Article from 2007. Comics, serial killers, censorship and Jerry Springer(watch the enclosed video) When Boneyard Press published a comic biography about cannibal serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, Capital bought 1,600 copies and then, on reconsideration, decided not to distribute it. “They paid me for it, anyway,” Boneyard’s Hart Fisher told me in an interview. “Every year or so, they’d call me up and try to sell some copies back to me!” At around this time, serial killer trading cards were hot topics on TV talk shows, and victim family members were proving litigious in several instances. The victims’ families apparently feared that Hart would make money that rightfully belonged to them, or some such thing, so they tried to get their hands on his stash (only marginally succeeding in the long run). Even the relatively tame “Psycho Killers” comic from Comic Zone Productions came under critical fire, despite the fact that the title seemed like a genuine attempt to chronicle and examine a true sociological phenomenon. Not that I’m scrambling for superlatives when it comes to comic books about murderers. If the comic had been better drawn and not so obsessed with body counts, instead focusing on the killers’ lives before their first murder (rather than crassly re-enacting the crimes), it would have been much improved. Dahmer’s own “survivors,” his victims’ families, were scared of the Boneyard comic bio. They were scared that it would “inspire” wannabe killers and they objected to Boneyard profiting from the tragedy. I’d tend to object as well, but that’s a subjective opinion and I wouldn’t attempt to sue Fisher the way the survivors did. Hart’s a nice guy, we’ve hung out and worked together, and he’s put out some pretty cool comics and some pretty lame ones (much like myself) but he definitely wasn’t trying to publish an illustrated “how to kill” primer. https://youtube/watch?v=M_PLXEabcmY
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 14:01:30 +0000
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