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Madonna's cautionary AIDS comic, handed out at a 1987 concert

Xeni Jardin at 10:10 am Fri, Jan 27, 2012

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From Ethan Persoff's ongoing chronicles of vintage weird ephemera: COMICS WITH PROBLEMS #7 - MADONNA ON AIDS. This public health pamphlet was handed out at one of her concerts, one night only, in 1987. Her image appears on the cover, and inside, a handwritten note urging for greater awareness of AIDS and an end to prejudice against those who contract it (or who are HIV-positive).

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Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE:  80s • AIDS • eighties • health • madonna • music • pop culture • punk • Vintage Weird

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  • EH

    short-hair madonna was the hottest madonna.

  • ChicagoD

    Man, that was a scary time. Seeing what people were saying and doing is a stark reminder of how savage people get when they are scared.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

    Would have been much better if the illustrations had been done by Jack Chick. 

    • James B

      Check out Jack Chick’s, “That Crazy Guy”.  It is everything you would expect.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

        I have a vintage 1981 or ’82 copy of “That Crazy Guy”. I was 14 at the time and figured that girl got herpes. Did Chick redo it to be about AIDS? I’ll have to check the Chick site and see. Sure wish I had copies of “Lisa” and “The Lost Children”, JTC cancelled them as just too weird. 

        I have to say that this AIDS comic is a lot better that this Spider-Man PSA comic from 1984.
        http://www.politedissent.com/archives/982

  • unit_1421

    I was happy to see that these were handed out at a NYC show. Guess the farm folk in the heartland would have gone ballistic over this, or the record company wouldn’t help cover it for the whole tour (she wasn’t a Zillionaire yet back then)/

  • Dicrel Seijin

    I would have been in middle school when this came out. The fear was quite real. At that time, AIDS was a death sentence. Still, the comic book geek in me wants to track down a copy of this.