Obscenity
Prosecutions, the 1973 Miller ruling, the collapse of head-shop distribution that followed, and the legal defence that grew up around comics afterwards.
Part of Underground Comics
32 moments in this segment.
- - Letter to the Senate subcommittee. A member of the public writes to the Senate Judiciary Committee's Special Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, which held hearings on comic books in April 1954 and precipitated the industry's self-imposed Comics Code.
- - Dan O'Neill. O'Neill's Air Pirates Funnies put Disney characters into underground comix in 1971 and drew a copyright suit that ran through the courts for most of the decade.
- - Dan O'Neill sobre Air Pirates. Dan O'Neill recounts the Air Pirates Funnies affair, in which Disney sued him and his collaborators for copyright infringement in 1971 over parodies using Mickey Mouse, a case he lost on appeal in 1978.
- - Sondra London interviews Mike Diana 1993. Mike Diana is interviewed at his Largo apartment shortly after being charged in 1993 with three counts of obscenity over issues seven and eight of his fanzine Boiled Angel.
- - Richard B. interviews Mike Diana. A visiting interviewer records Mike Diana and people around Largo, Florida in early 1994, during the months between the obscenity charge over Boiled Angel and the trial.
- - Chicago Comicon 1995 Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. A Comic Book Legal Defense Fund booth at the Chicago convention, pitching membership to attendees during the years the fund was defending shop owners charged over adult titles.
- - 7-28-95 San Diego Comic-Con adults-only controversy KNSD news report. A San Diego news report frames the adult and underground titles on sale at the 1995 convention as a scandal, opening on the claim that hardcore material was not what anyone expected to find there.
- - Mike Diana on America After Hours CNBC 1996. Mike Diana appears on American cable television two years after a Florida jury convicted him in 1994 over his fanzine Boiled Angel, the first US criminal obscenity conviction of a cartoonist for his own drawings.
- - Wizard World 1997 Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund works a convention table, explaining to passing readers what the fund pays for and which retailer prosecutions it was then carrying.
- - TFAW.com SDCC'09: Charles Brownstein Interview. Charles Brownstein, then running the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, sets out what the organisation does and how retailers and readers can support it.
- - PAUL POPE for CBLDF. Paul Pope explains what the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund does and walks through the making of his Liberty Tree fine art print, drawn as a benefit for the organisation.
- - SPX 2012: Charles Brownstein. Charles Brownstein, then executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, describes the organisation's work, the cases it was handling in 2012 and its relationship with the Small Press Expo.
- - Loki Talks to the CBLDF. A convention floor conversation with staff at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund table, who explain what the organisation does for retailers and creators facing charges over comics.
- - Shockingly Offensive Comics with Johnny Ryan. Johnny Ryan drew the back page of VICE for a decade in strips built on scatology and violence, and talks at home in Los Angeles about starting out and about Robert Crumb.
- - SDCC 2013 CBLDF Panel excerpt. An excerpt from a Comic Book Legal Defense Fund panel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2013, on the cases the fund was then funding.
- - OZ Schoolkids Issue obscenity trial at Comics Unmasked: R Crumb, Charles Shaar Murray. Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Geoffrey Robertson QC and Dick Pountain give first-hand accounts of the OZ Schoolkids obscenity trial, at the British Library in July 2014.
- - Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and the Oz Trial. Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton talk to journalist Charles Shaar Murray about their careers in American underground comix, in an event staged in two halves. The second half is a panel on the 1971 obscenity trial of Oz magazine in London.
- - Arrested for Artwork: The Mike Diana Story. Mike Diana was charged in 1994 over drawings in his zine Boiled Angel and became the first American artist prosecuted for obscenity in his own artwork, recounted here as a case history.
- - COMIC BOOK LEGAL DEFENSE FUND. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund booth at San Diego Comic-Con, filmed in 1993, a few years after the fund was founded to pay retailers' obscenity defences.
- - Take PRIDE in Comics: The Challenges Facing LGBTQ+ Content. A Comic Book Legal Defense Fund panel on challenges to queer comics, with Jane's World cartoonist Paige Braddock, No Straight Lines editor Justin Hall, librarian Valerie Acklin of the American Library Association's GLBT Round Table, and Katie Proctor of the Portland shop Books With Pictures. They trace the censorship history and why LGBTQ+ titles draw disproportionate challenges.
- - Addressing Identity Censorship. A Comic Book Legal Defense Fund panel examines challenges aimed at LGBTQ authors and titles, the category the fund reports as the most common form of censorship it now meets.
- - MOVIATE UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2019 - MIKE DIANA Q&A. Mike Diana answers questions after a screening of Boiled Angels, Frank Henenlotter's film about the obscenity prosecution that made Diana the first American cartoonist convicted for his drawings.
- - 005 Mike Diana. Mike Diana remains the only person convicted of artistic obscenity in the United States, and the case is reconstructed from the charge through the sentence.
- - CBLDF: Defending Comics Today | Comic-Con@Home 2021. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund describes how its work shifted from defending individual retailers against obscenity charges to contesting legislation.
- - CBLDF: Decoding Censorship. Terry Anderson of Cartoonists Rights Network International, Gordon Danning of the National Coalition Against Censorship, Jackie Farmer of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and Betsy Gomez of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund discuss how censorship pressure on comics has shifted. Jeff Trexler moderates the panel, recorded 24 June 2021.
- - Comic Book Legal Defense Fund - Wondercon 2022. Jeff Trexler, interim director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, is questioned by Christine Summers at WonderCon about the fund's remit and about comics and graphic novels being removed from libraries and schools.
- - Banned Comic Books: a Panel Discussion. Artists and free-expression advocates discuss the targeting of comics and graphic novels in Missouri and wider American book removals, particularly titles dealing with gender, sexuality and race, and the state laws exposing teachers and school librarians to fines and jail for supplying restricted material.
- - Banned Comics, Old Problems, New Forms, March 7, 2023. A New York Comics and Picture-story Symposium panel on comics censorship brings together Jeff Smith, Jerry Craft, Denis Kitchen, Jeff Trexler, Michael Dooley and Danny Fingeroth. They connect the campaigns against comics of the 1940s and 1950s to present-day school and library removals, and to the founding of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
- - The Tampa Morgue #56 Mike Diana the only American artist arrested for his art!(Interview). Mike Diana talks about his childhood, his homemade horror films, his album artwork for bands including Autopsy and Iron Monkey, and the prosecution over his zine Boiled Angel. He was convicted of obscenity in Pinellas County, Florida on 29 March 1994, the first US artist convicted over his own art.
- - Mike Diana
- - SDCC 2025: Interview With The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. An interview with Jeff from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at a convention, covering the fund's founding, the cases it has taken on defending retailers and creators, and where it directs its work now.
- - Explicit Comics, Censorship & Freedom of Speech w/ Maia Kobabe, Taylor Titmouse, PomPoison, Iris Jay. Host Iris Jay talks with cartoonists Maia Kobabe, Taylor Titmouse and PomPoison about censorship pressure on explicit and queer comics, covering library and school book removals, payment processors refusing to handle legal erotic work, and proposed age-verification and privacy laws.