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News
A Naked Picasso Visits Rome (Georgia): Serious Comic Book, Obscure Law Put Georgia Retailer in Jeopardy
September 29, 2005
By Max Chafkin
The section from Nick Bertozzi’s graphic novel The Salon begins like this: the artist Georges Braque is led into Pablo Picasso’s studio by a nude model. Picasso, the model explains, is enraptured by his art — “he’s in there masturbating” — and is angry at Braque for interrupting. The painter, as it happens, is also completely naked. After some blustering, punctuated by caustic interjections from the model (“Go fuck yourself, little man”), Picasso realizes that Braque is a fellow artist and embraces him as a brother — still naked.
This scene was included in a sample issue by the small press Alternative Comics and was distributed on Free Comic Book Day on July 3, 2004, in shops across the country. One such shop was Legends, in Rome, GA, where some 25 copies were given to patrons without incident. But — say lawyers of the shop’s owner, Gordon Lee — a single copy found its way to the back room of Legends. It remained there until October 30, 2004, when it was placed in a Halloween giveaway pile and was handed to a nine-year-old boy. Now Lee faces possible jail time in a case that has attracted the attention of the comic book community as well as the resources of a small anti-censorship group.
Strangely enough, the most serious of the charges facing Lee have nothing to do with the fact that the alleged victim is a minor. The proprietor of Legends was arrested six days after the incident on a number of charges, including two counts of distribution of material depicting nudity and sexual conduct – a felony that is based on an infrequently-used Georgia statute requiring any book containing nudity to be placed in an envelope with a warning about its adult content. “It’s sort of a truth-in-lending charge,” says American Civil Liberties Union senior staff counsel Chris Hansen. “But I’ve never seen a felony truth-in-lending charge before.”
Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which has so far spent $40,000 on the Gordon Lee case, finds the law especially troubling because it would apply even if Lee had given the comic to an adult. “If a customer takes home a New Yorker with a photograph of a nude protestor, he could be facing charges,” says Brownstein. “We’re not just talking about sex here.” He adds that a conviction could make it easier for local law enforcement to intimidate small booksellers who stock controversial books. “Comic book retailers are not well-capitalized businesses,” he says. “Prosecutors know that these guys are going to want to cut a plea. If they’re trying to create a precedent it makes sense to go after the retailers.”
For Rome’s district attorney, Leigh Patterson, precedents and free speech have nothing to do with Gordon Lee. “I guess the main reason that we have the case is because the comic was distributed to a child,” says Patterson, noting that the giveaway was part of a neighborhood trick-or-treat event and was thus explicitly intended for children. “There’s a big difference between a child sneaking into a Rated-R movie and a child trick-or-treating on Broad Street. I don’t think any parent would want their nine year old to look at something like that.”
Alan Begner, an Atlanta civil liberties lawyer hired by Brownstein’s group to represent Lee, begs to differ. He has made a career of arguing on behalf of pornography sellers and finds the furor aroused by Bertozzi’s non-sexual depiction of pre-War Paris somewhat bewildering. “Picasso is not erect [in the comic book]. I don’t see what is wrong with showing a kid a comic book of an event that’s factual. Are these Greek and Roman statues harmful to minors?” (The prosecution has a different take on Picasso’s state of arousal — or lack thereof — while the artist agrees with Begner: “Anybody that has a penis can tell you that when you walk around it moves around,” says Bertozzi.)
Begner, along with local co-consul Paul Cadle, argue that Lee’s was an honest mistake and that an apology should suffice. They filed a motion on May 2, 2005 to get the felony charge thrown out on grounds that another misdemeanor charge — distribution of harmful materials to a minor — amounts to the same thing. “They looked for a way to create a felony by using a law that doesn’t apply,” says Begner. Though Patterson argues that the district attorney’s office has done the only thing it can, given the complaint and the law, the seeming disconnect between the possible punishment and the crime raises an obvious question: given all the kids who happen upon actual pornography, why is Lee, a comic book retailer, facing charges?
In fact, this is not his first run-in with a Georgia obscenity law. In a 1993 case, Lee was convicted of selling a pornographic comic book to an adult. In the process, says Cadle, who defended him in that case, police illegally seized hundreds of “obscene” comic books, and refused to return them. Cadle sued the city and the district attorney’s office on Lee’s behalf and won an $18,000 judgment along with a court order requiring the return of the books. “I think what we’re seeing today is in part retaliation from them,” says Begner. Paterson denies this, saying that she did not work on the 1993 case and that the prior conviction is only significant as an aggravating factor. Cadle did not comment on possible retaliation, saying only “I think [Lee] would be possibly facing a stiffer penalty if convicted. You’d rather take a client into court who has no record.”
Should Lee lose, his lawyers and backers say they will take the case to the Supreme Court in order to get the law overturned — but if they fail, the case will represent the second time in the past ten years someone has been convicted in connection with an artistically serious graphic novel. In 1993, controversial comic book artist Mike Diana was convicted of obscenity and sentenced to three years probation, a condition of which was that he could not create any “obscene” art. “It was a damaging loss” says Brownstein, who estimates that costs relating to the defense cost his group upwards of $100,000.
So why does the graphic novel bear the burden of censorship so heavily? “Comic books unfortunately have a stigma of being a children’s art form,” says Bertozzi. “I know that there is a line that one must walk, but [The Salon] is being outrageously misinterpreted.” Alternative Comics publisher Jeff Mason says, “There is this expectation that comics should be x, y, or z — it’s like saying movies should be only for kids, books should be only for kids. When comics attempt to rise above that perception, they are often met with a violent reaction by those outside of the industry.”
That perception may be beginning to change, as sales of graphic novels climb and acceptance within the publishing industry grows. Bertozzi recently inked a deal with St. Martin’s to publish The Salon. Moreover, Lee’s backers concede that the industry is hardly in jeopardy. “It’s really a First Amendment issue more than anything else,” says Eric Reynolds, an editor at Fantagraphics. “Aside from whatever immediate financial impact it might have on us, it’s really just the principle.”
