Comic Books have long been at the forefront of battles over censorship and freedom of speech in contemporary literature.
Don’t believe me? Assuming you’re already familiar with Fredric Wertham and his unfortunate influence on comics in the 50’s, I recommend you further check out some of the controversy that surrounded Omaha the Cat Dancer or Mike Diana’s obscenity charge for cartooning. Or, if you wanted something more recent, you could read up on comic collector Christopher Handley’s sentencing last year to six months in prison for possession of ‘Obscene’ Manga.
This sort of brazen disregard for freedom of speech in artistic expression is what led to the formation of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in 1986 ‘to protect the First Amendment rights of the comic art form and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians, and readers’.
The Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund is a similar fundraising organization, founded in 1987 specifically ‘to raise money for the defense of a Calgary, Alberta comic shop whose owners were charged with selling obscene materials’. The CLLDF, which has been largely inactive for the past two decades, recently reformed to lend their support to an American currently facing criminal charges in Canada on account of manga images found on his laptop that were deemed ‘obscene.’
You can find more information on the case here, but the gist of it is that an American in his mid-twenties was searched at customs upon his arrival in Canada to visit a friend. Upon searching his personal belongings they found the images in question and deemed them to be child pornography.
The reason I’m mentioning this now is that the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund just last week sent out a press release announcing that they have finally been formally incorporated. Additionally, the board of Directors for the CLLDF has expanded from three members to five.
Regarding the move to incorporate, current Board of Directors member Derek McCulloch said in the press release that, “It’s a long overdue step, and one we hope communicates our intention to grow the Fund as a bulwark in the defense of free speech in Canada.”
The two new members on the Board of Directors are Jay Bardyla, founder of Happy Harbor Comics in Edmonton, Alberta, and Jennifer Haines, the owner of The Dragon in Guelph, Ontario.
Needless to say, this bodes well for all Canadian comic fans – the CBLDF has been an essential factor in matters pertaining to censorship in North American comic books for decades now, and the renewed efforts of the CLLDF to keep a strong Northern front in the battle are enormously encouraging.
With that said, there were just a couple of additional news items I wanted to regurgitate here.
(Onto you. The reader. Our figurative splatter-bib.)
Item one!
Speaking of encouraging news, they sentenced that dude who robbed a mentally disabled Superman super-fan of thousands of dollars worth of comics and collectibles pertaining to the Man of Steel.
If you hadn’t been following the story, Mike Meyer is a 48 year-old-man who works part time at McDonald’s and lives alone with his two dogs, Krypto and Dyno. He has been receiving Social Security for a mental disability for over twenty years.
Mike, who has been collecting Superman memorabilia since 1974, made headlines in September when he was conned out of more than 1,800 Superman comics, figures, and miscellaneous memorabilia. The loathsome prick responsible, who we now know to be 38-year-old Gerry Armbruster, befriended Mike and manufactured a moment of opportunity in which he could make off with the Supes collectables while Meyer was distracted.
Armbruster was later caught and pleaded guilty yesterday to the theft, in addition to the assault and robbery of an elderly man in an unrelated case.
He was sentenced to six years in prison.
The redeeming element to this story is that, once the media caught wind of Meyer’s plight and broadcast it to comic fans and the world at large, he received a generous surge of support in the form of empathetic individuals rallying to replace his stolen collection.
Item two!
Have you been reading Kill Shakespeare? Were you, like I, left with a great void to fill after reading the final pages of the last issue?
May this little bit of news help renew your sense of purpose in life.
Turns out, co-creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery (being the crazy couple of guys they are) are presenting a stage version of Kill Shakespeare in Toronto, Ontario on November 26th and 27th.
They’re billing it as ‘a mix of comic art, performance and music ‘ which will ‘tell the Kill Shakespeare saga in a way that will delight both theatre and comic geeks’. They also offer the teaser to those of us not in Toronto that they’ve been contacted by several other theatres who want to bring Kill Shakespeare to their communities.
Rad? Rad.
Oh also, for those interested, the second volume of Kill Shakespeare (containing issues 7-12) debuts on November 22nd. So if you haven’t been following the issues, this will be your chance to check out the complete run with two snappy purchases.
And that’s the forced adjective we’re riding out on…
Stay frosty,
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