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THE LAW IS A ASS for 05/02/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 42
Originally written as installment # 32 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 560, August 10, 1984 issue
Okay, so sometimes a comic book just rags me off. So frustrates or annoys or generally irritates me, that I have to write about it, even if it isn't technically on point. When it does, I find some way to pretend there's a legal angle to it and forge ahead.
This is one of those times. There was absolutely nothing legal in nature about The Incredible Hulk #'s 299 & 300. But what happened there was just wrong, so I wrote.
And best of all, I even managed to keep things in perspective.
As you'll see in some of the coming months, I didn't always manage that trick.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 42
by
Bob Ingersoll
This should not have been happening.
Stephen Strange was the Sorcerer Supreme, the Master of the Mystic Arts of every pan-dimensional plane of existence west of Earth-C--Dr. Fate had a lock on the remaining dimensions in the multitude except for Knudop, this one, little pocket in nether realms that nobody except Zatara wanted. As the Sorcerer Supreme, Strange should have been in control of his fate. He was not. Quite against his control, and wakening him from as sound a sleep as the Sorcerer Supreme of half the four-color muitiverse can ever have, he felt himself rising into the air; which disturbed him no end.
He should not have been rising.
His Cloak of Levitation was at the cleaners. He had worn it, hidden by a spell of invisibility, to one of Morgana Blessing's cocktail parties and some drunken, loutish lawyer-turned- writer had spilled clam dip on it. Not even the Bountiful Balls of Boraxo could remove the stain.
Strange tried to fight the levitation which carried him ever farther from his sanctum sanctorum. He attempted a drastic spell to increase his own body weight, so that the mysterious lifting force could not move him. But the Fabulous Flab of Falstaff failed. Stephen Strange found himself borne away to a land not even Salvadore Dali could have dreamt; not even after eating the double steak Chalupa with Diablo sauce before bedtime.
"Stephen Strange, you have been brought to this realm, so that you could answer to charges most serious, to wit: that you wilfully violated the laws cosmic which safeguard humanity, demonanity, and pan-dimensional sentience." The voice was sepulchral and yet commanding. Strange recognized it as belonging to the Living Tribunal, one of the ultimately powerful inter-dimensional butt-in-skis that Strange fought every five issues or so. He hadn't seen the Tribunal in several dozen issues. He hadn't miss him much, either.
"What have I done, oh, Wisdom Personified?"
"You have unleashed an engine of pure destruction upon the multi-various dimensions of existence," The Tribunal answered. "And can the sarcasm, or I'll find you in contempt."
"I'll watch the sarcasm, if you'll agree to talk like an ordinary person. All this high-flown polysyllabic garbage is tough for Ingersoll to write."
Agreed."
"So what is this 'Engine of Destruction', I'm supposed to have unleashed on dimensions everywhere?"
"What's the matter, Strange, you didn't read Hulk # 299 and 300?"
"Oh, that 'Engine of Destruction.' "
"Right. You really came through that mess with flying colors, fella. First, your old enemy Nightmare brings Bruce Banner's worst fear to life by awakening the slumbering savage persona of the Hulk that slept within him, so that Hulk can attack you. And how do you respond to that?
"Do you take on Nightmare directly, so he can undo the damage? That would have been the manly costumed-hero thing. Too cliched for you. Do you paralyze the Hulk with the Stunning Staples of Stasis? No, that wouldn't be classy enough. Do you take advantage of the fact that Hulk's already green and BAM! turn him into an economy-sized stuffed olive with the Wistful Wisps of Wishbone? No, too Emeril. No you, bright boy, wake up the Bruce Banner side and have it co-exist with the Hulk so that he recoils in horror at being trapped with his bestial alter ego.
"Result: Banner is unwilling to live with that horror again, so he submerges his intelligence into the Hulk never to come out--never or thirteen issues, which ever comes first. And what do you have now: a large, all-powerful monster with no intelligence, no subliminal conscience playing Jiminy Cricket to check his rages, and give him nothing to do but jump around with a giant 'mad-on' he has to let out.
"Nice going. You created a living temper tantrum."
"But, Tribunal, how was I to know, that Bruce Banner would respond that way?"
"You're the Sorcerer Supreme. What good is having all that power, if you can't make an educated guess every now and then?"
"I'm not the Sorcerer Supreme, anymore. I lost the title, when I refused to join The Ancient One in the Plane of Boeing, back when Mary Wolfman was writing my book."
"Yeah, but Starlin and Stern undid that, when they took it over the book."
"I forgot. It all happened so fast."
"But that's not bad enough," The Tribunal continued, "what did you do with this monster, you created?
"Did you banish him to the ice dimension of Allebasi? At least there his rage would have made crushed ice for the Inter-Dimensional Margarita Festival."
"No, that would have been cruel."
"Did you turn his limbs into lime Jell-O, so that he couldn't do any damage?"
"That would have been inhumane."
"Did you consider killing him?"
"Killing him, Tribunal?"
"Right. You people kill mad dogs when they attack, why not the Hulk?"
"Because mad dogs are not intelligent creatures."
"Hellllloooo? Neither is the Hulk anymore. What's the difference?"
"The Hulk has his own--" Strange started to answer. The Tribunal interrupted.
"And don't tell me it's because the Hulk has his own comic-book series and mad dogs don't. That may play in Peoria, or whatever Vaudeville circuit you've been headlining with your paltry magic act, but if you run it up the Flagpole of the Faltine, not even Hoggoth will salute it. Never mind. You didn't do any of these sensible things. Instead you determined that the Earth was too fragile for a monster like the Hulk, and banished him to the multiverse.
"Neat stuff, guy. Now the Hulk is free to wreak havoc on whatever dimension he happens to jump into each issue. How would you like it if Dormammu sicced the Mindless Ones on Earth? I mean what ever happened to all that 'Do unto others' stuff and the basic principles of multiversal law?"
"But I ordained that the Hulk could not do harm to any of the worlds he chanced upon."
"How'd you do that, Ace? Mind control. Oh, I forgot, he had no mind. I know, by making sure he'd never drop into an inhabited dimension. No, wait, Marketing would never have gone for that. Who would Hulk fight in future issues, if you had?
"Would you like to know how much harm the Hulk has been 'incapable of' causing, so far? He's demolished the capital city in the Dimension of Edownori. He's decimated the population of the Nospmoht Dimension."
"Decimated?"
"Yes. By some quirk of fate, exactly one-tenth of the population fell to his attack. And I don't even want to tell you what he did to the hieroglyphs of Kcebmeh."
"I am sorry, Tribunal. I did not think my actions out carefully. I accept whatever punishment you choose to mete out. My carelessness is a violation of cosmic law."
"You're telling me? But you know what, Stevey, you don't get off that easy. I'm not going to be the one to punish you. You lave to answer to a higher authority than me."
"Higher than you? Who is it?"
"I'll give you a hint, see if you can guess. From now on--or thirteen issues whichever comes first--every issue of The Hulk is going to feature him without even a vestige of intelligence fighting all-powerful, inter-dimensional demons and beasties. No doubt many or most of them will have little or no intelligence, themselves. In other words, Strange old boy, for the next year or so, every issue of the Hulk is going to be literally nothing more than endless, mindless fight scenes. How long do you think that will last, before that one group more powerful than all of us combined gets fed up and voices displeasure? How long until they judge us?"
"You don't mean?" Strange asked aghast.
"I do.
Stephen Strange fled. He renounced his mantle as sorcerer Supreme. He surrendered all worldly possessions. He emigrated to a mountain top in Sri Lanka, where he lived alone, a frightened hermit seeking to hide from the that one group that not even he could defeat.
For not all the powers of the Sorcerer Supreme nor the Gesturing Hands of Ditko could save him from the wrath of the readers.
BOB INGERSOLL
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