My, those novels are certainly graphic!: Libraries, comic books and censorship

I should admit right at the start, I went to this session primarily because Neil Gaiman was one of the panellists. He is quite simply one of my literary heroes, and frankly I'd listen to him talk about accountancy and be enthralled, so I couldn't miss out on the opportunity. I do have a strong interest in freedom of speech and freedom of information though, and strongly admire the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, who were sponsoring the panel. The panel consisted of Charles Brownstein, the Director of the CBLDF, Neil Gaiman and two other comics authors - Terry Moore and Craig Thompson. They all spoke about the current state of play with graphic novels, how after so many years they have achieved a kind of respectability and are now taken seriously and routinely stocked by libraries for example, but that in achieving this the battle has now moved on to them needing to justify themselves in terms of content. The CBLDF exists to fight those battles for those who make, publish and sell comics, and, worryingly for librarians, now for those who buy, own and read them, in the light of the current case of a man who has been prosecuted under obscenity laws for owning some Japanese manga. Along the way there was some interesting discussion about the relationship between creator and reader in comics as opposed to prose (or film) - in prose, the creator "gives the reader the raw code" for them to construct the image, whereas with comics the reader is given a series of snapshots and asked to fill in the blanks, create the story as much as the image. It was argued that perhaps this makes some people feel more uncomfortable with controversial material, as there is a degree of complicity. The static, visual nature of them also contributes, as anything potentially objectionable is more obvious - this is what gives comics their power as a storytelling medium, but also lays them open to more of this kind of accusation. It was interesting to hear the three authors talk about their experiences with accusations of obscenity and censorship, the odd mix of pride and guilt that their work has caused such a fuss, and the reason why, if you believe in freedom of speech, sometimes you have to defend things you find distasteful.

Neil Gaiman says it so much better.