Polite Dissent

With a title like “The Right to be Different!” I was expecting a stirring public service ad about goths holding a protest parade downtown, marching to “Fascination Street,” but instead I ended up with this anemic little PSA about collecting rocks.

Sure, the message is admirable, but it doesn’t really argue that being different is a “right” as much as that respecting others is the nice thing to do.

See the second panel, where Sam is playing with the dog? To my knowledge, that’s the only time some extraneous action has been inserted into a DC comics public service ad. Clearly the artist also understood this was an underwhelming ad and needed some help to be interesting.

This PSA can be found in DC comics with a cover date of September 1961. The script was by Jack Schiff (which surprised me. I know he seems to have written them all, but this one seemed so uninspired I figured it was somebody else). Art is by Bernard Baily, who drew most of the 1960 and ‘61 PSAs.

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Tags: comics psa different right jack schiff bernard baily