If I got busted for killing someone I would definitely hire lawyer Bob Levin. I actually have no idea how good of a lawyer he is or what kind of law he practices but he writes about comic books and thats enough to base my freedom on.
Anyway, Levin is best known as the author of the book The Pirates and the Mouse about Disney suing a group of underground cartoonists known as the Air Pirates in 1971 about a comic book parody of Disney cartoons in which Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Bucky Bug and others get high, have sex and swear a blue streak.
Now Fantagraphics has compiled a book of essays that Levin wrote for The Comics Journal magazine. These essays include subjects like Chester Brown, S. Clay Wilson, Dori Seda, B.N. Duncan, Justin Green, Maxon Crumb, Crockett Johnson, Roy Lichtenstein, Graham Ingels, Jack Katz, Rory Hayes and more.
Buy Outlaws, Rebels, Freethinkers & Pirates
Daniel Robert Epstein: First I want to talk about the aftermath of The Pirates and the Mouse; were there any dire ramifications for writing that book?
Bob Levin: No, Disney didnt give us any trouble or any flack. When it was being put together, one of the lawyers who had represented Disney in the original suit, said Whatever you do, dont reprint any of the Air Pirates because youd be violating the agreement. But it seemed to me like it was fair use and then I told Fantagraphics and they just went ahead and ran the stuff that they wanted. Theyre really a very courageous publisher. Id give them a lot of credit; most publishers wouldnt have done that and have risked the exposure.
DRE: How did the book do?
BL: It got good press but it didnt get a lot of national press. The national press we did get was slow coming. For instance the San Francisco Chronicle didnt review it until it had been out for six months. Then Salon.com did a review a couple months later as a book thats been neglected and deserved special attention. Then the Village Voice did a review, but this was all many months after it had come out and I think that after the books come out initially, its hard to generate sales for them. Reason Magazine got very excited about it and ran an extract from it at the end of last year. But if I look at my royalty statement from like the last six months, even the last year, more books got returned than got sold. It got picked up in close to maybe close to 200 libraries bought it, including over 2000 law-libraries.
DRE: As a lawyer that must have been great for you.
BL: Yeah. There were a few reviewers who dont like how I write. It always bothers me, but in terms of the book itself, there was only one like negative review that I can remember. For everybody else it was a valuable book and told a good story.
DRE: What did your colleagues think of it?
BL: My writing life is very separate from my lawyer life. I dont know whether or not the lawyers that I know read the things that I write.
DRE: Are you going to DisneyWorld any time soon?
BL: [laughs] No, I pay more attention to the articles about Disneys litigation than I used to.
DRE: Are you researching a follow-up?
BL: Im not writing anything more about them. I just expect to continue to write about cartoonists for Comics Journal.
DRE: How you got involved with Fantagraphics in the first place?
BL: The first article I wrote for Comics Journal was about EC Comics and it was just a blind submission.
DRE: That must have been pretty wild when they told you they wanted to publish it.
BL: Its a funny story. I had been writing since the early 70s. I published a novel and some short stories. By the 80s people werent accepting what I was writing. After my first novel I couldnt get another book published and my stories and essays were getting a lot of rejections. Then I got interested in the whole question of artistic worth, because I didnt think I was like a worse writer than I was when I was getting published more easily. Simultaneously I had stumbled into the world of comic fandom. I started subscribing to the Comic Buyers Guide and then somebody have told me you can buy old EC Comics through that magazine. I thought that since nobodys really written anything interesting about EC Comics Id write about what it was like being a kid who was a fan of them. So I submitted to the Comic Buyers Guide and they turned me down. [laughs] Then I sent it to the Comics Journal, I waited a few months and I called them up, and they said We never got your submission so I resubmitted it and waited a few months. I called them back and they said We never got your submission. So I sent it to them a third time and they said oh, were going to print it. Then they called me back a couple months later and they said Look, the printer lost your article. So when I stopped laughing I sent them another copy and they published it. At that point Spin Magazine was doing a special comic book issue so they reprinted portions of my article. That was cool.
Then I thought of another article about comics I could write and I sent that to the Comics Journal and not only did they print that but they started listing me as a contributing writer.
DRE: The new book collects many of the essays youve written for Comics Journal, whats the biggest commonality youve found amongst all these creators?
BL: Im interested in really off-beat people who live on some extreme edge or whose visions are out there. When I was putting the collection together, I was also really struck by how much a common theme that was. It all stems from the reaction to the Comic Code in 1954 and taking away my EC comics but its really a strong advocacy for first amendment freedom of speech and press. Even in the most extreme kinds of visions theres social value to getting them all expressed. There are these people who live these kinds of extreme lives which the rest of us are more conventional. So for one reason or another we dont live those kinds of lives. But these people who do it expand the boundaries of freedoms for the rest of us and make it easier for people to create space that other people can evolve into and make it seem more acceptable.
DRE: Do you have any desire to do comics yourself?
BL: No, from what Ive read about writers it makes me realize how difficult it is and I dont know that Im really cut out for it. But if someone was to come to me and say Hey, wed like you to adapt one of your stories, would you be interested in doing it? Then maybe I would.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Anyway, Levin is best known as the author of the book The Pirates and the Mouse about Disney suing a group of underground cartoonists known as the Air Pirates in 1971 about a comic book parody of Disney cartoons in which Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Bucky Bug and others get high, have sex and swear a blue streak.
Now Fantagraphics has compiled a book of essays that Levin wrote for The Comics Journal magazine. These essays include subjects like Chester Brown, S. Clay Wilson, Dori Seda, B.N. Duncan, Justin Green, Maxon Crumb, Crockett Johnson, Roy Lichtenstein, Graham Ingels, Jack Katz, Rory Hayes and more.
Buy Outlaws, Rebels, Freethinkers & Pirates
Daniel Robert Epstein: First I want to talk about the aftermath of The Pirates and the Mouse; were there any dire ramifications for writing that book?
Bob Levin: No, Disney didnt give us any trouble or any flack. When it was being put together, one of the lawyers who had represented Disney in the original suit, said Whatever you do, dont reprint any of the Air Pirates because youd be violating the agreement. But it seemed to me like it was fair use and then I told Fantagraphics and they just went ahead and ran the stuff that they wanted. Theyre really a very courageous publisher. Id give them a lot of credit; most publishers wouldnt have done that and have risked the exposure.
DRE: How did the book do?
BL: It got good press but it didnt get a lot of national press. The national press we did get was slow coming. For instance the San Francisco Chronicle didnt review it until it had been out for six months. Then Salon.com did a review a couple months later as a book thats been neglected and deserved special attention. Then the Village Voice did a review, but this was all many months after it had come out and I think that after the books come out initially, its hard to generate sales for them. Reason Magazine got very excited about it and ran an extract from it at the end of last year. But if I look at my royalty statement from like the last six months, even the last year, more books got returned than got sold. It got picked up in close to maybe close to 200 libraries bought it, including over 2000 law-libraries.
DRE: As a lawyer that must have been great for you.
BL: Yeah. There were a few reviewers who dont like how I write. It always bothers me, but in terms of the book itself, there was only one like negative review that I can remember. For everybody else it was a valuable book and told a good story.
DRE: What did your colleagues think of it?
BL: My writing life is very separate from my lawyer life. I dont know whether or not the lawyers that I know read the things that I write.
DRE: Are you going to DisneyWorld any time soon?
BL: [laughs] No, I pay more attention to the articles about Disneys litigation than I used to.
DRE: Are you researching a follow-up?
BL: Im not writing anything more about them. I just expect to continue to write about cartoonists for Comics Journal.
DRE: How you got involved with Fantagraphics in the first place?
BL: The first article I wrote for Comics Journal was about EC Comics and it was just a blind submission.
DRE: That must have been pretty wild when they told you they wanted to publish it.
BL: Its a funny story. I had been writing since the early 70s. I published a novel and some short stories. By the 80s people werent accepting what I was writing. After my first novel I couldnt get another book published and my stories and essays were getting a lot of rejections. Then I got interested in the whole question of artistic worth, because I didnt think I was like a worse writer than I was when I was getting published more easily. Simultaneously I had stumbled into the world of comic fandom. I started subscribing to the Comic Buyers Guide and then somebody have told me you can buy old EC Comics through that magazine. I thought that since nobodys really written anything interesting about EC Comics Id write about what it was like being a kid who was a fan of them. So I submitted to the Comic Buyers Guide and they turned me down. [laughs] Then I sent it to the Comics Journal, I waited a few months and I called them up, and they said We never got your submission so I resubmitted it and waited a few months. I called them back and they said We never got your submission. So I sent it to them a third time and they said oh, were going to print it. Then they called me back a couple months later and they said Look, the printer lost your article. So when I stopped laughing I sent them another copy and they published it. At that point Spin Magazine was doing a special comic book issue so they reprinted portions of my article. That was cool.
Then I thought of another article about comics I could write and I sent that to the Comics Journal and not only did they print that but they started listing me as a contributing writer.
DRE: The new book collects many of the essays youve written for Comics Journal, whats the biggest commonality youve found amongst all these creators?
BL: Im interested in really off-beat people who live on some extreme edge or whose visions are out there. When I was putting the collection together, I was also really struck by how much a common theme that was. It all stems from the reaction to the Comic Code in 1954 and taking away my EC comics but its really a strong advocacy for first amendment freedom of speech and press. Even in the most extreme kinds of visions theres social value to getting them all expressed. There are these people who live these kinds of extreme lives which the rest of us are more conventional. So for one reason or another we dont live those kinds of lives. But these people who do it expand the boundaries of freedoms for the rest of us and make it easier for people to create space that other people can evolve into and make it seem more acceptable.
DRE: Do you have any desire to do comics yourself?
BL: No, from what Ive read about writers it makes me realize how difficult it is and I dont know that Im really cut out for it. But if someone was to come to me and say Hey, wed like you to adapt one of your stories, would you be interested in doing it? Then maybe I would.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
courtneyriot:
If I got busted for killing someone I would definitely hire lawyer Bob Levin. I actually have no idea how good of a lawyer he is or what kind of law he practices but he writes about comic books and thats enough to base my freedom on...
rudiecantfail:
So I see this on the SG front page, with the quote from the interview: "I'm interested in really off-beat people who..." which in a moment of dyslexia, I read as "I'm interested in people who really beat-off..."