What do you do when fiction becomes fact?

Chapters 7 though 11 of The Ten-Cent Plague take the reader through the evolution of the comic book. Hadju describes how, within just a few years, the comic book went from being focused on crime, to sex, to horror, to humor. Ultimately, Hadju argues that the hoopla over comic book censorship increased and decreased over time with these different genres; however, the legislation and ethical arguments surrounding the text and images of the comic book never fully went away...it just hibernated for awhile here and there until some new societal problem reared its ugly head and Americans needed something to point to and blame.

I have to admit, though not much of a comic-reader myself, I was shocked and upset to learn that children were practically brainwashed to burn comics by the hundreds. Once I read that even The Boy Scouts were forced to burn comics as part of their “civic duty” I immediately began to think of the book Fahrenheit 451. Having not read the book since middle school, I went to sparknotes.com to remind myself of the book’s main plot and found this:

“.. special-interest groups and other ‘minorities’ objected to books that offended them. Soon, books all began to look the same, as writers tried to avoid offending anybody. This was not enough, however, and society as a whole decided to simply burn books rather than permit conflicting opinions.”

Reading this passage made me buy into Hadju's argument even more. Censoring and/or banning the comic book so as to not risk offending or damaging members of society is to stifle creativity, and an act that ultimately paves the way for complete government control of all American rights.