This concludes the Year of Phil Blank, master of the psychedelic sketchbook, who has provided our banner art for the four 2023 issues. This image is a detail from the following:
We are delighted to have been able to display so much of his work this year, and hope that this will lead to a greater appreciation of his remarkable gifts.
A number of images and image-dependent features have been removed from this and preceding issues due the the application of AI to image-searches for copyright infringement. We have been legally threatened and forced to pay for use of a substantially modified image. Whether our use of modified images in an educational/cultural publication that does not charge a fee is Fair use is here beside the point. We cannot carry the cost of defending ourselves in court.
Because there is a very real possibility that a publication such as this could be subject to flurries of such claims, we have had to remove all non public-domain images for which we do not have express permission. The legal threat also applies to images used in collages, thus we have had to remove a number of art features, and many of the back issues now present a maimed appearance.