Free Comic Books Day, 2010, part 1.
So. I’m not sure exactly why stupidity, ignorance, and baseless accusations always end up costing me money, but with the recent news of the Handley sentencing, The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is now in possession of another $100 of mine that I’m hard-put to do without. Honestly: do you know how many comics, how much beer that is?
brief recap of events follows; please keep reading to the end:
ANN, Christopher Handley Pleads Guilty to Possession Charges
ANN, Christopher Handley Sentenced to 6 Months for ‘Obscene’ Manga
RC Harvey at The Comics Journal, Our Nonexistant Liberties
Neil Gaiman, Why defend freedom of icky speech?
David Kravets at Wired’s Threat Level Blog, U.S. Manga Obscenity Conviction Roils Comics World
News @ the CBLDF: Handley Sentenced to Six Months in Prison
and a Google search pulls up so much more.
I’ve posted twice to RocketBomber, once about manga porn generally (including the sticky bit of representations of underage female characters) and more recently re: the loli question,
I just want to read books. All kinds of books. Anything that gets in the way of that is bad, in my opinion. We can question the motives of people who produce works that seemingly encourage Bad People to do Bad Things to children (“Think of the children!”) but I firmly believe that in a free society that encourages free speech, free thought, and free expression we cannot question their works as works. If you can prove a crime, with a real victim, then we can revisit the value of the work.But Books don’t kill people. People who burn Books kill people. You want to ban something “for the common good”?
I find that to be as abhorrent as the worst, least defensible porn.
And of course, this also cost me $100 back when Handley plead guilty 9 months ago.
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Here’s my proposal:
You all know about Free Comic Book Day, right? It’s an annual event, happens to fall on May 1st this year. Free Comic Book Day gets an orgy of online blog coverage (and even a smattering of mainstream journo attention) and rightfully so, because, dude: free comics.
This year, in addition to the “Free Comic Book Day” promo offered by Diamond and the major pubs, we need to run a parallel CBLDF “Free Comics” fundraiser.
Free as in Beer plus Free as in Speech.
It won’t take much. Every blogger just needs to include a blurb for the CBLDF in any post reporting on the Free Comic Book Day. I’m hoping we can even get some cool graphics going (soviet-era-style propoganda posters, ironic or otherwise, would be great) so maybe it’d end up as little more than posting a button & a link at the bottom of any Free Comic Book Day report. (On top of whatever other promotion my fellow bloggers feel like giving this initiative)
I didn’t wait until May to make another donation to the CBLDF; they already have another hundred of my hard earned dollars. But I’ll be back in April to remind everyone of this drive and with a special challenge:
DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Image, Tokyopop, Viz; Random House, Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster: I’m an unknown blogger with $100 — but I’ve put that c-note where my values lie. Can you match me? Just $100, I’m not asking for more. $100 to help protect your retailer partners, your customers, and yourselves. $100 out of your massive PR budgets to show even a token acknowlegement to the concerns of your fans, and to promote both free speech and the future of the comics industry.
You can donate $100 to the CBLDF in my name, or in Christopher Handley’s name, or under your own aegis; and I hope you donate more but $100 is the challenge. Can you match my commitment? And if you can’t, I wish you’d tell us why.
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I’ll repeat this post closer to the actual Day (April 15th, tax day, I’m thinking) with another call for funds, and renewed argument that we all need to adopt Free Comic Book Day as both a cause and call to action. And I’ll likely donate another $100 on that day, though I can hardly afford it. How many companies, how many of you, will join me in this?
