Posted in: Comics, Image, Walking Dead | Tagged: cbldf, censorship, comics censorship, graphic novels, walking dead

Walking Dead Comics Banned in Idaho Junior/Senior High School

Published Fri, 28 Jun 2019 18:39:24 -0500

Last updated Sat, 29 Jan 2022 08:41:51 -0600

Wallace Junior/Senior High School in Idaho has banned all copies of The Walking Dead from the school library despite a recommendation of the school's convened committee to keep all the copies of the comic book by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard on the shelf.

This also includes students banned from bringing copies of the Walking Dead into school, and to stop students using the Interlibrary Loan system to get their hands on copies of the books that way.

The Shoshone News-Press reported that this all went down when a former teacher saw a student reading a copy of The Walking Dead, investigated further and found them in the school library, and then they went to the principal Chris Lund. He consulted the school district's policies for challenged materials, put together a committee with students, educators, and parents to read the books, and make a recommendation to the school board as to what should happen to the titles.

Although the Superintendent is responsible for the selection of library materials, ultimate responsibility for the selection of library materials rests with the Board.

The Board, acting through the Superintendent, thereby delegates the authority for the selection of library materials to the principal in each of the schools. The principal further delegates that authority to the librarian in the school.

The Voting Dead

The committee voted 7 – 4 to keep The Walking Dead in the library.

However, parental pushback led Superintendent Dr. Bob Ranells to ignore the committee's, removed the comics, and donated them to the local public library. And he is looking at limiting student's IntraLoan access to library books by introducing a two-tier system.

"We want parents to have conversations with their children about these things at their dinner table," Ranells said. "We don't want to make these decisions for you or for your children."

Even though he just did. The reason is because The Walking Dead contains graphic language, violence and sexually explicit content, which was the main concern for the teacher, as well as a local group of parents. But, as regular readers know and often complain about, there's not a lot of it. Considering.

And yes, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is monitoring this matter closely.

The CBLDF describes The Walking Dead thus;

The Walking Dead's intense popularity is obviously not limited to comics, it has sparked two hit TV shows (as well as a TV show that just talks about the two hit TV shows), three TV movies are planned in the future, a motion comic was produced, and countless games and merchandise. Many see it as a spark in the zeitgeist that has fueled zombie and dystopian stories. And TWD is more than the depictions of ambling, rotting corpses that likely drew the ire from the teacher who made the complaint. The zombie trope offers the setting with which a diverse cast of characters, and their readers, can explore serious topics including survivalism, trauma, grief, loss, and the capacity for people to rebuild personal, social, and societal bonds when their status quo has been ripped away. The Walking Dead contains some violence and profanity, and very rare sexual situations, which serve to lend authenticity to its stories.

This is just the sort of situation that may entail letter writing. And it makes a nice change that it's not Alison Bechdel's Fun Home for once.

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