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Some are born posthumously, Fredrick Nietzsche once claimed. In the world of comics, some are porn posthumously — Picasso, specifically, whose famous painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon has helped create a legal nightmare for a Georgia comic-book retailer and raised questions about the state of free expression in the industry.
Gordon Lee's trouble began on Halloween of 2004, the night he gave away thousands of free comics to trick-or-treaters at Legends, his Rome, Georgia comic shop. One of the free titles, Alternative Comics #2, contained an excerpt from comic artist Nick Bertozzi's soon-to-be-published graphic novel The Salon, a murder mystery set in fin-de-siecle Paris. In a handful of frames, Picasso is depicted painting in the nude as he unveils his pioneering Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) for fellow cubist Georges Braque.
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Not everyone appreciated Bertozzi's history lesson, however, including the parents of a nine-year-old child who received the comic. Despite Lee's immediate apology, Georgia prosecutor Leigh Patterson has spent the past three years pursuing Lee under a controversial statute that prohibits the
The case could change how comics artists, publishers and retailers do business.
knowing dissemination of images of "sexually explicit nudity, sexual conduct, and sadomasochistic abuse" to minors. Patterson's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Lee's defenders say the law doesn't apply to Lee's case, however, as his distribution of the comic was accidental, and because the comic's nudity is hardly sexual. More broadly, Lee's lawyers claim the law is unconstitutional in general. "It makes illegal things not intended to be illegal," says Alan Begner, Lee's lawyer, who will be the first to challenge the law on appeal.
Begner's claim is that the law's definition of sexually explicit nudity, which extends to simple images of breasts and buttocks, is too broad. It remains to be seen whether the judge hearing Lee's case later this month will agree. In the meantime, the comics industry is paying careful attention to a case that could well redefine the way artists, publishers and retailers do business.
Lee's case is not The People v. Larry Flynt; no one has claimed that The Salon is obscene, or even that comic retailers should be prohibited from selling obviously sexually explicit material such as Hustler. Instead of outright censorship, Begner says, at issue is whether retailers can carry more mature titles, without fearing that a mistake like Lee's could earn them legal trouble. (Lee faces up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for each of the three counts against him.)
According to Begner, the case partly stems from the ambiguity of the standards for protecting minors from an accidental collision with the naked human form.
Click to enlarge An excerpt from The Salon.
Movie theaters require parental accompaniment to films with nudity, in part because pornographic films developed contemporaneously with Hollywood fare. Art museums, on the other hand, are historically founded around the idea that nudity in art transcends prurient interest. Because many comics are primarily aimed at children, the public tends to forget the existence of mature titles like R. Crumb's. Bertozzi says that misconception has made life hard for artists who want to tackle more sophisticated themes.
"The Disneyfication of culture has helped contribute to that lack of understanding," says The Salon's artist. "I think people unfortunately see cartoons and they see a nice thick line — a lot of cartoonists including myself are influenced by that nice thick line. It's assumed to be childlike."
That misconception helps explain why the first U.S. obscenity trial in the visual arts was directed a comic book. In 1991, underground cartoonist Mike Diana allegedly left behind one of his comics in a Xerox copier at the Florida school where he worked as a janitor. After the comic's gory and sexual images were shown to authorities, Diana was charged and subsequently convicted of obscenity. According to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), who helped take up Diana's unsuccessful appeal, the jury that convicted Diana agreed that his work "lacked serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Ironically, one of the yardsticks of that value was Picasso's Guernica.
The CBLDF has now taken up Lee's case, spending more than $70,000 on his defense, and succeeding in persuading the court to drop the two felony counts Lee faced, as well as three of the five misdemeanors. Lee now faces a third set of charges as he goes to trial. While some contributors to the fund objected to getting involved, executive director Charles Brownstein says he had no reservations about taking up Lee's cause.
