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THE LAW IS A ASS for 02/13/2001
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 82
Originally written as installment # 71 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 461, February 28, 1986 issue
Did you notice the change? Don't worry about it; neither did I.
In the past, the newspaper that published my column in was named The Comics Buyer's Guide. With issue # 640, the paper officially changed its name to Comics Buyer's Guide.
I was a regular contributor CBG, and I didn't know about the new name, until the editors happened to mention it in CBG's letter column several weeks after the name changed. What I never did learn was why CBG dropped the, "The."
I guess all that overtime by the typesetters must have been killing them.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 71
by
Bob Ingersoll
When was the last time I trashed a comic? I mean really ripped it apart no holds barred?
Just as I thought. It's been too long. That's what "The Law Is a Ass" is famous for, after all, rip-em-up comic reviews. Remember, those who can't; write sarcastic columns.
So today I write a "rend it from stem to stern, because it was really a stupid comic and it deserves to be rent" column. And the victim is...
Cloak and Dagger # 5.
Don't act so surprised. It didn't have to be # 5. It could have been practically any issue of this book. Admit it, you've been waiting for me to tear into this four-color diatribe for months, haven't you? While the Leonardi/Austin art is lovely to look at (likewise the fill-in job by Shoemaker and Austin in issue 5), the stories read like a primer for a bad Chuck Bronson Death Wish movie. (Which would be all of them, wouldn't it?)
No, let me correct that. Primers use simple, basic sentences and elementary words. Cloak and Dagger trots out lines like, "The police are hamstrung by the very law they serve, Dagger. A labyrinth of process and procedure allows the guilty to go free while the innocent suffer."
Eloquent, huh? Grammatically correct (except, maybe, for a missing comma), flowery, and persuasive. So what's wrong with the above sentence?
Well, the line was spoken by Cloak. According to his entry in Marvel Universe, Tyrone Johnson (A.K.A. Cloak) was a kid from the slums of South Boston with a stammer, who ran away to New York and got turned into Cloak by an experimental drug that some wicked, rotten, mean and evil, bad and nasty, and not very nice people looking for a cheap synthetic substitute for heroin injected into him to test. How many kids from the ghetto talk like they went to the William F. Buckley School of Elocution? Let alone ghetto kids with a stammer. Apparently, the experimental drug not only gave Cloak super powers, it have him the power of elocution.
Now don't castigate me yet; I'm not really a bigot. Dagger isn't any better. Her sample speech patterns include such elegant tongue twisters as, "We were right to come here, Cloak! The way they're reacting to us shows they're evil! And evildoers aren't worthy of the living light that burns brightly in all decent beings." According to Marvel Universe Tandy (Dagger) Bowen grew up in the affluent Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights. Know what? So did I. In fact, I went to school in the affluent Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights. And know what else? I ain't never heared no classmate a' mine talkin' like that all purty and fancy-like. Not no how. Not no way.
But seriously, folks, the characters in Cloak and Dagger spend so much time pontificating up on their soap boxes, I get splinters just from reading the damn book. I keep expecting Cloak to club someone with one of his mammoth word balloons.
But what do I care if the book is wordy? I care, because the speeches bog the book down. By the time I get past the inevitable and interminable debates on the merits of vigilantism and find the actual story, I've forgotten what said story was about. Assuming, of course, that there was a story worth reading in the first place. In Cloak and Dagger, there usually isn't.
Verbosity, however, is a complaint I have about every issue of Cloak and Dagger. What specific problems did I have about issue 5? Got a minute? Good. Raise it to the power of ten and maybe I'll have enough time to start telling you.
Cloak and Dagger invade some sleazy waterfront watering hole to learn about some drugs shipped into New York City on board the good ship Santa Angela. They beat up on some local scuzballs and force one to talk by subjecting him to Cloak's cloak of darkness.
Probably I'm wrong, but it seems to me that every issue of Cloak and Dagger opens with a this scene. Okay, maybe it's not the ship yards. Maybe it's a bar or a litter-strewn alley, but somewhere in the seamy side of New York City, this scene plays itself out. The scene has been repeated so often in Cloak and Dagger, that it is already a cliche. Pretty good for a comic that's only five issues old--or ten if you want to count the original mini-series and the Marvel Fanfare story. Either way, it's too few stories for that scene to have appeared as many times as it has.
The kids learn of a trap waiting for Detective Brigid O'Rielly, which is the closest thing they have to a regular police contact. They rush off to help her.
Meanwhile, Detective O'Rielly is at the abandoned Marshall Pharmaceuticals warehouse on the Furman Street piers in Brooklyn looking for the same drug shipment. Understand, that Brigid has been looking for these drugs for the last two issues. And while she's been looking, she's found out that some of the police are on the Maggia payroll, so she intends to track them down, as soon as she finds the drugs.
Brigid has come to this place to investigate a tip that a fellow cop named Falcone received. The tip was that the drugs were being stashed in the warehouse, until they could be distributed. So, Brigid and several other cops have gone to the warehouse. They find the warehouse empty and unguarded, which makes no sense. The mob wouldn't let several million dollars worth of heroin sit around in a warehouse without at least an overweight, coffee guzzling night watchman to look after it. Brigid suspects that the drugs aren't really here and that some, or all, of the police with her are among the cops on the take, about whom she's been hearing. She even realizes, that this could also be a trap. Smart girl, that Brigid. She's got brains, something most comic-book policemen lack.
So, what does Brigid do with her brains? Does she wait for her backup? Does she call in for help from people she knows she can trust? No. Brigid goes into the warehouse with the very cops she suspects may be on the take and have lured her into a trap. Remember what I said about brains, before? Forget it. Brigid just checked her brains at the front door, gang. Based on this performance, she's about as bright as a black hole.
This scene is of the type that film critic, Roger Ebert, calls an "idiot plot." Basically, if the people involved didn't act like idiots and did even one sensible thing--the sort of act that you and, hopefully, I would do in similar circumstances--the whole plot would collapse.
Idiotic enough for you? Keep reading, the idiots get worse.
Cloak and Dagger arrive at the warehouse district to help Brigid. Now, they don't know which warehouse the trap is supposed to be in, so you'd think they might start looking right away. Well, they don't. Instead they choose this inappropriate time to engage in their mandatory debate on vigilantism. Yes, mandatory. In every issue Cloak and Dagger have the same debate. Dagger says what they do is wrong, they're not judge and jury; and Cloak says it is necessary. They never resolve anything, never come to any conclusions. They just talk endlessly with the same overblown, unbelievable dialog for which I've already chided the book. At least, the debate only lasted half a page this issue. For Cloak and Dagger, that's an improvement.
Keep reading, the idiots get worse.
At the same time that Cloak and Dagger are debating vigilantism, the cops inside the warehouse are discussing search and seizure law. Why? I don't know. The conversation didn't move the plot along. It just had cops standing around saying things like, "That was the old rule! Now we can do anything as long as it's in 'good faith!' The Supreme Court says so!" Or, "Your informant's tip gave us probable cause to believe the drugs are here, and we have to act fast to prevent their dispersal or destruction! But while we're in here we can seize any evidence that's in plain view!"
Ye gods!
Clumsy writing is marked by giving the reader necessary information through characters telling each other something they already know, but the reader doesn't know. The writing above is so clumsy, it makes Curly Howard seem like a ballet artist. Not only are the police telling each other what they already know, not only are they talking in dialog which is clumsily stilted so that all of the legal buzz words like "probable cause" and "plain view" can be used; but the police aren't even giving the reader any necessary information with the exchange. Okay, it tells us that the police are there executing an search warrant. It tells us the police are waiting for the warrant to arrive. But that could have been accomplished in two sentences. I managed that little task, so could have the story, if it had wanted. But the prolonged debate over whether they can go into the warehouse without the warrant doesn't really give the reader any information that is necessary to the story.
Prove it yourself. Reread page 9 and substitute anything you want for the police dialog in Panels 3 through 5. No, I mean anything. The Gettysburg Address. Dr. Ruth's good sex advice. The intro from last week's Elvira movie. Finished? Is your comprehension of the story in any way diminished? I thought not.
The exchange is completely superfluous. In fact, the only reason that I can see for these conversations is that writer Bill Mantlo recently graduated from law school and passed the New York State Bar and he wanted to show off what he learned.
But if that is, indeed, the case, it's a pity so much of what happened after this dissertation on search and seizure law was flawed.
Brigid and her gang are at the warehouse, because a tip has told them some drugs are there, so they go in to search it. Trouble is, they don't have their search warrant yet. Apparently, it's on its way with the backup team. You remember the backup team, the one Brigid decided she wouldn't wait for, before she entered what she suspected was a trap with the people she suspected had set the trap?
So the cops decide they can enter the warehouse and start searching without the warrant, because they are acting in good faith. Someone had better look up the definition of good faith, because searching but without the actual warrant is hardly my definition of the concept.
I mean what if they searched the entire warehouse then get the warrant and find out that they weren't allowed to go upstairs. Worse yet, what if they searched the warehouse then found out, they didn't really have a warrant? Oops. A perfectly good search soured, because the cops couldn't wait five minutes for the warrant to arrive.
Another problem is that the search is being conducted at night. According to the story, Cloak and Dagger have been interrogating vermin in one rat hole after another during the long night. Now that sounds to me like they've been at if for awhile and at a rough estimate it is sometime in the wee hours of the morning. Or it's, at least, sometime after 9:00 p.m. Problem is, except for under certain unusual conditions, you can't execute a search warrant in New York between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.
Honest, it's in New York Criminal Procedure Law 960.30. I know, because I looked it up. Odrinarily the police can only execute a search warrant during the daylight hours. However, if the subject of the search is likely to be destroyed or dispersed between 9:00 and 6:00, then a judge can give special permission that the warrant can be executed during what lawyers call the night season. (Yes, lawyers really do have a special term for what everyone else calls nighttime. We have to. If we didn't use these special terms, then some of you might be able to figure out what we've actually been doing all these years. Then we'd really be in trouble.)
So what's my complaint? The drugs were certainly something that could distributed before the cock crowed, so the warrant was probably one permitting a night search.
Maybe, but how could Brigid know that? She hadn't seen it yet, remember? And again, wouldn't it be embarrassing if they executed it at night, and then found out it was a daytime only warrant, so that their good search was bad, because they were impatient. See, improperly executing a warrant in the night time when the warrant doesn't permit a night time search wouldn't be acting in good faith, because the mistake would be right there on the face of the warrant. Another perfectly good search put into possible danger, because these cops couldn't wait a few minutes for the warrant.
Maybe if the story established that the drugs were about to be destroyed, so what the law calls exigent circumstances--here the need to keep evidence from being destroyed--the police entering without the warrant would be forgivable. But we'll never know. The story didn't establish that there were exigent circumstances, only impatient police.
Oops again.
But let's move on with the story, because the idiots get worse.
Brigid figures out that the drugs were smuggled in inside statues of Santa Angela. So she picks up one of the statutes to check. And when she does, she and two cops are trapped inside a bullet proof cube which is filling up with a poisonous gas. Falcone and his two friends were the dishonest cops who lured Brigid and two innocent, albeit honest, cops into this death trap. Hey, there's a surprise! The death trap that Brigid suspected might exist but walked into anyway, actually existed. Falcone plans to kill Brigid then tell his superiors that he and Brigid split up and Brigid was ambushed and killed.
Question: Why did he bother with this elaborate death trap? Falcone could have secured any gun he wanted from the police property room, filed off all the identifying marks, shot Brigid and the two honest cops, dropped the gun into the bottom of the Hudson where it would never have been found, and told his superiors the same story about splitting up and Brigid's group being ambushed. Certainly a much simpler way to kill Brigid. Not to mention more certain. Why bother with this elaborate death trap? Other than that this is a comic book that is so full of its own cliches, it probably needed to borrow a few from other comics as a change of pace.
Keep reading, the idiots get worse.
If the death trap wasn't stupid enough for you, you're in for a treat. The designers of this death trap didn't use any ordinary poison gas. No, they used a concoction whipped up by Simon Marshall, the same guy who whipped up the experimental drug that created Cloak and Dagger. Does that make sense to you: to kill people using some unknown concoction of the man whose last unknown concoction was responsible for creating your worst enemies? For all they knew they were using the exact same potion which created Cloak and Dagger, and their using it to kill Brigid O'Rielly will turn her into a super powered foe as well.
Oh, did I happen to mention that when Dagger tires to free Brigid from the trap with her light daggers, the experimental gas combined with Dagger's daggers and Cloak's cloak to turn Brigid into a super-powered foe of the drug smugglers? But you knew that already, didn't you? Even those of you who didn't read the story knew that, right?
Stupid... stupid... stupid! Why would anyone in his right mind do anything as all fired dumb-headed as set this particular death trap? Other than the obvious reason that Bill Mantlo needed them too for his story, regardless of whether or not any rational person would have so acted.
Anyway, Brigid turns into Mayhem (which, as names go, ranks right up there with Paste-Pot Pete) who can fly, scratch eyes out with her talon-like fingernails and kill with the poison gas she exudes (as powers go, these aren't likely to get her past the Comics Code too many times.)
The story ends (thankfully) with Brigid forcing Falcone to admit that the drugs are in the religious statues (which she had already figured out) and will be distributed the next day at a religious festival. She, Cloak, and Dagger go to the outside of the Holy Ghost Church, where Father Delgado, a recurring character who is also Cloak and Dagger's personal confessor, has just taken receipt of the statues, so that he can innocently distribute them for the religious festival tomorrow.
Or will it be so innocent?
Given that Cloak and Dagger know the good father and know that the drugs are in the statutes, all they have to do is tell him about the drugs, open the statues up and turn the drugs over to the police, before the festival. End of story.
Unless... You don't suppose Father Delgado is one of the drug runners, do you? It would certainly explain why he's been so intent of getting Cloak and Dagger to give up the vigilante business, wouldn't it? Only time and the next issue will tell.
Oh, and about that next issue, I have a special offer to those who don't think they can stomach reading Cloak and Dagger # 6 just to see if the creators are tacky enough to make the priest a drug smuggler. Remind me about this in two months (after the issue has come out) and I'll tell you here.
Don't thank me. I'm going to read it anyway, but I'm already brain dead. No reason we all should suffer.
BOB INGERSOLL
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