While many students spend their final weeks of class studying chemistry, anthropology and engineering, some University students and their friends are using the time to focus on another subject – comic book legal defense.
Icon Studios, the students’ company, is the creator of the comic book “Keepers of the Word.” The company has been looking for a publisher for the comic book, which Icon Studios has been working on for eight years.
But once the comic book is published, it could face the fate other comic books intended for mature audiences have faced – censorship.
To join the fight against censorship, the members of Icon Studios attended the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Conference this past weekend.
CBLDF financially supports comic book artists and comic book vendors in their legal battles with censorship.
The organization’s Web site encourages members to “join the Fund and help preserve comics as a vital medium.” The organization also sells products such as T-shirts – one features a small comic book character wearing tiny red shorts and saying, “I’m wearing these shorts to hide my genitals. It is the law!”
CBLDF is needed because of the changing comic book market, said Heath Tullier, a 23-year-old comic book artist and creator of Icon Studios
“Comic books are increasingly being written for an older audience,” Tullier said. “The vocabulary is becoming more advanced and the subject matter is becoming more mature.”
Caren Strain, who works at Baton Rouge comic book store Louisiana Double Play, said the store sells comics geared toward an older audience.
“There aren’t a whole lot of kids who come in nowadays,” said Strain, the fashion design junior who is involved with Icon Studios. “Most of the people who come in here are over the age of 15.”
Strain credits this change partly to an increase in comic books that are nostalgic of the 1980s. Louisiana Double Play has started to sell comic books about old cartoons like “Transformers,” she said.
This change in the comic book industry has introduced the problem of younger audiences being exposed to material that may not be suited for them, Tullier said.
“You can imagine – a young kid walks into a store and sees a cover in a cartoon style and it looks harmless, but the material is actually suited for older audiences,” Tullier said.
“Material actually suited for older audiences” does not mean pornography, Tullier said – although there are pornographic comic books. The adult comics books sometimes have obscene material. “They are like rated-R movies,” Tullier said.
Tullier called “Keepers of the Word” a comic book of the horror and dark comedy genre and said most of the stories are “religion-based.”
But even a comic book like “Keepers of the Word” could be subjected to censorship, Tullier said.
The outcry against the comic books like Icon Studios’ has resulted in the banning of comic books and even the jailing and fining of owners of comic book stores.
And that’s where CBLDF comes in.
CBLDF defends vendors like Jesus Castillo, who was prosecuted in a Texas court for selling adult comic books. A jury convicted Castillo in 2002 of “promoting obscenity,” according to a CBLDF brochure.
The organization’s conference offers artists like Tullier a chance to promote themselves, to learn about the trade and to donate to the organization.
The recent conference fundraiser involved attendees paying major comic book industry figures – like Marvel Comics’ CEO Joe Quesada – to sing Karaoke.
The money donated to CBLDF is important for members of the comic book industry, Tullier said.
“There’s just not a lot of money in the industry, so we need CBLDF to financially support us,” he said.
Allen Gladfelper, a Baton Rouge comic book artist who attended the conference with Icon Studios, said CBLDF is “extremely significant.”
“There are several people in this year alone who would have been put out of business without it,” Gladfelper said.
Though some members of Icon Studios anticipate censorship could affect their comic book in the future, Tullier said the company will continue to produce its art.
“We’ve been at this for eight years,” he said. “We’re getting attention and we’re not going to quit.”