Thought Game
02/18/2005

A brief hypothetical:

I’m sitting by a roaring fire in my palatial estate, my feet kicked up, a cool glass of seltzer in my hand, checking the newspapers for a decent time to catch “Pooh’s Heffalump Movie”, when I’m suddenly struck with an awful realization, one of seventeen I experience in he average day:

“Oh crap. I forgot my cousin Joga’s birthday. Again.”

Joga is actually a second cousin or something. I forget. My other relatives assure me that we’re all very close, so I’m taking it on faith.

She just turned sixteen recently. And by recently I mean January 23rd, and I’ve managed to cleverly avoid getting her anything through a cunning scheme of not remembering anything. But now, I am wracked with guilt.

“I’d give her a Happy Birthday call, except it’s a month later. And I don’t have her number. And I won’t recognize her voice at first. And I don’t even recall if her parents like me. Does she know who I am?”

All of these thoughts raced through my mind. Unfortunately, one thing was quite certain: Joga had sent me an online coupon for my own birthday a while back (even though she barely knows me either) and I’m certain that everyone thinks I’m a loser for not sending anything in return for her own birthday (well, among other reasons).

But hey! Lemons to lemonade on this site, right?! It’s time for Comics Activism!

“What sort of comics will Joga like?” I wondered, digging through my piles of comics to find something to send her that won’t cost me money.

“Manga,” I muttered, “I heard she likes manga. Manga… manga… hm.”

I paused as I spotted an abandoned copy of Marvel’s “1602”.

“Well, girls like manga, and girls like Neil Gaiman, so they must be similar.”

I plopped the hardcover into an envelope, scratched out a note reading ’Enjoy The Manga!’ and sent the whole works off in the mail. I sat back down, confident that I’d not only resolved a family issue (sort of) but taken another step toward encouraging Our Nation’s young to love comics. Wonderful.

Oh, there’s a few more facts I must add to our hypothetical.

Let’s say that Joga and I live in the same state.

And let’s say that our state has a Very Special Law on the books. We’ll just call it the Very Special Law.

According to the Very Special Law, it is a criminal offense in my state for a person to distribute material depicting nudity or sexual conduct ‘when he sends unsolicited through the mail or otherwise unsolicited causes to be delivered material depicting nudity or sexual conduct to any person or residence or office unless there is imprinted upon the envelope or container of such material in not less than eight-point boldface type the following notice:

Notice - The material contained herein depicts nudity or sexual conduct. If the viewing of such material could be offensive to the addressee, this container should not be opened but returned to the sender.’

Hm, that Very Special Law seems like a good one. Sounds like it’s meant to protect good hearted folks in my state from dirty unsolicited pornography, right? Except…

What about that one panel in “1602” depicting Dr. Doom’s, ah, imperial posterior (eighth story page of Chapter 5, bottom left corner, unless the collected edition switched this around)?

I don’t know. Let’s add another hypothetical fact.

Let’s say that the Very Special Law defines nudity as, among other things, ‘the showing of the human buttocks with less than a full opaque covering.’

Uh oh. Seems a little broad. Doom wasn’t clad in anything opaque in that panel, if I recall, though it was a long shot. Eek! It doesn’t seem to matter how ling the shot was, not in the language of the law.

How about the rest of the law? Nobody had asked me to send that gift per se, I just sort of thought it was the right thing to do. I was not directly (or even indirectly) asked to send anything. I sent the book unsolicited. I didn’t have any sort of warning on the envelope; I hardly thought that the infinitesimally tiny amount of nudity in the book was a problem.

But all the Very Special Law says is what is above, including that very broad definition of ‘nudity’, which even embraces dear old Dr. Doom.

So let’s say that Joga cracks open her book, glimpses the Rump of Doom, and immediately turns into a pillar of salt or is stricken blind. Or maybe her parents just get mad. What sort of punishment does the Very Special Law have in store?

Oh look! I shall be punished by ‘imprisonment for not less than one nor more than three years or by a fine not to exceed $10,000.00, or both’! Golly!

Isn’t that a little, well, weird?

Say! Let’s change some facts around! That’s the best part of a good hypothetical!

Let’s say that it was Joga’s 19th birthday last January! Doesn’t matter. The law doesn’t specify mailings to minors.

Let’s say the mailing was to Joga’s 50-year old mom. Same difference.

Ok, now let’s go totally insane. Let’s say Joga and her family were visiting at my home. In the middle of the gathering, I’m struck with the same guilt as before, guilt over missing her birthday. As she’s leaving, I hand her that book.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“Manga!” I beam.

Now that can’t possibly be in violation of the law. I didn’t mail a thing.

Unless.

What’s ‘otherwise unsolicited causes’ as stated in the Very Special Law?

What if that was interpreted as simply handing the materials to a person. Not a minor, I remind you, a person.

Oh come on. I can’t be serious here, right? I mean, there’s been some ridiculous jokes in this column before, but this one takes the cake. Right? Right?

Let’s step out of the hypothetical.

Everything I have quoted as part of the Very Special Law is taken directly from the Georgia Civil Code, Title 16, Chapter 12, Section 81.

As you probably already know, a Georgia comics retailer, Gordon Lee, was arrested for violation of this law (along with an obscenity-based charge, which is another issue entirely), for accidentally handing a minor a comic depicting nudity during a Halloween visit. It doesn’t matter that it was a minor, really. The law doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter that the nudity was a bit more than Dr. Doom’s butt (though nothing more than in "Watchmen"). The law is broad enough to cover it all. And yes, simply handing someone a comic (so long as they don’t solicit it) is being interpreted as ‘otherwise unsolicited causes’ in the language of the statute.

Isn’t this a little weird? Isn’t this stretching an already questionably broad piece of legislation well past its limits and far beyond its apparent point?

That’s why this law needs to be fought. Why the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is backing this retailer’s defense.

Say.

Why not come up with your own hypotheticals, as based on this law, and these interpretations?

Because without a fight, these interpretations of these statutes are only gonna get wackier.

What fun.

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