased Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic. The Vicki Vale Mix is an extension of the middle part of Batdance, which includes dialogue between Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale.

Mashed again with the Batman and Robin serial from 1949 with stars Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan. This supercut includes more Vicki Vale (Jane Adams) scenes... in keeping with the music. Be on the look-out for the legendary Lyle Talbot as Commissioner Gordon. (I think he played Luthor in the Superman serial?)

Any questions? Feel free to ask. I’m actually a “real person” (more or less).