This essay accounts for the adolescent popularity of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by arguing that both novels indirectly appropriate the mid-twentieth-century figure of the rebel. By denying their “prime movers” much of a childhood, however, both novels heroize rebels who never suffer the dilemma that defines the adolescent according to Erik H. Erikson: the struggle between identity and role confusion. Following Erikson and Julia Kristeva, this essay reads Rand's prime movers as figures of a post-Oedipal fantasy of self-reconciliation and (...) career-oriented drive—figures who invite their reader into the fantasy of a life lived without adolescence's defining identity crisis. (shrink)

Graphic justice and the law of aesthetics have in very recent years successfully brought law, aesthetics and comics scholarship into the same space. The culture of copyright infringement within comics (including in the Marvel, DC, and Disney universes) has been extensively in the literature by scholars including Saval. How copyright law is portrayed within the graphic novels and comics themselves is the focus (and contribution of) this article. This article will explore several comics and graphic novels, as well as (...) included this author’s reflections of portraying copyright visually within zines for public dissemination. Throughout this article, the discourses of ghosts and spectres that are interwoven with copyright law and haunt the texts will be seen, as will the discourses of oppression and warfare that are involved for anyone seeking to make use of copyright works. As Gómez Romero and Dahlman note, comics offer “an alternative legal discourse” and we can see these alternative legal discourses through their aesthetic graphic form. This article will consider: the aesthetic portrayal of copyright law in A Gift for a Ghost and Josie and the Pussycats No. 6; as well as Bound by Law, Theft! A History of Music, and Pictures within Pictures. These comics and graphic novels have been chosen as they aesthetically portray copyright law and copyright infringement (referred to in some of the comics as “plagiarism”), and others aesthetically portray the public domain and fair use. In viewing these aesthetic manifestation of copyright law, the reader understands the limiting nature of copyright on creative freedoms, and that copyright law’s power is absolute. This article will explore the following: (i) copyright’s aesthetic portrayals and the impact of this; (ii) comics haunted by copyright law, considering A Gift for A Ghost and Josie and the Pussycats; (iii) comics about the necessity of the public domain and fair use, considering Bound by Law, Theft! A History of Music, and Pictures within Pictures; and (iv) self-reflections on portraying copyright aesthetically in publicly disseminated research zines. This article has not set out to determine that certain visual aesthetic portrayals are “correct” or “better”, but rather to explore how legal discourses and narratives about copyright law are circulated through the comics medium. These visual depictions hold considerable weight, and it is striking to see similar narratives used across a range of comics works, with different intended audiences. What is clear is that the visual depiction of copyright law enables a greater ability to convey the multiple copyright law discourses that can be felt at once, and also to highlight that some of these discourses are contradictory to one another. (shrink)

There are certain ‘facts’ which every schoolboy knows. Every schoolboy knows, for instance, that at the Battle of Hastings King Harold was killed by a shot in his eye from an arrow; and Sir Frank Stenton's demonstration that he pretty certainly wasn't has done little to shake this conviction.1 Not every schoolboy, perhaps, but every undergraduate who studies the history of ancient Athens knows that Ephialtes was murdered. After all, that is what the books tell him. Thus in Meiggs/Bury we (...) read that ‘Cimon's chief antagonist Ephialtes was murdered’; this is echoed by Forrest and Davies, to name just two authors of recent standard works. Hignett even knew the weapon the murderer used: ‘the dagger of the assassin removed him in the hour of his triumph’. (shrink)

There are certain ‘facts’ which every schoolboy knows. Every schoolboy knows, for instance, that at the Battle of Hastings King Harold was killed by a shot in his eye from an arrow; and Sir Frank Stenton's demonstration that he pretty certainly wasn't has done little to shake this conviction.1 Not every schoolboy, perhaps, but every undergraduate who studies the history of ancient Athens knows that Ephialtes was murdered. After all, that is what the books tell him. Thus in Meiggs/Bury we (...) read that ‘Cimon's chief antagonist Ephialtes was murdered’; this is echoed by Forrest and Davies, to name just two authors of recent standard works. Hignett even knew the weapon the murderer used: ‘the dagger of the assassin removed him in the hour of his triumph’. (shrink)

This article considers current advances in tattooing that are challenging community-held views of authorship and ownership, and the need to address this tension. The key challenge is from AI-generated artworks being used as tattoo designs, but the authorial role of the tattooist is also challenged by body art projects such as tattoo collection. Legal clarity for tattooing is lacking, and in addressing this, this article advocates for an open, community-based form of shared copyright ownership and authorship for projects as tattoo (...) collecting, drawing on Dusollier’s and Mendis’ work. This article contributes to both copyright and cultural heritage legal scholarship, and to tattooing scholarship and the tattooing community. AI-generated art being tattooed on people has not been explored in the literature to date, and this article fills this gap. Furthermore, this article contributes a pilot study of the tattoo community’s views on AI-generated tattoos, which is currently lacking from the scholarly debate on AI-generated art. This article argues that the debate within the tattoo community about AI-generated art being used in tattoos needs to be addressed within the community through agreed extra-legal norms, which may well depart from how copyright law decides to approach AI-generated art globally. This article also asserts that AI should _not_ be regarded as the “author” of tattoo works in the traditional copyright sense, as only a human tattooist can draw from a number of cultural, textual, audiovisual and visual, cultural folklore, history and mythical references in creating their tattoo designs, as well as drawing on the client’s personal stories. This article explores the following: (i) an understanding of tattooing as an artform; (ii) tattoos in UK copyright law; (iii) an exploration of the authorial role of the tattooist within tattooing; (iv) the authorial role of the tattooist within tattoo collecting; (v) AI-generated tattoos—perspectives from the tattoo community, through a pilot study of YouTube videos and viewer comments about this; and (vi) a consideration of whether copyright legal reform is the solution for the tattooing community. (shrink)

Prolific journalist, historian, political columnist, and practicing Catholic Wills (now 76) writes an intensely opinionated re-evaluation of leaders and celebrities he has encountered, among them Studs Terkel, Beverly Sills, William Buckley, Richard Nixon, and more.

The author attempts to encompass the self, or a self, that, while at some times appears to be his own, at other times not, thus encompassing and continually morphing. It is a mixture of poetry and prose.