For the last time...

In today's Funky Winkerbean, the comic book store owner got arrested, presumably because some of the items in the comics are not so much for the kiddies. The story arc starts on March 4 with a woman taking her first ever trip to a comic book store and finding the Adult Comics section.

Is there any way that we, the comic book reading public, can convince the rest of you that comics are not just for kids? We've already tried talking until we're blue in the face and pricing comic books way out of the range of most kids' allowances. None of that seems to have taken hold. There are many great titles for the small tykes--check out RQW--but not every comic is meant for minors. A lot of comics are meant for grownups, in exactly the same way that the majority of what is in a Barnes and Noble is meant for grownups.

Sure, some shops do a less-than-stellar job of segregating out the most adult offerings. One of my local comics shops keeps a longbox of Playboys on the floor underneath a table displaying action figures. Were I running a comic book store, that would not be where I would keep the nudie magazines. To be fair, the bad segregation of grownup materials is not unique to comic book shops. I was in a major media outlet a while back and accidentally knocked a box off the bookshelf. In full view of the Tiger Beat magazine display, a vibrator (ahem, Personal Massager) rolled right out of the box and into the aisle.

So please, leave the comic books alone. Whatever you may remember of Superman being chased by a giant telephone in the 60's, comics are not kiddie fare. Let the grownups have their picture books. While we're at it, can we just agree to stop trotting the small fries out whenever we want to get rid of something we disagree with? People don't do things "for the kids." The kids have no clue. They do it because they don't like something, so they don't think I should have access to it.