Disturbing New Comic Book Warning Labels Introduced
The Health and Human Services Department released a series of new graphic warnings for comic book covers today – the first of their kind.
The warnings, which depict the negative social impact of comic books, will be required to cover at least 50 percent of the back cover of every comic, graphic novel and superhero movie DVD sold in the United States.
"The introduction of these warnings is expected to significantly reduce the nation's population of geeks and dweebs and increase the number of Americans who have a life," the HHS website states.
An HHS spokesperson said that the need for the warning labels became more evident with the release of a survey that showed that 65% of this year's Comic Con attendees have never even kissed a girl, or were actually girls themselves attending Comic Con.
"Nearly one-third of all films produced by Hollywood over the past two decades have been about superheroes, and over two-thirds of the audience of these films are over the age of 18," said HHS Deputy Secretary Elizabeth McCammon, "That's tens of millions of grown Americans watching movie after movie about people in rubber suits flying around shooting fireballs out of their asses."
Included in the series of new labels is one that features the jarring image of an obese, middle-aged man dressed as the Green Lantern who slit his wrists in a bathtub. The photo is captioned: "People are right to pick on you, because you are an idiot".
McCammon defended the labels from some who claim they are too extreme, saying that anything less would be insufficient to spark the level of real human emotion required to motivate someone addicted to comic lore to move out of his parents' basement and find a damn job.
"I'm afraid subtlety is simply not an option," she said, "These people have been coddled their whole lives, and look where it's gotten them. Outer space. Another dimension. Two thousand years into the future. Everywhere but in the real world, making some sort of contribution to society and attending to their basic personal hygiene."
The new warning labels are expected to begin appearing by mid-2012.
