In this podcast, recorded at SPX, Tea Fougner spoke with Dirk Tiede, creator of Paradigm Shift on Modern Tales. Slightly related: Dirk met the producers of the NBC tv show Heroes at San Diego Comicon, and they decided to use some of his artwork in the show, in a scene set, apparently, in a comic book store. That episode airs tonight!

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Tea Fougner sat down with webcomics writer T Campbell (Penny and Aggie, Fans, etc) during SPX 2008 — and here are the results.

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Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of James Kochalka’s American Elf! Tea, James and I sat down at SPX 2008 to talk about this landmark — and about a lot of other things as well.

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During SPX, Tea Fougner, John Boeck, and I interviewed Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund about the Christopher Handley case. Handley is a collector who was taken to jail for a few hentai items in his vast manga collection (see press release below). It’s important listening. If anybody would like to help us out by making a transcript, I’ll be happy to post it here.

Meanwhile, you can download the MP3 or subscribe to the feed to listen to this podcast.

Press release:

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has signed on as a special consultant to the defense of Chistopher Handley, an Iowa collector who faces up to 20 years in prison for possession of manga. The Fund adds its First Amendment expertise to the case, managed by United Defense Group’s Eric Chase, and will also be providing monetary support towards obtaining expert witnesses.

Handley, 38, faces penalties under the PROTECT Act (18 U.S.C. Section 1466A) for allegedly possessing manga that the government claims to be obscene. The government alleges that the material includes drawings that they claim appear to be depictions of minors engaging in sexual conduct. No photographic content is at issue in Handley’s case.

“Handley’s case is deeply troubling, because the government is prosecuting a private collector for possession of art,” says CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein. “In the past, CBLDF has had to defend the First Amendment rights of retailers and artists, but never before have we experienced the Federal Government attempting to strip a citizen of his freedom because he owned comic books. We will bring our best resources to bear in aiding Mr. Handley’s counsel as they defend his freedom and the First Amendment rights of every art-loving citizen in this country.”

Mr. Handley’s case began in May 2006 when he received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven Japanese comic books. That package was intercepted by the Postal Inspector, who applied for a search warrant after determining that the package contained cartoon images of objectionable content. Unaware that his materials were searched, Handley drove away from the post office and was followed by various law enforcement officers, who pulled him over and followed him to his home. Once there, agents from the Postal Inspector’s office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Special Agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and officers from the Glenwood Police Department seized Handley’s collection of over 1,200 manga books or publications; and hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser disks; seven computers, and other documents. Though Handley’s collection was comprised of hundreds of comics covering a wide spectrum of manga, the government is prosecuting images appearing in a small handful.

Putting the case into context, Burton Joseph, CBLDF’s Legal Counsel says, “In the lengthy time in which I have represented CBLDF and its clients, I have never encountered a situation where criminal prosecution was brought against a private consumer for possession of material for personal use in his own home. This prosecution has profound implications in limiting the First Amendment for art and artists, and comics in particular, that are on the cutting edge of creativity. It misunderstands the nature of avant-garde art in its historical perspective and is a perversion of anti-obscenity laws.”

Eric Chase and his team at the United Defense Group have been vigorously defending Handley, and scored a major First Amendment victory earlier this year when the judge found portions of the PROTECT Act unconstitutional in his ruling on a motion to dismiss. District Judge Gritzner of the Southern District of Iowa found that subsections 1466(a)(2) and (b)(2) of 18 U.S.C. 1466A unconstitutional. Those sections make it a crime to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to distribute, “a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting,” that “is, or appears to be” a minor engaged in sexual conduct. Judge Gritzner found that those sections restrict protected speech and are constitutionally infirm.

Handley now faces charges under the surviving sections of 1466A, which will require a jury to determine whether the drawings at issue are legally obscene. The material cannot be deemed obscene unless it meets all three of the criteria of the Miller test for obscenity: “(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” The jury must answer all three questions in the affirmative in order to convict.

Eric Chase recognized the importance of the case, and of the CBLDF’s contribution to it, in a statement to the CBLDF: “This case represents the latest in a string of efforts by the Department of Justice to encroach on free speech. The United Defense Group is committed to fighting to maintain the protections guaranteed in the Constitution, and we appreciate the CBLDF’s support in this fight.”

For those interested in these sorts of things, I have a new video podcast posted to my site called “The Functions of Panels: Frames and Flow.”

This one is about the various functional roles that panels play in the visual language used in comics. Among the topics I hit are:
• focusing information within panels
• navigating page layouts
• visual “storytelling”
• text-image relationships

As always, I welcome any and all feedback you might have, either directly to me or on my blog. Enjoy!

Best,

Neil

Website: http://www.emaki.net
Blog: http://www.thevisuallinguist.com

The podcast starts off BIG with an incredible podcast theme-song recorded using the Nintendo DS cartridge Electroplankton (and the James Kochalka Superstar band jamming along with it live), and then goes into non stop TALK. Topics include the amazing positive energy of Colin Clary, Morissey’s guitar tech, jerking off in chinese restaurants, and a mind boggling examination of what it’s like to be the wife of a Superstar. In the middle of the podcast the band calls James’ wife Amy and interrogates her on the nature of their relationship.

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In part one of this epic podcast, James Kochalka Superstar and his whole band talk guy talk and play live a whole bunch of new original songs not yet available on any album… Big Star, Rainbow of Blood, What’s the Deal with the Triangle, Touch a Tiger, When Frampton Comes Alive, and Moony Moon.

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Pulp Secret is an online video show about comics, with surprisingly high production values. There’s even some coverage of “artcomics” (I saw a review of Gipi’s Garage Band in one of the archived episodes, which I’ve embedded below) — which is also surprising. I’d have expected G4-level hypemongering and corporate asskissing from something like this. So it’s good to be surprised.

Um. The more recent episodes are all about Spider-Man 3. I mean ALL ABOUT SPIDER-MAN 3. Let’s hope they don’t go whole-hog on the corporate bandwagon forever, and abandon coverage of the entire comics scene as they get more popular. If they get more popular.

James Kochalka and his band mates Creston Lea and Jason Cooley answer your questions, delving deeply into “does Jason have a crush on James’ wife, Amy?”, perform a whole bunch of new and original songs: Raindrops Keep Falling on the Dead, Dragon Puncher, a made-up off-the-top-of-heads song about Nintendo Wii, and Fucking the Computer, as well as some other songs.

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In this interview I conducted on the phone earlier today, Columbia College business professor Todd Allen, whose 2003 study “The Economics of Webcomics” will be released in a heavily-revised second edition in a few weeks, talks about how he digs up the real numbers behind the “webcomic to print” hype, the inner mechanics of various advertising networks and how well they work (or don’t work) for different webcomics businesses, and the recent announcements at the New York Comic-Con concerning print publishers like Marvel and DC dipping their toes into the pay-to-download digital comics market — or, in some cases, promising to do so, without any real conviction: what are they thinking, and what are they not saying? The audio quality isn’t the greatest. Sorry. If anybody wants to take the time to transcribe this, I’d be happy to post it in a follow-up.

[Edit: forgot to put the actual podcast links in! Durrrrr ....]

[Edit: fixed the mp3 link]

Download the MP3 or subscribe to the iTunes-compatible feed!