Abstract

The postwar transnational public health crisis afflicting children was not just polio. Across North America parents, educators, librarians, and doctors met to discuss the public health ‘emergency’ - of comic book reading. Initial restrictions in Canada under the ‘Fulton Bill’ (1949), followed by Senate hearings in Canada (1952) and in the United States (1954) argued that comic book reading contributed to illiteracy and juvenile delinquency. Previous scholarship has focused on the US Senate hearings and the subsequent introduction of the industry self-censoring ‘Comics Code’ as the fever pitch in this ‘moral panic.’ However, such analysis overlooks what happened after 1954 - specifically the continued work of ‘citizen action’ committees in the US and Canada to continue this campaign against comics - often behind the scenes and under the guise of ‘good reading’ initiatives. In Alberta this took the form of the newly created Advisory Board on Objectionable Publications. Operational from 1954-1976, this ‘watchdog’ organization worked with government, law enforcement, and local news agents to monitor and restrict the sale, distribution, and consumption of comic books and other ‘objectionable’ literature in the province. Based on previously unpublished primary sources from the Provincial Archives of Alberta, this paper discusses how the Alberta Board leveraged the comics ‘moral panic’ to (1) create widespread extragovernmental censorship restricting 20-25% of publications from reaching the newsstand including, notably, Playboy [1962] and Rolling Stone [1969], and (2) engage in transnational gatekeeping dialogues about ‘optimal’ child education and the role of the community to police these ‘good reading’ standards.