The Handley Case

"Won't someone please think of the children?" - Simpsons

On May 20th, comic book collector Christopher Handley pleaded guilty to obscenity charges in Iowa court. While this story has story is fairly well known in comic and manga circles, it has mostly flown under the radar for many librarians. All librarians should however be aware of the consequences and repercussions of the Protect Act.

Now I'm not going to defend child pornography or even make the argument that the material in The Handley case has some sort of artistic or literary merit. However I am going to question the motives of a law that has criminalized a work of pure fiction. No actual minors were harmed in any way by the material that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has described as simply "lines on a page." Also this was material that was confined to only to Handley's own home. There is no evidence that he attempted to share this material with anyone let alone present the material to minors.

So where does that leave libraries? A quick check of our catalog at work shows that our library has 3 copies of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. And unlike the Handley case, we have no restrictions on who can check the book out. Any minor, so long as they have a library card we accept, can check out and read Lolita. Now under the law as it now, if jury members decide that Lolita is obscene, we are in deep trouble. But let's look at an even more disturbing scenario. The Handley case began with a shipment of comics that had been purchased and shipped to Iowa. How often has your library's collection development librarian bought a lot of books or has had a lot of books donated to the library without knowing the full contents? Now imagine that the same manga that convicted Handley was part of that lot.

Scary isn't it?