Comic book with foul words, sex found in library

Comic book with foul words, sex found in library

June 12, 2007

COMIC BOOKS depicting nudity, sex scenes, violence and liberal use of expletives.

That's what The New Paper discovered after visiting the comics section of the National Library branch at Ngee Ann City.

This was despite Ms Fiona Goh Lai Kwan having written to the media on 28 May after she found her 12-year-old son reading The Punisher: Barracuda, a comic book under The Punisher Max series which feautured explicit scenes.

The boy had borrowed it from the National Library branch in Tampines.

The New Paper found the same comic book on the shelves of the Ngee Ann City branch the day after Ms Fiona's letter was published.

When we tried to borrow it, the librarian told us that the title was not available for loan and that it was being pulled from the shelves.

On the same shelf were superhero titles such as X-Men, Spider-Man and Superman.

However, The Punisher: Barracuda was not the only book with explicit content available there. We also found other comics from the same series with similar content. We borrowed one of them.

The comic had the words 'explicit content' in small print in bold on the back cover.

We alerted the National Library Board (NLB), which said it has since pulled The Punisher series from its shelves. An spokesman said that they have found the series unsuitable for loan.

She said: 'Meanwhile, we are reviewing all the other titles in the existing adult comic collection to ensure that they meet our criteria for inclusion. We are re-examining our processes to ensure that such incidents are not repeated.'

She apologised for the slip-up but did not explain how it occurred.

She said NLB's comics collection has evolved since the early 90s, when there were comic-strip compilation of titles like Garfield and Peanuts. Since 2004, more mature-themed materials have been added after feedback from itspatrons.

A check with Borders bookstore showed that The Punisher Max series comics, including the Barracuda volume, was available forsale.

All the volumes in the seriesare shrink-wrapped.

A check with Books Kinokuniya showed that the series was unavailable until further notice.