Publish on the web and be damned

HOWARD HALLIS is a comic book artist who made a big mistake. He used his website to publish parodies of Chick Tracts – Christian comic books chronicling the adventures of mixed-up teenagers who are rescued from lives of sex, drugs and Dungeons and Dragons when they find Jesus. Hallis drew a “Cthulhu Chick Tract” in which the confused youths eschew Jesus in favour of Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft’s infamous, slimy demon of the deep. Soon after Hallis posted it, his internet service provider received a letter from lawyers representing Chick Publications, ordering the ISP to take down Hallis’s comic…