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THE LAW IS A ASS for 03/12/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 136
Originally written as installment # 123 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 733, December 4, 1987 issue
You know the best thing about these "Mail Call" columns, when I answer the questions my readers send me? I don't have to think up a topic. That means I get to turn off my brain even more than usual!
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 136
by
Bob Ingersoll
I have this little tradition with Don and Maggie: every year at the July Chicago Convention, I give them an installment of this column. What can I say? I'm cheap, and twenty-two cents is twelve cents. Nine cents. Seven cents. (This stock market thing is real disconcerting!) This tradition has a long history. Tony Isabella actually hand-delivered the first two installments of the column during the 1983 Chicago Convention, when I couldn't go.
How was I to know that Don and Maggie would start paying me back?
At the 1987 Chicago Convention, I went up to them to deliver one simple column installment--six little manuscript pages. They cheerfully responded by giving me this mountain of mail that Federal Express would have charged double to deliver. I take that back. Fed Ex would have charged double just to come to my office and tell me they would absolutely, positively have to charge triple to deliver it.
I don't mind telling you it intimidated me. (I don't mind telling you that, because I figure I need an excuse for waiting over three months to answer the mail.) But today, I'm going to answer it. And tomorrow too!
First up: I want to thank Randy Freeman of Riverside, California for the handbook on the California Laws Relating to Youthful Offenders. I once wondered in a column if the California Youth Authority really could retain jurisdiction over its little --er--charges, until the age of twenty-five. Now I know they can. I also know every other aspect of California Youthful Offenders Law you could want. If the Final Jeopardy category is ever California Youthful Offender Law, I could wager my whole bank roll. (Provided, of course, that I had a bank roll. Where does Jeopardy find three contestants per day that actually know six facts about east Asian landscape architects or the romantic dramatists of Tutankhamon's Egypt?)
To Steve Coyle of Centerville, Virginia and Howard Wornom of Hampton in the same state: Thank you for the kind words. It's for people like you that I write the column in the first place. Well, people like you and the money. But the thanks are still heartfelt.
Candy Carter from Council Bluffs, Iowa wanted to know what crimes Brother Blood had committed in Teen Titans # 31 which would have permitted the police to arrest his henchmen. I suggest assault with a deadly weapon, to wit: a costume so gaudy it causes eyestrain.
Seriously, Sandy, as you pointed out in the letter, the Titans suspected that Blood had kidnaped some of their members. There was a good reason for that. Blood had kidnaped some of their members. Then he tried to kill the others. That's enough to get him and his henchmen arrested. Whether or not it was enough to get them convicted is another question.
Don't ask it.
To answer the question of Timonty Gunn of Glen Burnie, Maryland: yes, smoking in a no-smoking section is a violation of local laws. And yes, blowing smoke the face of someone who requests that one not smoke in a no-smoking section is a civil battery for which the smokee could sue the smoker. (Legal terms of art there.) If Tim undertakes such a suit on behalf of we non-smokers who feel that no one else has the right to expose us to the proven dangers of passive smoking, I wish him every success. Unfortunately, the law does not recognize the right to sue someone for his pig-headed truculence.
Brian Caden of Cincinnati, Ohio wondered whether Fury committed the crimes of trespassing, vandalism, or breaking and entering, when she trashed Silver Scarab's place in Infinity, Inc. # 42. Probably. But who's going to press charges? Silver Scarab? He's dead. (For now anyway. If he comes back to life--and don't they all?--it had better be within the Statute of Limitations.
Brian also wanted to know if Fury could win a paternity suit against Silver Scarab, seeing as he claimed he was no longer Hector Hall. Not any more, Brian. See the preceding paragraph.
I'm sorry, Donald Alan Webster of Harperville, Georgia, I can't do the column on the movie, The Untouchables, that you suggested. As you, no doubt, know, I've already done it and Don and Maggie would frown on my re-writing and re-submitting it. However, you might be interested to know some facts that Max Alan Collins told me at the last Chicago Convention. Max has done extensive research into the career of Eliot Ness for the Eliot-Ness-in-Cleveland books he's writing for Bantam. Max told me they really did switch the jury in Capone's trial for another jury, because they suspected jury tampering. But they switched the jury before the trial began. Certainly a more sensible tactic than that shown in the movie: switching the jury after all the evidence against Capone had come in. The way the movie had it, the jury didn't hear any evidence and didn't know who was who or what was what. When the court asked it how it found the defendant, it would have had to answer, "We looked next to his lawyer."
Jon Knutson of San Francisco, California sent me a list of laws he drafted to regulate the behavior of super-heroes and asked me if they were enforceable. Not as written, Jon. Your laws are too broad. For example, you define Special Movement Abilities as including running "in speeds exceeding those of Olympic athletes." Does that mean that someone who breaks the 440 record in the Pan Am Games, thus not an Olympic athlete, is a super-hero? How about someone who is faster than an Olympic athlete who just doesn't want to try out for the team?
Yes, I'm making light, of the situation. We're talking hypothetical laws to cover the activities of fictional characters. How serious can we take it? Jon's statutes were still too broad to be enforceable, though.
Ron Courtney of Urbana, Virginia and Steve Sullivan of Kansasville, Wisconsin both asked me about what happens to old characters or stories once their copyright expires and they enter public domain. Can these stories be reprinted? Are the characters up for grabs? (Why do I get the feeling there are lots of publishers out there dying to revive the exploits of such golden age notables as The Red Bee?)
Once the copyright expires, the story is in public domain. That means it is free and open to the public at large. Any story in the public domain can be reprinted by anyone. However, while the stories might be available for printing, the characters in the stories might not be. You see, while a copyright has a limited life span, a trademark is automatically renewed each time it's used. For example, the copyrights on the earliest Tarzan stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs have expired, but the trademark on Tarzan is still active and held by an organization which guards it quite assiduously. Thus, if you tried to print Tarzan stories, ERB might not be able to stop you with a copyright infringement suit, but they could stop you from using the name Tarzan on the cover of your publication with a trademark infringement suit. And, if you can't use the name Tarzan, do you want to bother reprinting the story? In the end there is no difference.
You can check to see if a copyright or trademark is still active. The easiest way is to write the Library of Congress or the Office to Trademark--depending on which of the two you want to check. Ask them for a search, pay them the relatively inexpensive fee, and they'll do the checking for you.
One more thing. Remember the Red Bee? Don't use him. DC's trademark on the character is still active. Beside which he's dead. (I'd never forgive myself, if I didn't do everything in my power to keep that character from being revived.)
To J. B. of San Antonio, Texas (I didn't use your full name, because I can't believe you really meant what you said in your letter, and I didn't want to embarrass you), I don't care if Astoria from the Cerebus rape scene has been, as you put it, "a manipulative bitch," she didn't deserve it.
Rape is foul. No one ever deserves it. EVER!
Do you think I made myself clear?
Now stay tuned for next week's installment of "The Law Is a Ass." In it I'll answer the second half of the mail mountain.
What a racket! I get paid for being a pen-pal.
Bob Ingersoll
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