NOT For Children
Recently, I checked out Superman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told from my local public library. I did this in part because I’m a sucker for free comics, but by far the biggest factor in my decision to read this book was some marginalia added to the cover:
Someone had inexplicably added “NOT for children” to the upper-left corner of the book. Having read through the book, I must admit that I’m still amusedly perplexed. The stories in question are almost all from the goofy Silver Age days when Superman fought giant robot dogs and such. The only modern tale is basically a morality play about why Superman’s oath to avoid killing even evil men is a good thing. There’s no sex to be had anywhere in the book. There isn’t even any sex implied anywhere in the book. The only drug use is tobacco.
Was this brief sharpie verdict the product of some kind of ultra-fundamentalist that even I with my years of Southern Baptist lifestyle can’t understand? Or was it the scrawling of a rabid Superman fanboy, desperately needing affirmation that his Superman comics were far too meaningful to be shelved in the young adults section of the library.