BIG BOOK OF... REVIEW III
It's possible that the editors at Paradox Press won't ever run out of subject material for their
Big Books. While I really wanted to buy The Big Book of the Unexplained, the only copy
there had been read through enough times that it might qualify for a sale bin at the library. So I took
Vice instead.
Vice, by Steve Vance and DC artists, is a newer title, published in 1999. It leaves no stone unturned - there's
Sin Cities, Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco, Sex and More Sex, Gambling and The Devil's Playground. I like this book because it
demonstrates that these things have plagued humanity for ages. Before Las Vegas, there was Sodom. Before LSD, there was peyote.
Before card games, there was roll-the-bones, and so forth. In other words, we've been going to hell in a handbasket for
centuries. Unique histories are given for each section. If you think porn is bad today, you can imagine the shock
archeologists got when they dug up Pompeii and found it everywhere.
Vice is wickedly funny but also soberingly serious. Two stories, "The Pimp" and "Sex Slaves"
are very sympathetic towards women. Oddly enough, racism is featured in almost every section. For example,
in "The Battle of Booze", it is claimed that "drys" in the South spread rumors about "drink crazed Negroes",
even if blacks did drink less than whites. Skip over to "Reefer Madness" and find out that one of the first anti-marijuana
laws in Texas was based on the belief that "All Mexicans are crazy and this is the stuff that makes them crazy". In
"Breeding Grounds of Vice", it's revealed that "juke" was a black slang term for wickedness, and it applied
to jukeboxes and juke joints. In one state, minors couldn't use a jukebox!
There are five stories that feature Las Vegas, but none mention FLLV (!!!). However, Timothy
Leary is featured in the drug chapter. The Mitchell's aren't in here either, although Larry Flynt, Al Goldstein, and Arthur Comstock
are (who's Comstock, you say? An overzealous person who inspected the mail for smut. The word "Comstockery" comes from his reputation).
The John Holmes story is hilarious - he's mostly naked with a longer than average "censored" sign around his groin.
Vice, perhaps inspired by Famous Dope Fiend cards has it's own set of
eight cards, "Vice Styles of the Rich and Famous". Featuring Adolf Hitler (peyote), Sigmund Freud (cocaine), Cary Grant
(LSD), Aldous Huxley (psychedelics), Judy Garland (amphetimines, barbituates, alcohol), Claire Boothe Luce (LSD - wife of Henry Luce),
Ulysses Grant (cigars, morphine) and Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi (both morphine).
Besides profiling the champions of vice, the book also looks at some of the more famous anti-drug, anti-gambling and prohibitionists who
shaped our culture. The Devil's Playground is probably the most interesting chapter. From how comic books got the dreaded "Comics
Code" to sugar addiction (believe it!), it's amazing how parents see everything from baseball cards to rock music to video games were
and still are evil. My mom still thinks Rolling Stone is evil and used bookstores are dens of porn (well, not all of them, anyway).
I think I turned out pretty good for someone who read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest over a dozen times. As to comics, I'm only
just getting back into them. It seems so sad today that cartoons and comics are so lacking in jokes, or even plot.
Vice should be required reading for any old biddy or politician. The next time either comes on TV and wants to implement
some new "prevention" tactic, just remember...we've made it this far from ancient times, and all of humanity's worst habits
are still with us! Old habits die hard!
LOL lest one suspects me of working for DC, who also
has the imprint of Vertigo Comics which publishes Transmetropolitan,
I don't.
