In an open letter supporting the Video Games Voters Network, comic book grandmaster Stan Lee drew a parallel between censorship of comic books in the 1950s and new laws aimed at curbing videogame violence.  Lee’s letter comes just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case of a California law, which would ban sales of violent video games to anyone under 18, levy fines against retailers for any infractions, and require a new violence rating code.  The California law, which was signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, was declared unconstitutional by the 9th Circuit Court of appeal.s, but the 9th’s decision could be overturned by the Supreme Court.

In his letter, which is printed in full on the VGVN site, Lee recalled the excesses of the anti-comic book movement in the 1950s: “My memory has always been lousy and it's not improving with age.  But it's good enough to remember a time when the government was trying to do to comic books what some politicians now want to do with video games: censor them and prohibit their sales. It was a bad idea half a century ago and it's just as bad an idea now.  Comic books, it was said, contributed to "juvenile delinquency." A Senate subcommittee investigated and decided the U.S. could not "afford the calculated risk involved in feeding its children, through comic books, a concentrated diet of crime, horror and violence." Comic books were burned. The State of Washington made it a crime to sell comic books without a license. And Los Angeles passed a law that said it was a crime to sell "crime comic books." Looking back, the outcry was -- forgive the expression – comical…

“The more things change, as they say, the more they stay the same. Substitute video games for comic books and you've got a 21st century replay of the craziness of the 1950s. States have passed laws restricting the sale of video games and later this year, the Supreme Court will hear a case about one of those laws, this one passed in California. Why does this matter? Because if you restrict sales of video games, you're chipping away at our First Amendment rights to free speech and opening the door to restrictions on books and movies.”