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,

-Kevin@thefabler

Coming atcha. Coming at-cha. Yeaahhh.

There are a few cool things worthy of note in this week’s comics round-ups found around the web, but before I get to those, I wanted to mention how unbelievably rad it is that Adriana Blake (of the webcomic Fall On Me) took the time to translate my entire interview with her into Spanish!

Blake writes an English version of Fall On Me as well as a Spanish version, called Cuenta Conmigo.  She did the translation so her Spanish-speaking fans wouldn’t feel left out.

As one of my favourite web games to play involves using an online translator to translate paragraphs of text back and forth into nonsensical oblivion, I immediately felt the need to run Adriana’s Spanish version of the interview through Google Translator and back into English.

Highlights included the following excerpt:

“KD: Did you miss your husband was fit to be in a webcomic? How do you feel about it now?

AB: Surprisingly, it soon and I think even flinch. “

As well as these questions that I most definitely asked during the original interview:

“What motivates you to take that approach ’soft’ so full?”

“How do you know you have fans seemed interested in your interaction with your spouse every day?”

Apologies: I am considering joining a self-help group for people disproportionately amused by really simple things, I promise.

Right, and the news:

The 2011 Hugo Award nominees have been announced, which include the nominees for “Best Graphic Story”.

This is the third year that the Hugos have included this category, and this year the nominees include ‘Fables Vol. 13: Witches‘ (written by Bill Willingham and illustrated by Mark Buckingham), ‘Girl Genius Vol. 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse‘ (written by Phil and Kaja Foglio, illustrated by Phil Foglio), ‘Grandville Mon Amour‘ (by Bryan Talbot), ‘Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel‘  (by Howard Taylor), and ‘The Unwritten Vol. 2: Inside Man‘ (written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Peter Gross).

Both Fables and Girl Genius are titles that also popped up on the 2009 and 2010 nomination lists, with the latter taking home the Award each time.  Could this year foretell a Hugo upset? Will reigning champions the Foglio’s be dethroned?

We’ll have to wait until the winners are announced on Saturday, August 20th to find out. Nuts, right?

On the (Canadian) homefront, the Joe Shuster Award just announced their five finalists for the Harry Kremer Award for Outstanding Canadian Retailers.

The nominees are Amazing Stories in Saskatoon (Saskatchewan), Another Dimension Comics in Calgary (Alberta), The Comic Hunter in Moncton (New Brunswick), Comic Readers in Regina (Saskatchewan), and Planéte BD in Montreal (Quebec).  According to the Shuster Awards blog post on the subject, winners are selected based on such factors as “(1) Support of a wide variety of innovative material, (2) Overall appeal of the store and usage of space, (3) Knowledge, (4) Community activity, and (5) Adherence to standard ethical business practices.

The Harry Kremer Award winner will be announced alongside the rest of the Shuster Award winners at this year’s Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo on June 18th. (Speaking of the Calgary Expo, they now have an impressive list of Canadian comic creator guests up on their website – the list includes Fabler Blog interviewees Scott Chantler, Ray Fawkes, Jim Zubkavich and Jeff Lemire, alongside a bunch of other very cool individuals).

I was sad to read that comic publisher New Reliable Press announced this week they would be shutting down after one final showing at TCAF. Ed Brisson, who owns and operates the company, put out the word Monday, citing his desire to focus more on his own work in comics as a primary motivator in the decision.

New Reliable Press has put out a lot of solid titles over the years, notably Jason Turner and Manien Bothma’s True Loves, Simon Roy’s Jan’s Atomic Heart, and the Crime Comics anthology Acts of Violence, alongside the series of anthologies You Ain’t No Dancer.

Ed has said that Jason Turner is making copies of his work available for order online through his website, while other New Reliable titles may be obtained through San Diego-based publishers Poseur Ink.

Bummer, but best of wishes to Ed Brisson and the other creative talent associate with New Reliable Press.

It wouldn’t be civil to end a Fabler Blog post on a sad note, so instead, here’s a little piece of nifty that you might be interested in.

The 900th issue of Action Comics hits the stands today, and if you’ve ever been a fan of the big blue man of steel with a heart of gold, I suggest you head down to your local comic shop at a spritely trot and pick it up.

Action Comics #900 is one hundred pages of epic, featuring a story that DC is billing as the ‘ultimate Superman vs. Lex Luthor showdown’ and a collection of stories from a wicked-cool lineup of guest authors. The author lineup includes David Goyer, screenwriter of The Dark Knight; Damon Lindelof, writer and co-creator of Lost; Geoff Johns, current Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics; Paul Dini, prolific writer for Batman: The Animated Series and a host of other animated series’; as well as Richard Donner.

Yes, legendary director Richard “Superman I and II” Donner. This wouldn’t be his first time writing for Action Comics either – you may recall, back in 2006 he and Geoff Johns teamed up for a run on the title.

I guess all of the kerfuffle is because this issue means Action Comics is the first and only comic series to have published 900 issues. So buying it is like participating in history… but then, technically, so is existing at all…

In conclusion, The Goonies is a wonderful film.

-written by Kevin de Vlaming

At the other end of the lawsuit, we find… the artist responsible for creating the original likenesses of all of the above properties.

Okay, okay – so as we all know, legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby has been dead and gone for over a decade and a half now. The man who (alongside Stan Lee, Joe Simon, Steve Ditko, and several others) helped build Marvel as a major player in the comic industry is not in fact the direct catalyst behind this latest nugget of comic book conflict.

Last September, Jack Kirby’s heirs made it known that they intended to invoke a copyright law which would terminate existing copyright claims to many of the characters Kirby co-created. Apparently, there are certain tenets within the murky waters of rights and ownership legislation that allow an author (or that author’s heirs) to regain copyrights a certain number of years after those rights were initially granted out.

Last year, the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel made headlines with a similar court case. They wound up winning a packet of rights back concerning the Man of Steel, including his origin story, the names of his parents (as well as of the planet Krypton), and publishing rights to some of the earliest Superman appearances in comics. Marc Toberoff, the lawyer who represented Siegel’s heirs, is now onboard helping to defend the Kirby copyright claims.

The big news now is that, as of a week and a half ago, Marvel is suing to render those claims invalid.

And so the soap opera that revolves around creator rights versus those of the major comic book publishing companies spills over into yet another decade.

This daytime drama is one that has been around as long as the very concept of comics as we know them today.

Jerry Siegel’s own struggles with creative ownership go back to 1938, when he and Superman co-creator Joe Shuster originally sold the copyright for the character to Action Comics for a measly $130. After receiving a comparatively tiny fraction of the revenue generated by their creation for nearly a decade, they sued to void their original contract in 1947.

The attempt was met with failure, and for several decades more the creators of the most wildly successful comic character in history continued to go uncredited and underpaid. In 1973 they made another (ultimately futile) attempt to regain rights to Superman, though at least this time the press rallied around their cause enough to effect some kind of change. Warner Communications (who by that time inherited the rights to the character through the acquisition of National Comics) responded to press coverage of the unfair treatment of Siegel and Shuster by offering them each a pension of $20,000 per year.

In addition, they would finally be credited with creating Superman on all Supes-related media. Over thirty years after the event.

After Siegel and Shuster passed away in 1996 and 1992 (respectively), their heirs attempted to reclaim copyrights in 1999 and several times again between 2002 and 2008. It wasn’t until just last August that they actually gained some significant ground in the courts.

Marvel has had its own share of discontent within the ranks of its creative talent to deal with in the past.

One notable example would be Marvel’s infamous tendency to merchandise characters and art created by freelance artists without allowing those individuals any creative control or proportionately reasonable royalties.

In 1991, Marvel experienced a coup of sorts in reaction to this. A number of popular artists then-freelancing for Marvel decided to collectively demand more rights with regards to their creative contributions to the company.

Many are now familiar with how Marvel’s flat-out refusal of their requests led those disenfranchised illustrators to branch off to form their own independent comic company, Image Comics. Those artists were Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Whilce Portatio, and Jim Valentino.

If you’re starting to get a sense that ‘copyright law’ and ‘creative rights’ are vastly important terms in comics, you’re bang on the money. As an artistic medium historically dependant on complex relationships between publishers, artists, writers, distributors, and everyone else in-between, ‘who controls what’ and ‘who deserves how’ much become paramount questions.

It’s no wonder that many prefer to go the route of self-publishing their creative material.

Establishing creator rights in the comic book industry is such an integral concern to artists that many even got together to draft their own ‘Comic Creator’s Bill of Rights‘ back in the eighties. Scott McCloud, Dave Sim, Kevin Eastman, and Peter Laird were but a few of the big-name creators involved in the Bill’s conception.

The latest case of the Kirby heirs versus Marvel does represent another soap-operatic episode in an industry pointedly prone to such drama, but it is important nonetheless to pay attention to its outcome.

Some are claiming that the heirs are merely partaking in a cash grab now that the window to terminate existing Kirby copyrights is approaching, especially since Hollywood is experiencing a surge of popularity with movies based on comics. It doesn’t help their case that the initial letters of termination were distributed to most of the major production studios in Hollywood, nor does it help that they came on the heels of news that Disney was buying Marvel.

The argument put forth by Marc Toberoff on behalf of the Kirby Heirs is that they are just seeking “proper compensation and credit” for the lasting creative contributions he made to Marvel in his lifetime.

Meanwhile, Marvel claims that Jack Kirby’s creations were all work-for-hire assignments, and thus not covered by laws regarding termination of copyright.

Toberoff has pointed out that, “It is a standard claim predictably made by comic book companies to deprive artists, writers, and other talent of all rights in their work.”

I’m tentatively siding with Toberoff and the heirs here, mostly because I don’t want to see further precedent set against artists (or their heirs) trying to regain some form of artistic control or monetary compensation from corporations that have reaped disproportionately vast profit from their creations.

That being said, here’s hoping that – whatever the outcome – what Jack himself would’ve wanted winds up factoring in at least a little amidst all of the talk of dollars and cents.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming