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Author: Legman, Gershon
Title: LOVE & DEATH: A STUDY in CENSORSHIP
Place Published: New York
Publisher:Breaking Point Press
Date Published: 1949
Description:

95 pp. (8vo) red wrappers. First Edition. A very good copy, with spine and edges of rear panel sunned.

Love & Death, Gershon Legman's self-published manifesto about American media violence, includes a chapter titled "Not for Children" that's probably the most acrimonious piece of anti-comics invective ever published. Legman's book pre-dates both Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent" and Wagner's "Parade of Pleasure" by five years, and his primary focus is the hypocrisy, as he saw it, of America's embrace of fantasy violence and fear of healthy eroticism.

"Even people dismissed as pornographers were speaking out against comics: Gershon Legman — amateur psychologist, former assistant to Alfred Kinsey, collector of dirty jokes — wrote a book called Love and Death in which he claimed that comic book violence was a perverse result of our repression of sexuality and was the only true pornography on the stands." — G. Jones, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book. Basic: 2004, p. 240.

A limited edition of 150 softcover and 15 hardcover catalogues is available. 400 lots, fully illustrated. Fun reference, great keepsake. Softcover $30, deluxe hardcover with dust jacket and limitation plate $200. Ten of the 15 hardcovers are pre-ordered and the rest will go quickly, so reserve yours now. To order, contact ivan@pbagalleries.com.

Consignments welcome for PBA's December 2021 Comic Book sale. Top prices for Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age, Silver Age, original art and ephemera. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.