Planet Comics follow-up

Originally published February 16, 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1161

This will be a relatively short column. Hope you’re all OK with that.

We’ll cover two topics:

1) A public service message. You’re not gonna believe this.

Regular BID readers may recall my enthusiastic, albeit tongue-in-cheek, chatter about a Pocahontas tie-in book called Hide and Squeak Meeko.

In this priceless tome, your kid can sit there and squeeze a little rubber Meeko the raccoon at appropriate story points.

If this bit of licensing is enough to make you choke, well, I’ve got news for you. Apparently, it’s enough to make your kid choke. Literally. Really. Swear to God, I’m not kidding.

Apparently, the laminate on the cover can be peeled off by little hands, and the removed lamination can then be thrust into little mouths, lodge in little throats, and suffocate the little life out of the little readers. It hasn’t happened yet, but the folks at Disney have announced Hide and Squeak Meeko does present a legitimate choking hazard. Likewise with similarly designed books involving Simba, Winnie the Pooh, and other characters.

Since I made copious mention of it in this column, I feel obliged to let you all know that Disney has recalled all of these squeak-type books. If you have one of them, you can return it to Disney, P.O. Box 7200, Indianapolis, IN, 46207. Include six 32¢ stamps, your return address, and your phone number, and they will send you back several other titles that are kid-safe (although not necessarily less cloying). They will also, I believe, refund you the postage.

Or you can take it to a Disney store and get your money back.

Or I guess you could peel the lamination off yourself and throw it away.

Somehow I doubt anyone read my column and actually went out and bought one of the stupid things. Nevertheless, in the event that someone did, well, now you’re warned.

And speaking of warnings:

2) By now, you’ve all read the latest press release from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund about the doings in Oklahoma City.

Apparently, the taxpayer dollars of that fair town seem to be best spent, in the eyes of the law, by sending half a dozen cops to ransack the house and destroy the livelihood of a comic book retailer—a retailer whose crime was to sell comics of an adult nature to adults.

I would suggest that the story of Planet Comics might make an exciting comic book—except that, to my mind, the actions of the Oklahoma City censors are such an obscenity that the story content would probably result in the comic book’s being banned.

The flow of cash into the CBLDF as a result of my earlier fundraising efforts has trickled off into non-existence after that initial flood.

Frankly, folks, I’m a little disappointed. Those of you who did send money—and there were many—were unstintingly generous. Often the donations were accompanied by letters of support for the cause.

But by my calculations, at least 90% of you who read this column didn’t send in so much as 10¢, much less the $10 that I suggested. It’s an arbitrary figure, I admit, but I figured that if everyone sent in 10 bucks, the CBLDF would be in a powerful and solid financial position in the months ahead.

And, believe me, if this persecution of Planet Comics succeeds, it will set a precedent that every two-bit legal eagle with an eye towards cheap publicity and crowd-pleasing headlines is going to zero in on.

You don’t like the story content of the comics currently under fire? Fine. But be aware: They’ll go after Spawn for story content. They’ll go after Sandman for language.

There’s always an excuse for censorship, but there’s no excuse for laziness.

Come on, guys and gals. You spend how much a month on comics? Thirty dollars? Forty, fifty? Being too busy or too uncaring or just too oblivious of the danger that we’re in is the equivalent of having a Porsche that you can’t be bothered to keep filled with motor oil. The question is: Are you going to be bothered to attend to the problem now? Or are you going to have to wait until your engine is belching smoke to suddenly realize that one of your great joys in life is going up in flames?

As always, the address for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is www.cbldf.org.

And, just so we have something a little different: Here’s a reworking of a popular show tune. I hope you like it.

 

Ooooklahoma

Where the First Amendment goes to die.

Where a legal clown can shut you down

Selling comics grown-ups want to buy!

 

Ooooklahoma

Where the comics sellers have such fears

As a po-lice state, or counts of eight

That can lead to six-and-eighty years!

Verotik and Eros beware

‘Cause your comics are not welcome there!

So when they saaaaay, “Yo!

Do they want freedom there?” No!

They’re only saying, “Vengeance is ours, Oklahoma.”

Oklahoma, OK!

 

(Okla-homa, Okla-home, Okla-homa, Okla-homa)

 

They’ll take a-way all that you own

Look out! Soon they’ll be coming for Bone.

 

So when they saaaaay, “No!”

You better keep awaaaaay-o!

‘Cause if you’re selling

Com-ic books in Oklahoma,

You may not be OK

-L-A-H-O-M-A

Oklahoooooma! Oy!

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)