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Join us each Tuesday as Bob Ingersoll analyzes how the law
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THE LAW IS A ASS for 04/04/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 38
Originally written as installment # 28 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 556, July 13, 1984 issue
I just flew back from Florida and--all together now--boy are my arms tired.
I had planned--honest, I had--to write a column while down in Florida, between the trips to Disney World's The Magic Kingdom, Disney-MGM Studios, Downtown Disney and DisneyQuest, Universal's Islands of Escape, Busch Gardens, the Kennedy Space Center, and MegaCon. Honest, I had. I might just as well have planned on what to do after I was named CEO of DreamQuest, because there was a better chance of that happening than my writing a column between the trips to Disney World's The Magic Kingdom, Disney-MGM Studios, Downtown Disney and DisneyQuest, Universal's Islands of Escape, Busch Gardens, the Kennedy Space Center, and MegaCon.
In other words, I blew my deadline and this space was for rent yesterday.
Onward.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 38
by
Bob Ingersoll
It's all really very complicated. It has to do with deadlines and lead times for articles and comic-books and lots of technical publishing stuff like that.
What's all very complicated you ask? And if you didn't ask, please ask. 'Cause, if you don't ask, I won't be able to go on and there's gonna be lots of white space on the "The Law is a Ass" web page today.
What's all very complicated, Bob?
Thank you.
What's very complicated is the answer to the question you're probably been asking yourself for the past few weeks. Not "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" (I tried calling, but all I got was the Bizet signal). Rather the question is, "Where in Marvel Team-Up # 145 was Bob Ingersoll?"
You will recall in a recent column (the one that appeared here on March 14, 2000), I announced that I had a cameo appearance in the aforementioned Marvel Team-Up # 145, playing myself as Blacklash's Cleveland public Defender. I made several jokes about my being a trademarked character for Marvel Comics now.
Well, there's many a slip 'tween the cup and the gang aft a-gley. In other words, those of you who know me or, at least, have seen me at a con and were expected to find a ring-eyed albino zombie from a George Romero Living Dead movie in Marvel Team-Up # 145 but found instead a fat man with long brown hair and a caterpillar under his nose are correct in concluding, that wasn't me. Kind of. It was me and it wasn't me.
That's where it gets complicated.
When Tony Isabella plotted the story and knew Blacklash would need a Cleveland public defender, he thought it would be fun to use me as the public defender, what with me being known to comic fandom as a real-life Cleveland public defender. It's what we call in the entertainment biz an in joke. (It's what you call an in joke, too, but my way I get to be elitist). Tony asked me if I minded being used. As an attorney, I'm always being used, so I' used to it. He asked me to send a picture of myself to Greg LaRocque, the penciler as reference, so I could be included. I did. I sent the same picture, which graces the end of my columns here in CBG. Don & Maggie say the picture isn't accurate, as I am seldom as distinguished as the picture makes me out to be. They've told me, that when next they see me, they plan to get a more natural (read scruffier) picture. Truth in advertising and all.
Anyway, I sent the picture to Greg LaRocque, and he drew me into the story. Careful perusal of the lawyer on Page 21 will reveal it is my face under the dead mouse adorning the upper lip. Greg even added glasses, because, while my picture doesn't show them, I do wear glasses and that way the poor, unfortunate character would look even more like me. Greg, for some reason, gave me Clark Kent's glasses, but that's alright; Colorist Bob Sharen, gave me Clark Kent's suit. (Attention colorists everywhere: I do not own a suit the shade of blue found in the story. No one owns a suit that particular color. I think Clark Kent took sole delivery on those particular bolts of blue serge.)
I know that Greg LaRocque drew me into the story, I saw copies of the original, uninked pencils. Tony showed them to me, when he was writing the story. I was so proud. There I was, blond and virile appearing in the pages of a comic book.
I wrote a column about it, so that I could let you readers in on the in joke. My mistake came in writing the column so that it could appear the same week as the comic story. In order to do that, because of the lead time necessary in editing, typesetting, and printing a column, I wrote the column several weeks before the story came out, confident that the dashing figure I had seen in the pencils would appear.
Imagine my surprise, when I opened Marvel Team-Up # 145 and did not find myself. At some point, the editor had someone re-draw the public defender figure. Now, along with Clark Kent's glasses and suit, I had Peter Parker's hair--in color, anyway--and Groucho Marx's moustache. And I mean that literally. They made the moustache by adding grease paint to the printing plate.
In other words, the character started out as me, but didn't end up that way. Pity, I--many manifold sins and weaknesses notwithsanding--am so much more dashing than Groucho Kent.
Marvel claimed they had to change "me," because they they didn't have likeness rights to me. Had they but asked, they could have gotten them easily enough. Had they but thought for a second, they could have guessed that Tony had my permission to use me in the story. Hell, how the hell else do they think Tony supplied the artist with a photo of me for reference, if not by getting one from me, which implies a grant of likeness rights? It's not like Tony carries a wallet-size of me on his person. I mean, we're close, but we're not that close.
So why is my explanation appearing so many weeks after the story? Because of the same lead time problem. I couldn't write this explanation, until after I had read the story and realized it needed an explanation. By the time Don & Maggie edited it, the typesetters typeset it, and the printers printed it, several weeks had passed since Marvel Team-Up #145 appeared.
Having finished with the explanation, what do I now do with the rest of my column? Don't worry, I'll think of something.
I suppose I could try some of that law stuff?
Naw...
Don, regarding your recent review of What If? # 45, "What If the Hulk Went Berserk?" and your question, "hasn't that already happened in the real Marvel universe?" I commend to your attention the upcoming What If? # 47, "What If Loki Had Found the Hammer of Thor?" Hasn't that happened a few times already, also?
Actually this issue should prove to be a very interesting issue; the world's first one page What If? story. I mean if the story is true to continuity it should go something like this:
******
PANEL ONE
SCENE:The Watcher standing next to and gesturing to a scene of Loki in his best Kirbyesque Asgardian vestments coming into the cave where Don Blake first found the Hammer of Thor, way back in Journey Into Mystery # 83. Blake's cane lies in the foreground.
WATCHER:In your world, Donald Blake, lame surgeon and human persona of the thunder God Thor, was fated to find this innocent-looking walking stick, which is, in reality, his mighty Uru hammer, Mjolner.
WATCHER:But imagine how the cosmos would have differed, if not Blake, but the God of Evil had first found the walking stick.
(Title) "WHAT IF LOKI HAD FOUND THE HAMMER OF THOR?"
LOKI (Thought): Odds bodkins, what doth I espy with mine little eye?
PANEL TWO
SCENE: Loki looks down at the walking stick at his feet.
LOKI (Thought): Tis a cane for one of the many crippled mortals who doth inhabit Midgard.
LOKI (Thought): Mayhaps I can utilize it, in mine efforts to unseat mine father, Odin.
PANEL THREE
SCENE:Loki trying, unsuccessfully, to lift the walking stick.
LOKI (Thought):Tis most passing strange. The stick doth resist mine every effort to lift it.
PANEL FOUR
SCENE:Loki walking out of the cave. The walking stick lies undisturbed in the foreground.
LOKI (Thought): Oh well. Twas probably nothing of import anyway.
CAPTION:The end.
******
But enough of this silliness. Let us move be on to other silliness. I have a few "thank you's" I'd like to send out. To John Q. Adams of Buffalo, New York (funny I always associated that name with the Massachusetts): I thank you for the Vigilante post card you sent me. I'm afraid that I cannot do with it as you suggested. I don't have a dart board. However, I do have this marvelous pair of matched Toledo swords hanging on my office wall, points exposed, and ...
To Keith A. Bowden of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee: thank you for the drawing. It, too, is on my office wall, but not in as precarious a position as the aforementioned post card.
To Rex Munsee of Fairmount City, Pennsylvania: thank you for the information regarding pre-trial criminal court procedure in the Keystone State. I won't print the whole procedure, but I will keep it on file for research.
If any other readers from other states want to forward me their home state's pre-trial criminal procedure, I would appreciate it for my reference file. I can, that way, see how the states differ, to see if what I am saying in this column is as universal, as I hope it is. And, if I have the information and some comic writer wants to ask me, what the procedure is in, say, Pennsylvania, I will be able to give it to him or her. In this way accuracy is preserved.
Well enough of this, as well. I must move on to more important matters. I don't know what time it will be, when you read this, but as I write it, it's bed time.
Good night.
BOB INGERSOLL
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