Obscenity is like humor, in that both are subjective.  Humor is like obscenity, in that both are part of the foundation upon which human culture has been built.  One of the more obvious places that the two meet is in comic books, an art form that is often laughably obscene (see Omaha the Cat Dancer, Get Fuzzy, etc.).  Should we censor the bondage in early Wonder Woman comics or make Robin wear bicycle shorts under his costume?  Perhaps those are the best examples.

As a result, some exceedingly strange lawsuits have arisen in recent years.  Benevolent java-pusher Starbucks sued the artist Kieron Dwyer for copyright infringement when he parodied their mermaid logo.  The resulting court decision prevented Dwyer from printing his parody or displaying it on his website or linking to a website that displays his parody.

How can a lone artist stand up to such massed power (corporate or political)?  The Comic Book Legal defense Fund (cbldf.org) was formed in 1986 to fight for freedom of speech in their corner of the world.  While they often represent the creators of comics, the Fund has more often found itself defending retailers who face prosecution from local authorities defining their political convictions with a few public convictions.

Self-appointed watchdogs have long tried to force all media through a filter of their own design.  Pegged as a children’s medium, comics have consistently faced censorship.  As the funny books strive to shake off the juvenilia label, creators step into adult waters.  The CBLDF was founded by publisher Denis Kitchen, reacting to efforts to push comics back into the kiddie pool.

Currently, the fund is defending shopkeeper Gordon Lee, who is charged with distributing obscene material when a nine-year-old found himself in possession of a free copy of Alternative Comics #2 last Halloween.  Within that anthology, the youth found an excerpt from a tale about the early Cubists.  Pablo Picasso is portrayed painting in the nude in three panels.  One can only imagine the trauma.

September, 2005

The world was not ready in 1988.  Ousted by the Board of Directors, Steven Jobs had left Apple Computer, the company which he had co-founded.  With money from Ross Perot, among others, Jobs identified then-current technologies which he saw as the paths to the future.  From extensive research came a grand leap of faith: NeXTStep.  Jobs was not new to running a company other than Apple.  He had bought Pixar Animation Studios from George Lucas a couple years earlier.

If you happened to wander into the student computer shop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989, you saw an array of Apple products lining the walls- monochromatic Cyclopes all.  Walk past them for in the small, dark room off to the side sat one black computer on a pedestal beneath a spotlight.  This was the NeXT computer, too special for mere test drives, though the employees would be only too glad to demonstrate its glorious qualities: built in a completely automated factory; housed in a magnesium case; usable memory on a 256 MB magneto-optical device (10-20 times larger than anything commonly used at the time); 8 MB of RAM (when 1 MB was extensive).  And it cost many thousands of dollars.

Over the succeeding four years, NeXT made extensive improvements to their product line, dropping the price and replacing much of the basic hardware with more practical items.  Concurrently, a gentleman named Tim Berners-Lee did develop a little thing called hypertext on the NeXT computer (the ht in your http).  In 1996, Apple bought NeXT in order to capitalize on its operating system and brought Jobs back into the fold where he remains to this day.  Colorado-based Black Hole, Inc., will gladly sell you a used NeXT computer for significantly less than the original price.

May, 2006

Let us now bemoan the fate of lost pop culture, slipping through our collective fingers, rolled across our national landscape, and dropped into the national sewer.  Rappin’, Rockin’ Barbie is inexplicably entwined with Rubik’s Cube.  Pink Lady and Jeffsinks along with The Associates.  Within this swirling mass of mediocrity, we find the Tick, bubbling to the surface and crawling back into our national consciousness like some… bubbling… crawling… thing.

Long before The Invincibles, the comics industry made fun of its own.  Plastic Man and Captain Marvel were originally as much satire as heroic.  The Tick appeared during the late eighties independent comics boom, created by Ben Edlund. Hollywood was scouring the comics’ field for the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and discovered Edlund’s semi-annual series.  They wanted a franchise that would burst over the youth market like a squeezed zit.  Instead, Edlund and company produced a Saturday morning cartoon that was just a little too off-kilter (i.e., Mickey Dolenz, Bobcat Goldthwait, Laraine Newman, and Jim Belushi all contributed their voices).  It did last for three seasons, but nobody bought the tchotchkes.  Edlund handed off the comic book to friends as he pursued a career in Hollywood.  Later, he launched the live-action Tick series. Unfortunately, other parties owned the cartoon show and fought the use of any of the original storylines or characters.  The magic was gone like a fallen cake.

Today, Edlund works in television.  The Tick live action series is available on DVD.  The original, hilarious comics have been collected in The Tick Bonanza 1-4.  For that and other shiny stuff, check out www.necomics.com.  The Tick: Days of Drama, a new, non-Edlund comic is due this month.  The best news is that ABC is showing the original Tick cartoons all summer long. Chairface Cippendale, American Maid, Thrakkorzog, and Arthur are available at 11 pm weekdays (Toon Disney) and 11 am Sundays (ABC Family).  Tune in and hug your destiny!

July, 2005