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06818_Field_TCUM T383.txt
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1996-04-10
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939b
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16 lines
The first comic books appeared in 1935. Not having
anything connected or literary about them, and being as
difficult to decipher as the Book of Kells , they caught on with
the young. The elders of the tribe, who had never noticed that
the ordinary newspaper was as frantic as a surrealist art
exhibition, could hardly be expected to notice that the comic
books were as exotic as eighth-century illuminations. So,
having noticed nothing about the form , they could discern
nothing of the contents , either. The mayhem and violence were
all they noted. Therefore, with naive literary logic, they waited
for violence to flood the world. Or, alternatively, they attributed
existing crime to the comics. The dimmest-witted convict
learned to moan, “It wuz comic books done this to me.”
Meantime, the violence of an industrial and mechanical
environment had to be lived and given meaning and motive in