Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Darrin Lawrence Bell is facing felony child pornography charges over a trove of graphic videos — some of them AI-generated — that detectives say the 49-year-old uploaded to an online account.
Bell, a Northern California resident, was arrested Wednesday and is being held in the Sacramento County Main Jail on $1 million bail, according to booking records.
The married father of four is the first person to be charged for possession of AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) since it became a crime under state law on January 1, the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office announced on Thursday.
Bell’s alleged activities came to the attention of Sacramento Valley Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) investigators after they were contacted by officials at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which tracks CSAM being shared online. ICAC is a national network of 61 coordinated task forces, representing over 5,400 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.
Detectives say the investigation began with a tip related to 18 files containing CSAM, but a deeper look turned up 134 offending videos in all, among them a stash allegedly produced using AI.
Darrin Bell is facing felony charges for possession of CSAM (Getty Images)
Bell is the creator of a strip called Candorville, which launched in 2003 and was at first syndicated through The Washington Post Writers Group. However, a Washington Post spokeswoman told The Independent that the company discontinued its syndication relationship with Bell more than a year ago, and that they are no longer formally affiliated in any way.
Bell’s cartoons are now distributed via King Features Syndicate, which handles such iconic names as Popeye, Dennis the Menace, and Beetle Bailey.
He won a Pulitzer in 2019 for editorial cartooning, the first African-American in history to do so.
Bell also received the Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning (2016), the RFK Award for Editorial Cartooning (2015), and UC Berkeley’s Daily Californian Alumni of the Year Award (2015). He does not yet have an attorney listed in charging documents and was unable to be reached for comment.
His 2023 graphic memoir, The Talk, was named one of the year’s best books by a slew of media outlets, including NPR and Time magazine.
Bell is due to appear in court on Friday at 3 p.m. local time.
