Yet, while there is a rich history of discussing censorship within all realms of literary studies at the MLA, the subject has yet to receive attention from a panel of comics scholars. This fact is surprising given how attempts at censorship haunt comics history. In the US, the self-censorship of the 1954 Comics Code defined mainstream American comics as “for children,” a definition that hampered the development of the medium and resulted in public and academic dismissal of the form for several decades. This panel reckons with this history, but also uses it to cast light on the subtexts of current challenges and to initiate a conversation about the perception of the so-called dangers intrinsic to comics storytelling. Panelists will also weigh in on strategies for how we might leverage the very power censors attribute to the image as a form of resistance.

Chase Gregory compares the anti-comics rhetoric of the 1950s with current challenges to Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1993) and other Holocaust literature in schools. Their research considers how a Tennessee school board’s objection to nudity in Maus operates in concert with a resurgent antisemitic discourse that is grounded in histories of racism, right-wing authoritarianism, and moral panic. Ultimately, Gregory’s work suggests that the fight against Holocaust literature censorship also offers an opportunity for cross-identity solidarity building with comics that are challenged on the basis of race and LGBTQ+ content.

While Gregory uses historical comparison to illuminate subtext in challenges, Aaron Kashtan and Patrick Lawrence examine the censors' own rhetoric for clues about the ideological motivations behind the current rise in attacks on books with words and pictures. In the case of Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer (2019), Kashtan observes that claims that comics are pornographic have strategic value because they draw upon a widespread discourse about protecting children from being corrupted. Such claims also imply that images are inherently more seductive and dangerous than words. Lawrence highlights a different kind of strategy that has been used to pull Jerry Craft’s The New Kid (2019) from library shelves in the midst of the current conservative pushback against the Black Lives Matter movement. Specifically, he observes that the complaints adopt a tenuous rhetoric of universality in order to undermine the lessons of Craft’s graphic novel through an “ideologically-neutral” stance.

Fernanda Diaz-Basteras describes how Puerto Rican cartoonists are using the power of the image that Kashtan mentions to resist mainstream narratives that leave out important information. Her contribution expands the panel’s discussion beyond mainland US to consider incidents such as how the syndicated comic strip Pepito by Harold Jessurun and Aníbal Quiñones was censored by the Primera Hora newspaper in 2017 for criticizing extremely conservative views on marriage, sexuality. Basteras also explores the way that webcomics currently published online by TODOS, an independent journalist collective, circumvent the restrictions of traditional print comics to create a digital archive of death, colonialism, and resistance on the island, while also generating a solid platform for local communities to question and imagine inclusive radical futures.

The panelists touch on some of the most visibly challenged comics in recent years–Maus, Gender Queer, and New Kid–and provide scholars with a range of methodologies to use in taking a stand against such censorship. Methods that engage history and media studies could be applied not just to comics, but to all literature. The currency and visibility of the topic promises to attract attendees from across the MLA for an illuminating discussion on the role faculty can play in countering attempts at censorship.