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THE LAW IS A ASS for 11/06/2001
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 120
Originally written as installment # 109 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 703, May 8, 1987 issue
The Question was an interesting comic in the dichotomy of its two versions. When the character was first introduced by Steve Ditko, as a back-up feature in The Blue Beetle from Charlton Comics, The Question was a predecessor to Ditko's later creation Mr. A. The Question was a character who saw everything in absolutes: black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. Floor wax and dessert topping. Ditko, who was reportedly heavily influenced by Ayn Rand, used the character and his stories to preach his philosophy of absolutes.
Then Charlton stopped publishing super-heroes and The Question languished until DC bought the Charlton heroes and started publishing new stories of the characters. DC gave The Question to writer Denny O'Neil, who promptly turned the character from an one espousing an absolutist philosophy into one espousing a zen philosophy, and all without a good manual on motorcycle maintenance.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 120
by
Bob Ingersoll
Name dropper that I am, I was talking with Harlan Ellison about something totally unrelated to this column, when from out of the blue he asks me, "So tell me, Ingersoll, are they going to arrest Mrs. Fermin?"
I was taken aback by the question. Not only because it had nothing to do with the subject we had been discussing only seconds earlier, but because I had forgotten who "Mrs. Fermin" was. I told Harlan as much.
"The Mayor's wife in The Question," he replied.
And the light shined upon me, oh my brothers, for I knew whereof he spoke. Or, who of, actually, as Mrs. Fermin was the lady character from The Question who had stabbed the villain of the comic's first story arc in the back
"Probably not," I said. "True, she wasn't acting in self-defense, when she killed Dr. Hatch, but I doubt they'll prosecute her. No one knows about what she did other than the Question, and I don't think he's going to tell anyone about it."
Harlan asked, wasn't the failure to report a felony is a crime? True. So wasn't the Question breaking the law by not telling anyone? Again true. But just as The Question was the only person who knew what Mrs. Fermin did, she was the only person who knew about what he had done. Fermin. And, for obvious reasons of now wanting to admit her own culpability in Hatch's death, I didn't think she was talking, either. Our conversation went back and forth like this for a bit, then Harlan said the whole incident impacted on vigilantism and the morality of heroes. He said there was a good column in it.
Again true. I said I would write it.
Here it is.
******
Let's start, as I usually do, with the assumption that there are some of you who haven't read The Question stories in question and delve into the background a little. (See, those expository background paragraphs in my old columns do serve a purpose. They weren't just to pad out my word rate. This paragraph, on the other hand... Well, a guy's gotta make a living.)
Something's rotten in the city of Hub City. (Somehow Shakespeare made that work much better.) Anyway, what's rotten isn't the meat at Sam 'n' Ella's Snack Shoppe, It's the government that's rotten--which probably makes Hub City indistinguishable from every other major metropolis in the United States. It's not that the mayor is corrupt. On the contrary, Mayor Fermin's an ineffectual drunkard, who's totally controlled by Dr. Jeremiah Hatch. It's Dr. Hatch who's corrupt. And evil. He forced Myra Connelly to marry Mayor Fermin by threatening violence to Myra's child, if she didn't. That's what I like, subtlety. No black and whites in this comic, boy!
That Dr. Hatch is evil should surprise no one. Don Thompson, my esteemed editor, thinks that albinos are the most abused minority in comics, because they are always portrayed as being evil. Not even close, Don. Albinos come in second. There's another group which comic writers portray as evil even more frequently than they do albinos.
Hatch is a minister.
Yes, the evil man of the cloth. Maybe the second-oldest cliché in comics.
Anyway, the Question fought Hatch and his corruption for the first three issues of The Question's self-titled comic, because writer, Denny O'Neil, wanted to explore the ramifications of political corruption in a comic book. All was proceeding according to plan for those three issues. There was political corruption headed by Dr. Hatch. The Question waged a reactive war against it. That is to say, The Question would find out about some new corruption and move to counter it. But he wasn't really able to do anything to fight the problem at the source. He wasn't able to do anything to take out Dr. Hatch.
Then, in issue # 4, Dr. Hatch, for no apparent reason other than that Dr. Hatch--like all villainous comic book ministers--has a grasp on sanity which is one shrimp shy of a barbee, kidnaped Myra's kid and was going to human sacrifice her. And just to make it more interesting, he tied up Myra so she could watch. (Okay, there was another reason. The story needed to end this issue. What better way to undo deep-seated political corruption and all seated in one man (and do it all in only one issue) than suddenly turn that man into a raving loonie? No controlling interest, no corruption.
The Question stopped Hatch and freed Myra and the kid. Then he picked up Hatch, held the sacrificial knife to Hatch's throat, and told Hatch how much he wanted to kill him, but couldn't, because--all together now!--that would make him no better than Hatch. (As comic book cliches go, in "that would make me no better than you," we've found the only one that may be older than the evil minister.) Anyway, having frightened Hatch nearly to death, The Question started to leave, leaving Hatch a blubbering idiot kneeling on the floor, blabbering incoherently and, no doubt, leaving untidy stains on the floor.
At this point of the story, Hatch was, as I said, kneeling on the floor, babbling nonsense and no longer in a position to kill or harm anyone. It was at this point that Myra shoved the point of the knife right through Hatch. From behind!
That was not self-defense. Self-defense is the use of deadly force by someone who is in fear for his or her life from an attacker who is presently able to inflict serious physical harm or death To make this explanation simpler, let me now give you a couple of legal terms of art. Generally, the law calls the person who acts in self-defense "the actor." In the same way, the law calls the person who is killed "the victim." Self-defense has some basic requirements and conditions precedent, which, if they don't exist, preclude the successful invocation of the self-defense doctrine. The first and foremost condition precedent is that the victim must have been presently able to inflict serious physical harm or death upon the actor. If the victim wasn't capable of inflicting serious bodily harm or death, then the actor did not have a reasonable fear of imminent threat to life or body, so couldn't use deadly force. The law just doesn't allow you to use deadly force to repel an attack that isn't coming.
Another condition precedent is that the actor cannot have violated a duty to retreat. This means, if possible the actor must try to retreat, before acting in self defense. If the actor didn't try to retreat, then the actor cannot invoke the doctrine of self-defense. This is because the law wants you killing someone only as a last resort, not as a first strike.
Myra loses on both counts. Not only was Hatch incapable of harming anyone at the time that Myra Ginsued him, Myra could have, but didn't retreat. She could have walked out of the building with The Question and left Hatch to the police. She didn't She not only made like Vlad the Impailer, she did it from the blind side like a blitzing linebacker on an unwary Joe Montana. Want to take a stab at whether stabbing someone in the back qualifies as retreating?
This rather abrupt ending to Rev. Hatch and his reign of corruption makes one wonder about this study in corruption that O'Neil wanted to write. After only four issues he ends it. And the only solution he offers is for the innocent to be corrupted to the point that she knifes the corruptor in the back? With that kind of resolution, one can only hope that Denny never studies the problem of nuclear proliferation.
But enough fun and frolic. There has been a rather disturbing but recurring theme in comics of late; one repeated in The Question and one that I find rather distasteful: the hero acting as judge and jury by deciding who should be tried and punished.
But, you ask, don't all super-heroes do that when they capture super-villains? No. Most super-heroes see (or hear about) a crime being committed and act to stop the criminal. Then they turn the criminal over to the police, so that said evildoer can be prosecuted and maybe convicted, by the system. When the hero acts in this way, he or she isn't acting above the law by deciding who should be punished. Rather he or she is acting within the system and is even assisting it, just as you or I would assist the system by making a citizen's arrest. In fact, that's all the standard super-hero really does, effect a citizens arrest on a criminal whose super-human abilities make him too powerful for the police. Which doesn't explain why those busy super-heroes don't leave for the police those villains even you or I could beat, like The Ringer.
Some "heroes"--and I use the term loosely, because I find nothing heroic about anarchy--believe they are better than the system. They know better than any prosecutor, judge, or jury who should be punished and who should not and usually they claim to know what that punishment should be. (Invariably, it is death.) These "heroes" are extremely distasteful to me, because they seek to supplant the wisdom of said system with their lone, warped version of justice. These "heroes" are vigilantes in the classic since of the word, as opposed to the rather free and inaccurate use of the word by J. Jonah Jameson. These "heroes" are acting like the members of a reconstruction Vigilance Committee at a lynching. These "heroes" are marked by moral ambiguity at best and by immorality at worst. These "heroes" I can do without.
Question joined their ranks, when he failed to report Myra's act of murder. Yes, that's what Myra did; she murdered Jeremiah Hatch. It was a bad act, one deserving arrest and prosecution so that the system could decide if the homicide was justified.
By refusing to turn Myra in for her murder, an act which is itself a crime, the Question allowed his wisdom (or lack thereof), his moral ambiguity to supplant that of the system. It was a bad act, though not as bad as those of, say, Adrian Chase.
Barely.
Bob Ingersoll<< 10/30/2001 | 11/06/2001 | 11/13/2001 >>
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