joe quesada. thank you. [applause] i'm ken paulson. back next week with another conversation about free expression, the arts, and america. i hope you can join us then for speaking freely. captioning provided by the first amendment center, funded by the freedom forum. captioning by tate at captionmax www.captionmax.com

our guests today include wendy pini of elfquest, joe quesada of marvel comics, and carmine infantino, the former publisher and president of d.c. comics. welcome to you all. (man) thank you. [applause] well, what a great lineup, and we've got folks with every possible perspective on comic books here. just by way of background, there is something called the comics code that is on comic books, most of the comic books i grew up reading-- many of which were illustrated by carmine-- had the comics code authority approval on it, which basically said this comic book has been sanitized for your protection. every comic book we read as kids was censored in some way for our own good so we would not grow up warped in any way, and all of this was inspired by a guy named dr. fredric wertham, who wrote a really influential book called seduction of the innocent in 1954, and he suggested, among other things, that comic books were a negative-- had a negative impact on kids, that it encouraged juvenile delinquency and put bad thoughts in their heads-- kind of--many of the same arguments you kind of hear

joe quesada. thank you. [applause] i'm ken paulson. back next week with another conversation about free expression, the arts, and america. i hope you can join us then for speaking freely. captioning provided by the first amendment center, funded by the freedom forum. captioning by tate at captionmax www.captionmax.com >> about four years ago, [inaudible] look at how beautiful this was. there is our relationship to the planet. these regions are the wealthiest, the most powerful. that really has impacted the planet. it is almost impossible now to go anywhere and had it really be completely dark. there are very few locations that you can find. that means our relationship to the sky, there is a way where we dominate the sky. we cannot see anything really. we are blinding ourselves in a way. >> you can look at the images, they are beautiful. when i started four years ago, there was a conversation about environmental issues that was very different. this is not being talked about in the way it is now. . this has just been like an amazing grow