From Hell's Heart, I Litigate at Thee!

Here's a line you're unlikely to hear the next time Dan Clowes does a signing at the Fantagraphics store in Georgetown: "Hey, dude, didn't you pitch your tent next to mine outside the Cinerama before Revenge of the Sith?" There's a reason their books aren't shelved together, often aren't even stocked in the same stores and newsstands: You see, comic dorks and sci-fi geeks just don't get along; they're two different breeds. It's like cats and dogs, Vulcans and Klingons, DC versus Marvel, Chris Ware against Stan Lee. Some people doodle in their unlined black journals; others play massive multiuser games online. I collect vintage issues of Plastic Man; you religiously TiVo every episode of the new Battlestar Galactica. There's ComiCon (this weekend at Paul Allen's QwestField) and the Star Trek 40th Anniversary Gala Celebration & Conference (last September at Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum), and the laminated pass from one won't get you into the other.

So it's perhaps no surprise that the divided fan camps burst into a mad froth last September, after Los Angeles sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison sued Seattle publisher Fantagraphics for defamation, demanding a punitive award that could threaten the indie company's very survival. The parties' respective Web bulletin boards have played host to thousands of enraged comments—the Fanta fans calling Ellison a greedy, washed-up loon; the Ellison acolytes saying Fantagraphics co-founder Gary Groth is a spiteful ingrate. I used to think the Internet was 99 percent porn and 1 percent everything else. Well, the ongoing matter of Ellison v. Fantagraphics probably now occupies 50 percent of the bandwidth not currently devoted to discussing the latest twist on Lost.

Yet the rancor among the fan base pales next to the level of animus between the two men themselves. Groth and Ellison had a falling-out more than 20 years ago—ironically, when they were both on the same side in another defamation suit—and that bad blood has only gotten worse in the interim. In Ellison's complaint, which doesn't exactly read like your typical sober legal pleading, he labels Fantagraphics' Groth "a scheming pathological liar and little more than an obsessively vindictive and petty man trying to be a mover and shaker."

Groth, in turn, is coolly dismissive of his nemesis, Ellison. He recently told me, "He's not part of our world. He's really entirely irrelevant. I wish I could be sued by somebody relevant."

Groth wasn't quite so flip, however, in a blast e-mail sent out last month to Fantagraphics supporters, which pleaded for donations, auction items, and "guerilla fundraising ideas." "Already...the suit has cost us in the mid–five figures, and a quality defense will require considerably more money than that," Groth and Fantagraphics co-owner Kim Thompson wrote. "Without additional financial assistance, we will have to reconsider many of our commercially marginal books (approximately half of them); the money that would make those books possible will instead be spent on legal fees."

By choosing to fight Ellison's lawsuit, rather than settle or alter the content of a not-yet-published book that's at the center of the case, Groth is embracing a huge risk, he acknowledges. Fantagraphics already lost the first legal round last month, when a federal court declined to toss out the complaint. Now Groth is seemingly committed to a courtroom marathon that could stretch on for years. Isn't he taking a chance that might destroy his own company? "An adverse judgment could, sure," he says. "But any publisher with any courage takes that chance every day. Whether it's The New York Times or The Nation...any journalistic enterprises that seek to exercise their rights do take that chance, and I think they're obligated to take that chance."

All of which sounds perfectly noble and admirable—until you look further into the story, and realize that this suit is but phase three of a 27-year grudge match that seems to be at least as much petty and personal as it is principled.

"Bugfuck"

Who is Harlan Ellison, and why is the comix contingent saying such terrible things about him? Not quite as famous as Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, or Philip K. Dick, the ultraprolific 72-year-old author has won Hugo and Nebula awards for short stories (including "I Have No Mouth, but I Must Scream") whose aggregate number well exceeds 1,000. His TV credits run back to the '50s: He wrote for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek. (An occasional actor, he even showed up on Babylon 5 during the '90s.) A Boy and His Dog (1975) remains the most successful movie adaptation of his work. He was a famous writer and gadfly, a regular guest on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, a celebrity with a ready opinion on every aspect of pop culture. More recently he turned up on Bill Maher's former ABC series, Politically Incorrect.

He has a reputation, among friends and detractors alike, for being extremely ornery, completely uncensored in his gripes, and fierce in righting perceived wrongs—especially when it comes to his name and intellectual property. He recently sued and settled with AOL over his stories being posted to an electronic forum. Before that, he successfully sued James Cameron for plagiarizing his material in The Terminator. (To repeat: He beat the Terminator!) He told Publishers Weekly last September that he was 16-0 in legal actions (including settlements), with ABC, Paramount, and Universal among the notches on his belt. On a fan-run Web site, he boasts: "When it comes to litigation, I am neither capricious nor greedy; I am, however, dogged and unrelenting."