Wal-Mart Drops Comic ‘Racist’ Comic
A couple days ago ComicMix brought you the news that Wal-Mart stores in Texas were stocking the controversial comic book Memin Pinguin, and people were calling racism.
The retailer didn’t respond to the article, but now comes word that Wal-Mart will pull the controversial comics off their shelves. The company’s statement:
Wal-Mart carries a wide array of products that reflect the wants and needs of Hispanic customers. And we understand that Memin is a popular figure in Mexico. However, given the sensitivity to the negative image Memin can portray to some, we felt that it was best to no longer carry the item in our stores. We apologize to those customers who may have been offended by the book’s images.
There is plenty of disagreement over whether the comic is racist or not, with this mention from the character’s Wikipedia page giving some evidence to negate that view:
In one famous issue, Memín, having read that Cleopatra VII of Egypt took milk baths to lighten her skin, tries the same treatment. His mother weeps with sorrow that her son would want to change his skin color. A repentant Memín decides to be proud of his race and color to honor his good mother.
Tha Wikipedia quote calls to mind a popular misconception – that Celopatra was black. In fact, there's a good chance she was a redhead, since the Ptolemys were originally of Greek extraction, and, according to sources i've encountered, not uncomonly redhaired or blonde.As to WalMart pulling it – wayway back, when Joan Jett put out her album, Album (1983), it was common practise to re-sequence the songs, or add extra songs to cassette versions of albums, in order to make the two sides approximately the same length.The cassette version of Album, with no mention of it anywhere on the packaging, had an uncensored version of "Star Star", under its proper title, "Starf**cker", and Joan took an obvious urchin-like glee in clearly and loudly enunciating the multiple repeats of the title in the choruses. Well, from what i read, a lot of mommies bought that cassette for the teenage daughters.I think WalMart, as a result, still refuses to carry Joan Jett albums.
What I found hilarious was that this comic is apparently so obcure (I own around 150 issues of it) that the Associated Press article that reported this took the one cover image they had from Wikipedia.
It's changing, slowly, but there's nothing so obscure to the mainstream media than comic books. A tax on "holy" headlines in re comic books could have funded a really cool space station by now.