You’ve probably already heard of Jesus Castillo (interviewed here): He’s the man who was recently denied an appeal by the Supremes after being convicted of selling a clearly marked adult comic book… to an adult. The key argument, apparently bought by jurors who knew nothing about contemporary comic book markets, was that all comics are inherently for kids.

Now, if you’re reading this, you probably already know how preposterous that is, that there’s a huge number of titles obviously geared for adults—and not just in the “adult toys” and “adult films” sense of “adult.”

But it’s actually worse than that. See, it occured to me that, not only are comics not entirely for kids, but I almost never see people younger than 18 or so in comic shops at all. And upon checking, it proves that, lo and behold, the average age of a comic book reader is 24. So not only was the Texas DA wrong in general to tell the jury that “Comic books, traditionally what we think of, are for kids,” he wasn’t even right on average. If you’re in Texas, tell your governor that he’s the last hope for a hapless clerk who’s already paid $4,000 and is currently on probation for selling adult material to an adult cop. And send a (polite) email to the politician, Mary Poss, who’s responsible for this particular case of entrapment.

In other news, I see via Atrios’s commenters that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (contribute!) has joined the attack on a South Carolina law that attempts to apply the low “harmful to minors” standard to every piece of content going over the internet, reducing the content of your inbox to what would be appropriate for a sandbox, to paraphrase one Supreme Court justice.