Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

Attention current law students! Are you looking for a way to support CBLDF and build your resume at the same time? Here’s your chance: CBLDF is looking for a law student summer intern!

The CBLDF law student summer intern will research, draft, and coordinate publication of short articles in bar journals directed at criminal law practitioners. The work is expected to take all summer and may be extended into the Fall semester. A full-time summer commitment is expected. Betsy Rosenblatt, CBLDF Advisory Chair for Outreach and Education, will supervise the internship. Supervision will be electronic, so you can work from anywhere!

The internship is offered on a volunteer basis, but we are willing to work with your school to provide school credit. Interested law students should e-mail a cover letter, resume, and writing sample on or before May 20, 2011.

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Last weekend cartoonists crossed the border for TCAF, the Toronto Comics Art Festival, where several were greeted with intrusive customs searches that led to the seizure of at least two comics titles — Black Eye, an anthology, and Young Lions, a graphic novel by Blaise Larmee.

Tom Neely, a contributor to Black Eye was the first to release word of his ordeal through Facebook status messages. Neely explained that copies of the Black Eye anthology were seized, and would either be returned to him or destroyed, pending “further action,” prompting the cartoonist to write:

“I just hope “further action” doesn’t involve being arrested the next time I try to cross the border. They went through everything in our car. Opened every suitcase and looked through every book.”

In the The Comics Journal comments thread where the story broke, Black Eye editor Ryan Standfast noted that copies of Blaise Larmee’s Young Lions were seized from Sparkplug Comic Books publisher Dylan Williams.

Current coverage of this story includes: The Comics Journal, Ryan Standfast, Robot 6, and The Beat.

The CBLDF is investigating these incidents, and will continue to report on developments as they occur.

This incident is part of a recent, growing trend of customs searches and seizures of comics that the CBLDF has been following. The CBLDF has issued an advisory for travelers on crossing borders with comic book materials that is available here as a Word document, and here as a PDF file.

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The Comics Journal reports that copies of the anthology Black Eye were confiscated from artist Tom Neely when he was entering Canada for this weekend’s TCAF festival.

According to Neely:

“… They took ‘em. I tried to get them to just ship them back to me at home, but they said they were required to send it to Ottawa for review… if they found the material to be ‘obscene’ they would take ‘further action.’ I asked what ‘further action’ meant and he said they would just destroy them. Or there is a chance they might ship them back to me.

This incident is part of a recent, growing trend of customs searches and seizures of comics that the CBLDF has been following. The CBLDF has issued an advisory for travelers on crossing borders with comic book materials that is available here as a Word document, and here as a PDF file.

Read more →