A North Carolina comic retailer was charged with a felony after allegedly giving a comic with adult material to a minor at a Halloween event. The sequence of events was kicked off by a Facebook post by the Sunset Beach (North Carolina) Police Department on the morning of October 31, alerting the public that a copy of Grendel Tales Featuring Devil’s Hammer #1 was allegedly given to a minor at the Sunset Beach Trunk or Treat event hosted by the department the previous evening.
Later Friday morning, the SBPD posted that Kathleen Lincoln had been charged with a Class G felony for violating North Carolina 14-190.1, Obscene Literature and Exhibitions. Lincoln is the proprietor of Marvelous Issues Comic Shop in Sunset Beach. Late today, she posted “We’re gonna be closed for a little while,” on the store’s Facebook page with the image of a grieving Abraham Lincoln based on the statue at the Lincoln Memorial by editorial cartoonist Bill Mauldin.
The beginnings of this case bear eerie parallels to the mid-00s Gordon Lee case in Rome, Georgia, in which Lee was charged with seven counts, including several felonies, for giving away a copy of Alternative Comics #2 to a minor at a 2004 Halloween event (see “CBLDF Takes Georgia Obscenity Case‘). The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund took the case, had four of the seven counts dismissed in 2005, and the remaining three dismissed in 2006. New charges were filed and went to trial in 2007, when a mistrial was declared after prosecutors revealed facts they’d been admonished not to reveal to the jury in their opening statement. Charges were re-filed but eventually dropped in 2008 in exchange for an apology by Lee (see “Gordon Lee Charges Dropped“).
In both cases, the comics were marked as appropriate for older readers. Grendel Tales Featuring Devil’s Hammer #1 bears a “Not for Children” slug on the cover, and Alternative Comics #2 was labeled for “Mature Readers.” Grendel Tales Featuring Devil’s Hammer #1 was originally released in 1994.
Source: ICV2
