Picasso in the buff

It sounds like something from News of the Weird... but a comic-book store owner in Georgia is scheduled to go on trial next month for letting a comic book with nude figures (Picasso among them) fall into in the hands of a child.

Who knows how the court will rule but I hope Nick Bertozzi, creator of "The Salon,'' an inventive graphic novel that chronicles the birth of Cubism against the backdrop of a murder mystery, is selling more copies due to the publicity.

And I hope the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund can rescue the store owner from the uptight parents who could have simply asked him to apologize for letting "The Salon'' slip into a bin of books he was giving away. (For more on the case, see the NY Times story.)