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THE LAW IS A ASS for 03/28/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 37
Originally written as installment # 27 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 555, July 6, 1984 issue
As I review my old columns for this page, I come across columns like this one. The potpourri columns; the ones when I didn't have a single topic long enough to sustain a whole column, so I string several of these smaller topics together into a column. I wasn't always satisfied with these columns. They seemed unfocused somehow--probably because they didn't have a single focus. But they were important for getting all those little topics which weren't long enough to sustain a whole column out there and before the reading public. So I guess I can't complain about them. At least not now, it would be like closing the barn door after the cows have left then trying to round them up.
And that would be a case of the potpourri calling the cattle back.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 37
by
Bob Ingersoll
Well, you re wrong, it ain't all skittles and beer!
The life of a public defender/columnist isn't as easy as you think. True, I get paid for a cushy government job, where everyone hopes I won t succeed, so as not to put my clients back on the street. (Talk about your job security, I get paid whether I succeed or not and, in fact, everyone wants me to fail! Tell me another job, outside of TV Network Executive, where you can fail more than ninety percent of the time and still keep your washroom key?) Then I get paid to read and talk about comics. But there are some real problems associated with the whole thing.
First, there is fat. As in, I'm getting fat; and I'm probably using the wrong tense. You see, in my jobs, I sit most of the time. I sit in my office. I sit at the trial table. I sit in my recliner. I sit at my typewriter. I sit at the dinner table, only I get to do that several times a day. That is a lot of sitting. Sitting is sedentary, as in no exercise. That makes me fat. I could pose for the out-of-shape "before" picture in a Charles Atlas ad, except for the fact that the last time I saw the good side of ninety-eight pounds, the Beatles were just four guys from Liverpool, Gary Coleman was years away from being born, and a ten cent comic book cost a respectable twelve cents.
Even worse, however, is the fact that I can no longer simply read a comic. Now, I have to read it in terms of its being potential column material. I have to dissect it, analyze it, figure out what's wrong or right with it from a legal standpoint. I can't just read a comic for fun anymore.
Sometimes that isn t a problem. There are books which I don t read for fun, because they aren't fun to read. Like The Fly. Reading these comics is a duty which this column, plus some obsessive compulsion to read virtually everything, forces on me. And it s not always isolated books. There are some comic publishers whose entire line is less fun than tag team wrestling with tiger sharks in the great Grimpen Mire.
Still, there are some books that I read for fun, or used to read for fun. Now, I have to read them to see what bothers me about them. Sometimes I find major things that bother me. Sometimes I find little things. Things like...
Cynosure. This is a pan-dimensional city found in the pages of First Comics, notably Grimjack, Starslayer, and Warp. Cynosure is a strange place. It seems to be a nexus for several different universes, which co-exist side-by-side. Picture a wheel with an infinite number of spokes all leading into a central hub. The hub is Cynosure, where all the universes imaginable come together and exist side-by-side.
Cynosure is a marvelous concept. Using it, an imaginative writer can literally put his characters into any setting he wants. You say you want sentient squirrels doing Edward G. Robinson impersonations? You got it in Cynosure (not to mention Warp # 16). You want killer bunnies and talking suns? Just go one block east in Cynosure, they re there. How about gritty streets plagued by vampires? They re running a special on them this week in the south side of Cynosure, the baddest part of town. Well, you get the idea.
Cynosure is fun. Would that I could simply accept it for the fun concept that it is. But noooooo. I end up wondering what the legal system in Cynosure must be like.
See? Never thought about that did you? You just took it in stride. Me, I have to wonder how a city, where each block is a different universe governed by different natural laws and inhabited by vastly different creatures, can have a coherent legal system.
Take, for example, slavery. In some of the Cynosure blocks, dogs are dogs, nothing more. There little Timmy owns Lassie. But what if Timmy goes to the neighborhood grocery store with Lassie on a leash and ends up walking through a dimension where dogs are sentient creatures and the dominant life form? Suddenly Timmy finds himself arrested and dropped in the Pound as a vile slave owner.
I don't even want to think about the laws governing what is and isn t an unnatural act. (While the situation is fraught with possibilities, a nice family newspaper isn t the proper place to go into them.)
See? When I think about stuff like that, how can I have fun reading comics?
Take Firestorm. # 27, please! (Yes, I know I stole that joke. Don t worry, they can t prosecute me for it. Stealing jokes from Henny Youngman is petty larceny.) An American Indian brings his dying son into the "white man s hospital" but is refused admittance, because the hospital is for whites only. The father pushes a nurse aside and continues onward. Next an obviously bigoted security guard draws his really big revolver and shoots the father. The bullet passes through the father and the son he is carrying, killing both. Finally, we are told that the guard was found innocent of manslaughter.
A very dramatic scene to point out the inequities in the legal system for minorities. The trouble is, I didn't believe it for a minute.
First of all, the narrator of these events was about nine, when it happened. She now looks to be in her early twenties, so some ten years separate now from the event. By the mid-l970 s the Civil Rights Act was firmly established in America. Among its provisions was a requirement that any hospital that accepts federal aid (which is any hospital except, maybe, the very big, successful clinics--and even that I doubt--but definitely not some podunk center in the middle of North Carolina) must admit indigents and minorities for treatment. The hospital couldn't have legally refused to treat the dying Indian boy, so the whole incident should never have occurred.
Second, we re told the guard was found innocent of manslaughter. He should have been. He should have been found guilty of murder. Murder is the intentional killing of another, manslaughter is either accidently killing someone, or killing someone in a justifiably provoked fit of rage. The guard didn't kill accidently. He drew, aimed and fired; fully intending the exact result he got: two dead Indians. And the guard didn't act in a provoked rage. Oh, there may have been rage on the guard's part, but there wasn't any provocation. At least none that the courts would recognize as being justified. You see the father was acting legally, so under the law, the guard had no justification to be provoked so there was no mitigation for his shooting the Indians.
Admittedly, these aren't major mistakes. Still they are mistakes, which I noticed and which hindered my enjoying the story. Of course, the actual story hindered my enjoying the story, too.
The Fly # 8 was another comic I couldn't enjoy, but this time not only because of the legal aspect involved. Remember what I said earlier about some comics being worse that mudwrestling Galeocerdo arcticus? Well, the entire Archie Adventure Comics line and especially The Fly fit that category. Actually, I think they're the poster children of bad comics.
Not only do we have a hero so inept that he has been forced to kill his foes for the last two issues; not only do we get super villains with no definable power or purpose like the Big Freeze (which, I suppose is still preferable to the recent Crooked Man); The Fly now has the most boring legal subplot in all comics, one which easily surpasses the impossibly tedious Flash-murderer story. (As comics' only legal commentator, it is entirely within my province to bestow this dubious honor.)
Tom Troy, disgraced former lawyer and accused--but never convicted--jury tamperer, has been muddling through three or four issues now. (I don't remember exactly how many it's been, and I'm sure as Shinola not going to risk the brain damage that rereading old Fly comics would surely bring to find out! I don't have to. It's in the Eighth Amendment. Look it up.) Three or four issues that tell the exact same story. Troy slinks around while everyone in the city avoids him and thinks how dirty he is. Troy's former partner, Flynn, and D.A. Busse fulminate about how there isn't enough evidence to get Troy on anything but vow to get some. Troy weeps that everyone has turned against him, but other than that nothing happens. Nothing which advances the plot one silly millimeter ever happens. We just get the same scenes over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. (Kind of like this sentence.)
What makes it worse is that the three scenes are all terribly written, so not only does nothing happen, but it doesn't happen in unreadable fashion. And finally we all know Troy is innocent. He didn't tamper with a jury, he was framed. We know this, because we saw him as the Fly, at the same time his double was tampering.
Attention responsible parties: how much longer must we endure this tripe? And how long will the Comics Code permit the villain who actually tampered with the jury to remain undetected and unpunished? As stories go, this one should go. Away! It wasn't worth starting in the first place, so why don't you just end it now?
Jon Sable, Freelance # 16 was a comic I enjoyed. A lot. Still...
Does anyone really think there's no law, against stealing from thieves, as Maggie the Cat opines on page 9 panel 2? I hope not, because there is such a law. It's called theft.
Theft, you see, is knowingly exerting control over property with the intention of depriving the owner of the property. For the purpose of the theft statute even a thief, who stole the property from another, is an owner when compared to a second thief. Stealing from a thief is theft. What, you think if Inspector Henderson is walking around Metropolis Park and sees a purse snatcher take a purse, then, in turn, be robbed of said purse by a mugger, he's not going to bust both? I can assure you he won't say, "Well the mugger stole from a thief, so I can't arrest him." No, he's going to say, "Book 'em, Danno. Both!"
Another thing about Jon Sable, Freelance # 16: I find it hard to believe that an executive with the Coca-Cola Company, who has enough clout to know that Formula 7X is a hoax to dupe Pepsi, wouldn't have a better, swankier office than what was shown.
Legal glitches, which keep me from fully enjoying a book can pop up anywhere. Power Man and Iron Fist # 109 had one. It was this human interest story about some schmuck named Sylvester. I think we're supposed to feel sorry for his plight. I couldn't.
Sylvester is going to be on TV. Trouble is he's too poor to own a TV so he won't be able to watch himself. Awwwww! So, the little beggar steals a TV, so he can see himself on the evening news. Awwww! A cop sees him and chases him. Awwww! While trying to escape Sly pushes the cop, who falls below the wheels of an oncoming subway car and dies. Aww-- Hey wait a second! Now, Sly has holed up in a church and has taken the Reverend Otis Jeaver hostage. We're supposed to feel sorry for this little perisher.
Why?
The cretin stole a TV and killed a cop, while he did it. That's felony-murder. Now he's holding a man of the cloth hostage. And why? So he can watch himself on TV! We're supposed to be full of awwwws for someone who's so awful? I don't think so!
If the little imbecile had simply gone to a local department store, he could have watched himself for free, without having to steal a TV. Then we'd have had one less dead cop and less crime on the street. But no, this jerk has to wilfully break the law and commit felony-murder of a cop while doing it. Well, I for one, am sick of people who can't or won't take responsibility for their own actions. I say the kid is guilty of the worst crime possible and should receive an appropriate punishment. But not even I, with all my liberal, public defender training, can feel the least little bit sorry for him. And any story, which tries to make me feel sorry for him has to be an abject failure.
I also wanted to say two things about X-Men # 185. First, I doubt if the Constitution permits the government, in the guise of national-security operative Peter Gyrich, to permanently deprive anyone of their mutant abilities. Especially before that mutant has had a trial and been found guilty of any crime. I'll grant that our founding fathers couldn't have had the mutant ability to fly or make snow balls in mind, when they wrote the Bill of Rights, but the concept does bother me. (Yes, for mutants I do feel sorry.) Second, if you see a super-strong mutant pulling a sinking boat to shore so that people won't drown and you help him, you aren't aiding and abetting the mutant break the law, even if he is a fugitive. You can only aid and abet illegal acts, not legal ones. Last time I looked savings lives was still legal
One last thing, before I go. I promised, last column, to explain why it's illegal to hunt Hawkman out of season. For the same reason it's illegal to hunt him in season. He's Hawkman. It would be murder.
I'm glad I was able to clear this little matter up for you.
BOB INGERSOLL
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