In Missouri, Graphic Novels Find Acceptance

Last fall, we told you about the effort to ban two graphic novels from the public library in Marshall, Missouri. I’m happy to report that last week the library’s board of trustees rejected the ban, by allowing Craig Thompson‘s Blankets (excerpted above) and Alison Bechdel‘s NBCC-nominated memoir Fun Home back on the shelves, even after the formation of a “materials selection policy” that some in the town hoped would result in the removal of stories they viewed as “pornography.”

Curiously enough, another item on the trustees’ agenda suggests that Marshall has bigger problems than comic books about intimate relationships: A committee was established to draft a “code of conduct” for library patrons “due to occurrences of patrons being loud and boisterous to workers causing some to cry.” What the heck kind of manners are they teaching people in the Missouri these days, that things have come to this?

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting this Thursday, February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), and Tim Devane (bitly). Register now.