The first panel of the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning was allied with "The Big Read," in which Kenosha and Racine residents are reading and discussing Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," and Tim Hamilton's authorized adaptation of it into a graphic novel.
Hamilton's book, and an exhibit of his work on it, are only one part of a massive "Fahrenheit 451" series of activities around The Big Read, but it was a good hook upon which to hang a panel on censorship, in this case centered on cartoons and comics.
The panelists were Doug Singsen, an ass't professor of art history at the Univ of Wisconsin/Parkside, our hosts, whose dissertation was in use of mainstream comics genres in alternative comics; Paul Buhle, founder of the SDS journal Radical America and coeditor of the Encyclopedia of the American Left as well as a writer of books on comics; Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Press Sink and a collaborator with and publisher of artists like Will Eisner, Robert Crumb and a who's who of underground comics as well as a founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; George Hagenauer, a collector and researcher of historic comics, Scott Stantis, past president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists and political cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, was well as creator of "Prickly City" and Tim Hamilton of the aforementioned adaptation of "Fahrenheit 451."
Obviously, with that many high-level commentators, I'm not going to get it all in here, but what struck me in particular was that, while they universally decried governmental censorship, they all seemed considerably more concerned about market censorship.
That is, there was talk of governmental pressure on artistic freedom, but it had more to do with threats like the Tipper Gore/Joe Leibermann plan to crack down on song lyrics, or an absurdly draconian law proposed by Rep. Peter King that never got out of committee.
That's not to say it's not an issue: Kitchen noted that, when the Supreme Court established the notion of "community standards," it opened the door to local witchhunts, one of which led to his founding of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund on behalf of a Florida comic store owner charged with pornography for selling a copy of "Omaha the Cat Dancer," which Kitchen was publishing.
But more insidious, they suggested, is the self-censorship of the Comics Code Authority, an industry move that went to extreme lengths in the late '40s and '50s to eliminate any content that someone might want to censor, and there were several examples of how comics had been so sanitized as to lose all appeal.
There is also the issue of distributors who refuse to handle certain titles, even though they may be going to stores that don't cater to small children, as well as both Ebay and Amazon having regulations that prevent certain types of materials -- often very far from "hard-core" -- from being sold there.
Stantis recounted how, as president of the AAEC, he had been invited on Alan Keyes' conservative talk show to discuss a controversial Ted Rall cartoon with Keyes and Peter King. He said he never defended the content, merely the right to the opinion, but anything he said was met with, as he said, "Scream!"
"It was the worst seven minutes of my life," he said.
Then Hamilton recounted how a graphic novel he had produced with war correspondent David Axe on African terrorist Josephy Kony was given the title of Kony's guerrilla force: "Army of God," which led to a government agency holding up his payment from the publisher and, he was quite sure, surveillance of him as a potential security threat.
Add to that the reluctance of potential sponsors to support anything that could be criticized by anybody and you have an atmosphere of prior restraint that is plenty chilling before you even get to the actual violations of the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, you can still get really good service in restaurants if you simply have a bunch of cartoonists do some souvenir sketches for the proprietors to hang on the wall!
Then it was back to UW/Parkside for a presentation by Denis Kitchen, who has an exhibit of his own art as well as that of Eisner, Crumb and Capp, in the galleries there.
Kitchen began his career as an underground press publisher early, with "Klepto," which was actually authorized or at least permitted by his school, which gave him access to the mimeograph machine and allowed him to sell Klepto to other students.
I think his tagline "Read by millions, enjoyed by many," may be one of the best ad slogans I've ever encountered, and I've posted a relatively large version in case you want to click and read what he was going before became a big deal publisher of underground comics, as depicted in this piece from the exhibit, which even has a cameo appearance by frequent collaborator Robert Crumb:
Then, after a brief intermission, Anne Morse Hambrock interviewed Kitchen and collaborator Michael Schumacher about their biography, "Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary."
For those familiar with Capp's work, his name provokes extreme ambivalence: Love of his seminal comic strip, "Li'l Abner" and utter contempt for his bullying and his sexual predation, and I was interested to see what side Kitchen and Schumacher would come down on.
As it turns out, they had the same ambivalence. Anne Hambrock reported that a woman she knew told her she felt that, after reading the book, she needed to take a shower, to which Schumacher responded that she ought to consider how they felt after writing it.
And yet he was a brilliant, creative, incredibly funny man, he added, "and every once in awhile, just when we were ready to give up, he'd do something decent to pull you back in."
It was an interesting way to conclude a set of sessions that had begun with the notion that you don't have to agree with someone's views in order to agree with the idea that they should be allowed to express them.
And interesting timing, Anne Hambrock noted, given that football fans are currently asking much the same questions about Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson that comic fans have been asking about Capp since his history of sexual assaults became public knowledge.
Remember when I said that, if you were anywhere near Kenosha, you should be here? There are still two more days.
Next up: I'll shadow Lincoln Peirce as he visits grade schools, and then the artists visit a high school and, that night, Rick Stromoski and Todd Clark will present.
If you can't be there, be here.
And remember:
Postscript:
If you have not seen Scott Stantis's major comment on growing up in an abusive household, you need to go here (link to the comic is included.). The Trib gave him a full page and all the cartoonists here at the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning are giving him full props for an outstanding piece.
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