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THE LAW IS A ASS for 09/21/1999
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 11
Originally published in The Comics Buyer's Guide # 523
December 23, 1983 issue
It was nine columns into my run and I was looking for a way to change, something I could do on occasion to vary the way I approached my columns a new way of doing the analyzing thing. This was the first installment of many in which I employed one such change of pace, a column in which comic-book characters come to visit me. In that way, I got to write an actual short story and do the analyzing in the interplay between the characters and me.
It was an enjoyable change of pace, in fact, my wife tells me that these types of columns are her favorites. So it is something I return to.
Oh yes, in addition to the regular column about the Vigilante yes again! I got to analyze a little something from Neal Adams, one of the foremost creators of the 60's and 70's. A truly bad comic called Skateman which is better left forgotten. Nevertheless, in the interest of history, I am representing the whole column, including the section about Skateman. This is a comic about which I would say now in these post-Mystery Science Theater 3000 days, "it needs bots."
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 11
by
Bob Ingersoll
" Don't move, scum! Don't turn around! I don't want to have to put a bullet in your head!"
My fingers froze above the typewriter keyboard. I didn't move, except to look up at the wall in front of me. I didn't turn around. I didn't have to. I could feel his .357 pointing directly at the part in my hair.
"Hello, Adrian," I said trying to sound as calm as I could. I sounded like the life boat officer on the Titanic.
"How did you know who I was, Ingersoll?"
"I can see you reflected in the glass of the diploma in front of me, and that Vigilante costume of yours is pretty distinctive. Letting yourself be reflected like that is careless, Adrian. You've got to be more careful. But, then, I guess I've got to expect a mistake or two, considering you learned an entirely new career in only six months. I'm just glad you didn't take up brain surgery."
"Cut the comedy, Ingersoll. I want to talk with you."
"Okay. But can I turn around first? I mean talking to your reflection is stupid. I want to talk face to face; or face to face mask."
"Yeah. But do it slow. And stop calling me 'Adrian!' "
I turned. Slow. And I stopped. Never argue with a loaded .357 Burke's Law. And never use really old TV shows as cultural references, you only date yourself Delta Burke's Law.
"You're going to write about me in that column of yours, aren't you?"
I nodded.
"Well I want you to stop it. I don't like what you write."
"I'm afraid you can't stop me, Vig. Freedom of the Press and all. You know, one of those constitutional technicalities you love so much?"
"You promised your readers you wouldn't write about me anymore."
"Get your facts straight, Vig. I promised I'd try not to write about you anymore. After Vigilante #3, I've stopped trying."
"Why?" he demanded. His voice was as cold as the steel of his magnum. "Oh and, Ingersoll."
"Yeah, Vig?"
"Go back to 'Adrian.' "
"I don't like you, Adrian. And I don't like what you stand for. You're a hypocrite. You talk about serving justice by going after the people who break the law and get away with it. But every time you go out, you break the law, and you get away with it. Why don't you turn yourself in?"
"I haven't done anything to interest the police."
"You kill people, Adrian. Or doesn't murder the police anymore?"
"I've only killed three times. Scarpelli, Quilt and Brand. Each was self-defense,"
"Brand maybe, But you broke into Quilt's and Scarpelli's homes. You goaded them; gloating about how you had stolen enough evidence to put them away, and how you were going to use it. You goaded them into pulling a gun on you, just so you could kill them. That's not self-defense in my book. And not in the law books, either.
"In order to invoke self-defense, you can't have done anything to instigate or provoke the encounter, breaking and entering homes so that you can goad people into attacking you just so you can shoot them is more provocative than the out takes of Last Tango in Paris.
"I haven't killed anyone recently."
"I know. I read the Comic's Interview interview. No one dies in issues 2, 3, and 4. But that wasn't for lack of trying, was it? Look at what you did in issue 3, going after Stryker and Cyborg all guns ablaze. I haven't seen anyone try to kill that hard since Norman Bates revolutionized, 'Shower with a friend.' "
"Stryker deserved the death penalty for his acts. He didn't get it. He was convicted only of a namby-pamby, minor charge and got only a one-year sentence. I was just imposing the sentence that should have been imposed."
"Wrong! You may think Stryker was guilty of murders, but he was never convicted of them. Stryker deserved to be sentenced only for the crimes he was convicted of. That's another one of those annoying little technicalities from the Constitution, that you hate so much, you can't punish someone for a crime of which he hasn't been convicted."
"Stryker deserved to die!"
"No sir! No matter what you may think he was guilty of, Stryker was never convicted of a capital offense. He did not deserve to die.
"Of course a little thing like that didn't stop you, did it? No, you chased him down like a big game hunter, while he was unarmed and handcuffed to Cyborg. That's real sporting of you, Adrian. Do you also hunt three-legged deer?
"I mean look at what you did, You fired five shots at the two of them on Page 2. Two more in Page 3. Page 9 is good. You blew up the car Cyborg and Stryker were in with an armor-piercing shell and made it fall off a cliff. That's subtle, Adrian. What else do you do, handgrenade goldfish bowls?
"You got off another nine shots on Page 10 and one more on 11, Page twelve was cute. Cyborg and Stryker are hanging from a cliff. So you shoot at them and make them fall. And when that didn't kill them, you shoot three more times. Was it something they said, Adrian?
"On Page 14 you've got Cyborg and Stryker tied up with spiked bolas. So what do you do? You start pounding on Cyborg's face, he hadn't even broken a law. He was just transporting Stryker to prison. It was Stryker you were after, and you're beating on Cyborg's face like you were Adolph's Meat Tenderizer."
"That 'Adolph' crack was intentional, wasn't it?"
"What do you think?
"On Page 15 Cyborg still hasn't broken any law, except for preventing you from murdering Stryker, which, last time I looked, isn't actually against the law. So you kick him in the face. You and Cyborg got into a good fight for the next four pages. But Cyborg was cheating now. He was hitting back, so I won't count this, against you.
"I really loved Page 20. That's when you told Stryker that the kid gloves were off. After you'd shot him with armor piercing shells, pushed him off a cliff, and tried to pepper his hide with both a .357 and a high powered rifle; now the kid gloves are off? I've got it, you used to nuke ant hills, didn't you?
"Page 21. What a page! You decide you can't kill Stryker, after all. Then when Cyborg comes in and tells you he has to arrest you for the assorted mayhem you committed for the last twenty pages, you shoot Cyborg point blank in the shoulder with your .357. Ever see the exit wound on one of those babies, Adrian? Entrance wounds may be small, but exit wounds are like three times as big. The exit wound of a .357 at that distance would have blown his cyborg's arm off at the shoulder."
"But I didn't kill Stryker. Damnit! I couldn't. And I apologized to Cyborg."
"Did you also kiss his boo boo and make it all better?
''Adrian, I count at least forty-four counts of attempted murder, one felonious assault and two more aggravated assaults. That's more mayhem in thirty minutes, than the people on your hit list could do in a lifetime.
"Combined.
"Then, after twenty-one pages of story condoning all these crimes of yours, because you thought Stryker deserved more than a one-year sentence, all the' ends justify the means' claptrap, you think one page of your saying 'I was wrong' and a get-well card makes "everything all right?
"The damage was done by then, Adrian. The idea that it was good for you to kill Stryker was already firmly implanted in the reader's head. It was too late for your epilogue to be anything more than a totally unsatisfying and manipulative cop-out.
"And don't be so proud that you didn't kill Stryker. He'd probably prefer that you had killed him, compared to whatever you did do to him to get him to make that tape recording you left for the cops."
"I just convinced him that he should confess, is that so wrong?"
"'Convinced' him? How? No, never mind, I don't want to know. Such things shouldn't see print outside of the collected works of the Marquis de Sade."
For a moment I thought that I had gone too far. I saw his finger tighten on the .357's trigger, I couldn't vouch for the cleanliness of my pants at that moment,
"Why are you so concerned with Stryker, Ingersoll. The man is scum. He brutalized children. He raped my assistant, J.J.'s girlfriend and turned her into a vegetable,"
"You seem to get a lot of that. Issue 2, Sister Mary Elizabeth was turned into a vegetable. This issue J.J,'s girlfriend. What are you, the local supplier for the Green Giant?"
"That's tacky, Ingersoll."
"Well, I couldn't let you have a monopoly on tacky. Anyway, it's not Stryker I'm concerned about, Adrian, it's the law, and justice, and the Constitution, and everything else you trammel under your white jackboots. You don't even understand how much harm you're doing."
"What harm?"
"Why don't you ask Cyborg? He was acting correctly, he was trying to keep you from killing Stryker, then tried to arrest you, and you shot him, Do you call that doing good?
"Or take Stryker. You' convinced' him to confess, so that he would get the stiffer penalty you felt he deserved. He won't, you know. All you did was to insure that he can never be tried for his crimes."
"What do you mean2 The police can use the tape recording to find all the evidence they need,"
"Wrong again, Memorex breath! No one can use that tape, it was the product of coercion and generally inadmissible.
"But the police didn't coerce Stryker, I did."
"That doesn't matter, The Constitution says, 'No person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.' It differentiate about who does the compelling.
"Coerced confessions are not admissible in court, no matter who does the coercing, And if the police can't use the tape, which they can't, then they can't use any evidence they got by listening to the tape. That's the 'Fruit of the Poisonous Tree Doctrine.' Wasn't Constitutional Law a required course, back when you went to school, Adrian?
"Now no one will ever be able to get any evidence against Stryker, because everything they ever could get will have come from that stupid tape. Congratulations, Adrian, because of your actions William Stryker can never be tried. He should put you on permanent retainer.
"Retire, Adrian. You aren't doing anyone any good."
"What do you mean not doing any good, I got Quilt, didn't I?"
"You sure did. Right between the eyes. But what have you done since then? You brought Leonard Kord's life, and house, crashing down on him in issue two while chasing him for a crime he didn't even commit. You've caused untold property damage. You've shot up one of the Teen Titans. And you've insured William Stryker can never be prosecuted.
"You're right, Adrian, keep at it. You're batting ,200,"
"You're ignoring all the good I do, Ingersoll,"
"You can't ignore what isn't there, Adrian. All you do is present complex legal and constitutional issues in a simple, one-sided, reactionary, anti-thought manner. You do your readers, most of whom don't know enough law to know better, irreparable harm.
"And until you stop, I can't stop writing about you."
"But I want you to, You make me look bad." The words came out in a snarl, like a wolf with its leg caught in a trap.
"I don't make you look bad, Adrian. You do that all by your little lonesome. I'm not going to stop writing about you, and you can't make me.
"Unless, of course, you kill me."
"You know I can't kill you. I don't have that right." This time the voice almost sounded disappointed. "Not yet."
The snarl had returned,
"Look, I'11 tell you what, Adrian, I promise not to write anything about Vigilante #4." I hoped that he wouldn't realize that #4 was the first of a two-part story and figure out that I was going to withhold comment until, the story was complete.
"Not good enough, I want to see you attack some ether super hero as viciously as you do me."
I handed him the column I had been writing, when he first interrupted me, "Read this."
******
Kurt Vonnegut once said, that he had become such a big-name author, he could sell his laundry list, if he submitted it. Apparently some big-name comic-book creators are trying the same trick with their used toilet tissue.
How else do we explain Skateman?
Skateman is a product which gives new meaning to the phrase, "wanting in every creative department." It purports to be realistic, it even has the hard-bitten, noir writing style associated with "real" crime fiction, as well as the obligatory profanity. But this realistic book has a hero who openly defies law, both man-made and natural. We'll worry about the man-made laws in a bit, for the nonce, let's concentrate on the natural laws first.
Have you ever tried to skate fast over an uneven asphalt road, or kick someone in the face while wearing skates and not landing flat on your butt? Not easy and not something that anyone could do with the facility shown by Skateman.
Skateman had plot holes so large that the hero and the entire Bay City Rollers roller derby team could have blitzed through them, while standing upright and linked arm in arm. The plot basically is about Skateman's attempts to help Jill from a bunch of Hell's Angels because of what they think she knows about their Mexican Operation. It does forget to tell us a few things, though, like who was Jill, where did she come from, and why did the bikers think she knew anything about their "Mexican Operation?" You know, trivial things not important to the story. The same sort of glossed-over unexplained plot minutia as: why was Skateman's friend, Jack, killed with booby-trapped skates? What was the connection between Jack's murder and the bikers? Why was Angel killed? Why would Skateman recognize Skull, after only seeing the back of his head, while Skull wks riding away on a motorcycle?
Why weren't any of these necessary questions answered in the story?
Skateman had clumsy writing, "Partially hidden by garbage cans, Skateman spots a loading platform and heads for it. And over it!" What exactly was partially hidden, Skateman or the loading platform? Or, maybe it was neither Skateman nor the garbage can, the hidden object was just a good grammar book?
Worst of all Skateman himself is a murderer. A mass murderer. Look at his attack on pages 18 and 19. Skateman breaks into a warehouse, beats four people senseless with nunchaks, and clunks another with a billiard ball, which he threw backhand without even aiming. (Another impossible thing before breakfast, but we're dealing with a man who can catch an escaping car on roller skates, so who cares?)
These five people are unconscious. Inactive. They couldn't chase Skateman anymore, even if they had his miracle pot-hole-avoiding skates and he were on foot. Nevertheless he kills them and several more by throwing a large bomb into the warehouse. Look at page 19, panel 4. Look at the building burn. If any of the people inside it survived the explosion, it was only until the ceiling collapsed on them.
Yes I know some of the people were trying to shoot Skateman, so he may have had the right to defend himself against them. That still doesn't mean he had the right to kill everyone in the building Even if Skateman had the right to kill the men shooting at him, he didn't have the right to kill the people he had already knocked senseless and weren't shooting him or creating an imminent danger of bodily harm. They weren't attacking, so Skateman couldn't defend himself against them.
What Skateman did was cold blooded, deliberate, calculated murder.
Gee, a hero who murders. He must be related to the Vigilante.
******
"The last line goes, Ingersoll."
I didn't argue. He had the gun. The line was gone.
And, as suddenly as he had come, so was he.
Which is unfortunate. After finally meet him, I think I understand the Vigilante, I know who he is and what he is, And I know why he does what he does.
Adrian? I know you're Out there somewhere reading this. I do understand you now. And I want to help. I promise if you turn yourself in, I'11 defend you, And I also promise I'll win the case. I'11 get you off on a technicality.
It's called insanity.
BOB INGERSOLL
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