A note on the why's and wherefore's of the magazine's cancellation (which, incidentally, was a major topic of discussion in the Comics relay a few months back). According to my best information, Marvel cancelled the book in anticipation of pressure from the various anti-violence advocate groups. A few weeks prior to the release of the first NIGHTMARE, there had been an article published in the New York Times decrying the level of violence in comic books. Apparently, that article -- along with the picketing that took place outside theatres showing NIGHTMARE 5 in Los Angeles and elsewhere -- was enough to make Marvel turn tail and run for cover.
Please note that this is DESPITE the fact that the NIGHTMARE magazine carried a "suggested for mature readers" warning and that NO DIRECT PRESSURE had actually been applied on Marvel.
The cancellation of NIGHTMARE is a textbook example of the "chilling effect" you hear so much about these days in discussions of free speech. The book was killed not because of it WAS criticized, but because the publishers FEARED it would be criticized.
This won't be the last incident of its type, either. The impulse to censor -- led by groups on both the left and the right, and fed by the innate cowardice of American business -- is growing in this country. It's something that anyone who reads for pleasure or edification ought to be aware of, and prepared to combat. In one of the great ironies of history, we have a situation in which the totalitarian nations of the world are on an inexorable march toward freedom, while their very model, the United States, is moving slowly, but dangerously, in the opposite direction.
- STEVE GERBER
Reading for Pleasure (Issue #8)
January 1990
