Most Outrageous: The Trials and Trespasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chester the Molester

Written by Bob Levin

Published by Fantagraphics Books. $19.99 USD

With his cartoons for Hustler Magazine, Dwaine Tinsley attempted to find humor by pointing out the hypocrisies we see everyday from the leaders of our society, and he also lifted the veil from our own desires, delusions and hatreds. This was exactly what his employer, publisher Larry Flynt, wanted him to do, and indeed the entire magazine operated differently from competitors Playboy and Penthouse in that Hustler was less about fantasy than it was showing the ugliness in the world, and reveling in it. It offered gratification at a price. Surely more than a few readers read one of Tinsley’s Chester the Molester cartoons and wondered just what happened to this month’s centerfold girl to bring her to posing fully nude and spread. Was she comfortable with her body, or was she taught from a too-young age that this was all it was good for? 

With a history of exposing the peccadilloes of public figures (I still recall the grainy, black-and-white photos of a flabby, topless Jackie Onassis on a yacht they printed), it was with no small amount of irony that Tinsley found himself in 1989 accused of molesting his teenage daughter. 

Levin had been writing for The Comics Journal for fifteen years when the project was proposed to him. His subjects were often outlaw cartoonists like Dan O’Neill, B.N. Duncan, Vaughn Bode’, cartoonists outside the norm, in unusual circumstances or pushing the envelope of decency or even legality. He was the natural choice to write the story of Tinsley’s life and trial.

Unlike, say, an Albert Goldman, Levin is not attracted to his subjects just to dig up the dirt on their personal lives. He seems to mostly come to them as a fan, or if not much of an admirer of their work, at least an admirer of their drive to put it out there, to suffer for a vision. That seems to be where he meets Tinsley, as a man who wanted to make his readers laugh but also think. It’s a delicate balance Levin attempts here, as Tinsley’s work is blunt in delivery, not particularly well-drawn and generally designed to offend. And it’s effective at that. The deeper thinking is tough to come by, although Levin does take pains to point out that Tinsley’s Chester character is never depicted heroically, and never seems to have intercourse with any of the underage girls he pursues by various means (often disguising his penis as something harmless like a hot dog or puppet). 

But the book is not a defense of Tinsley. Interestingly, Levin comes off undecided, or to be more exact he seems convinced of Tinsley’s innocence, the daughter’s claims chalked up to a combination of cocaine addiction and sociopathy, but by the end he’s less sure there isn’t some real abuse to explain the lasting hatred. 

Levin astutely points to the real unfairness of the trial that led to Tinsley’s conviction on a few of the many counts of abuse, in that Tinsley’s cartoon work was essentially used as evidence of his own character deficiency. Is a crime novelist more likely to murder his wife? Even if someone had immoral or illegal impulses, wouldn’t getting to exorcise them in print help prevent that person from acting on them? Still, with a father creating such cartoons, and with his work in the house in pornographic magazines, it’s hard to argue that there wasn’t some negative influence.

Whether that makes Tinsley guilty is up to the reader. Again, Levin is undecided, but to his credit he presents as much of both sides as he can, of the case and of Tinsley himself, a thoughtful man who definitely lived the high life for a time, a loving father who nonetheless was not consistent, at times inappropriate, in the boundary between father and daughter, as far as letting her stay up late and drink with him. Levin wants the reader to come up with their own opinion, or maybe it’s more fair to say it’s impossible not to have formed an opinion by the end of the book. Levin’s is not often a forceful tone; he digs up information and can deliver it in a scholarly enough manner, but also will follow his muse, digressing into dry humor and even an admitted Faulknerian flight of fancy. He’s fully engaged, grappling with the facts and the issues as he uncovers them, and the reader grapples right along with him. It’s a much more compelling book for the fact that Levin doesn’t try to wrap it all up in a bow. Sometimes when we say we forgive and forget, we are forgiving nothing and misremembering. Sometimes we can trace pain to its source, sometimes not. Did Tinsley pass on the pain from growing up with a drunken whore mother to his daughter? Will she pass her own pain on to her own children? Who knows? We can only try to live with our own, to rid ourselves of it or bury it.

—Christopher Allen