Almost a year ago, when Syrian political cartoonist Ali Ferzat was abducted and had his hands broken by men likely connected to authoritarian president Bashar Assad’s government, the message was clear: stop drawing. But Ferzat defied the warning and, in…
Category: News Blog
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Columbia Missourian Project Reveals the Breadth of Book Challenges in Public Schools
Why are books challenged in public schools and, even more importantly, why are some challenges successful in getting books banned while others fail? A new comprehensive study by the Columbia Missourian is attempting to find out. The periodical is currently…
Looking Back At SDCC 2012
The Summer Solstice of the comic fan’s year has come and gone. The maypoles are down, and the blood has been washed from the altars. Comic Con International is over until the earth spins around the sun again. This was…
Effort to Return MAS Books to Classrooms Fails in Tucson
Early this year, CBLDF joined a coalition of organizations to decry the removal of seven books by renown Latino and Native authors from Tucson, Arizona, classrooms. Last week, TUSD Governing Board Member Mark Stegeman brought forth a resolution to put…
Support The CBLDF At OTAKON!
This weekend the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund will be at Otakon, one of the country’s largest gatherings celebrating anime and manga culture! Learn more about the fight to protect manga with a panel and booth appearances by Ryan Matheson,…
Cartoonist Battles Frivolous Lawsuits with Comedic Protest
The Oatmeal, a website that features the work of cartoonist and programmer Matthew Inman, has been entangled in a legal dispute with the attorney of competitor Funny Junk, a comedy site that posts user-uploaded images. After exercising his First Amendment…
Danish Report Discredits Link Between Cartoons and Child Sex Abuse
The Copenhagen Post reveals that a report issued by experts at Sexologisk Klinik discredits claims that cartoon depictions of underaged characters engaging in sex acts encourage people to commit child sex crimes in real life. The report to the justice…
Canadian Fair Dealing Expanded to Include Parody
While working on my recent post about Canadian political cartoonist Dan Murphy’s animated parody being removed from his newspaper’s website, allegedly under pressure from the very company targeted by the video, I was somewhat surprised to learn that such works…
A Librarian Responds to a Book Challenge
One of CBLDF’s missions is to protect graphic novels when they are challenged in libraries. We’ve played a pivotal role in some challenges, most recently with Alan Moore’s Neonomicon, which faces a challenge in North Carolina. As I was cruising…
SDCC: The Fight to Defend Manga
On the Saturday of Comic-Con, CBLDF Executive Director joined Ryan Matheson for “CBLDF: The Fight to Defend Manga,” a panel discussing the particular issues that manga and its fans face when it comes to censorship. Matheson was arrested by Canadian…