This course focuses on the role of obscenity and censorship in comics. In particular, readings and assignments examine how comic books, as being simultaneously form, media, and genre, become a site for powerful cultural and political influence for readers, creators, and critics. Comic books had a reputation as “the ten-cent plague” and that virality thrives today in narrating the unthinkable. We will trace how taboo representations of sex and sexuality, race and nation, gender and age, and horror and erotica in comics problematize the process of storytelling within mainstream morals and liberal mentality. Using ideas of “visibility politics” (Arendt), queer/crip intimacy, and the hyperbolic language of satire we will read personal stories of sexual experiences, re-interpretations of fairytales, and stories about both the quotidian and imaginative lives of marginalized peoples. Texts include material from around the world inclusive of pornographic and “banned books.” Using an array of resources, students will create a their own 10-page comic/graphic. Emotional and reading maturity is criteria for this creative-critical course. Course application.