by Dave Sim

The respective trenches having been excavated in this ancient conflict, one envisions a manifestation of creative-freedom-as-absolute, facing it's opposite number the-self-appointed-guardian-of-the-public-good, raising respectively their pointed fingers of self righteous wrath and approbation after the fashion of revival tent preachers, crying out in a unison of accusation: "If we give you an inch, you'll take a mile," and in this they are both entirely accurate.

Where the boundaries of convention are violated, the floodgates invariably open. Inadequate works, poorly conceived, execrable in their execution, having naught to recommend them but provocation for provocation's own sake of society's overly sensitive souls--this follows in the wake of genuine innovation, as night follows day. An inch is granted and a mile is taken.

But to make room for the sublime we must defend the absurd, the guttural, the moronic, the fourth, fifth, and tenth rate. If the forces which are interested in sequestering "From Hell" are to be kept at bay, we must resist those efforts against a work like "Verotika #4," deplorable as it is--and the imagination boggles at what imitations "Verotika" itself might engender.

To give the censor an inch on on "Verotika" is to invite them to take a mile. The hammer blow which strikes down "Verotika" as self-evidently worthless trash glorifying violence against women will next descend, you can make book on it, upon Howard Cruse's "Stuck Rubber Baby," or Donna Barr's "Desert Peach" for their portrayal of, to quote the rhetoric of the right wing, "an immoral lifestyle."

Our goal is not the defense of mindless pornography; our goal is not the advocacy of creative works which degrade any group or individual. These substandard and repulsive works are not the standard we bear.

In the waning hours of the twentieth century we believe that individual choice must be preeminent, if we are to call ourselves a civilized people, a free people. Whether as San Franciscans, as Californians, as Americans, as North Americans, or as citizens of the global village.

Just as no one should be forced to create, publish, distribute, display, sell, or buy comic books in violation of their personal choices and preferences, so too must it be seen as a violation of inherent human rights to impede anyone from creating, publishing, distributing, displaying, or buying the comic books of their choice.

Your assistance in guaranteeing these fundamental freedoms to choose is urgently needed; no contribution can be considered too small. A $5 contribution from each of a 100 people, a $20 contribution from each of 25 people, a $500 contribution from a single donor. Each contribution buys someone, somewhere, a minute, or an hour, or a day, of freedom from the imposition of a collective will upon the rights of them as an individual.

Neil Gaiman, and the Board of Directors of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund ask for your contribution in the name of the ideal of free expression of creative ideas, and the fundamental human right to participate in and enjoy free expression without fear of prosecution.

Help us to defend that inch and the mile will take care of itself.