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THE LAW IS A ASS for 06/25/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 150
Originally written as installment # 134 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 751, April 8, 1988 issue
This column addresses one of my pet peeves in fiction: the concept that a person who commits not just a single crime but a whole series of crimes--and major crimes, to boot--will get off, simply because some outside pressure or a really bad day forced him into it. "Oh he wasn't just a bad guy, he just snapped, because he had a really bad hair day.
Well, I don't care how bad the day was, the person should still be held accountable for his crimes. Maybe the bad day and the pressure and all might go to ameliorate the sentence imposed. But it doesn't excuse the crimes committed. Not even if the bad hair was the Hell Toupee
******
THE LAW IS A ASS
Installment # 150
by
BOB INGERSOLL
I've been studying prisons, and I've developed a startling new theory on what the authorities should do to revolutionize the prison system in the DC universe.
They should build some.
You remember prisons, don't you? Big, squat, ugly, grey buildings with guards and guns and watchtowers and razor wire and stone walls that depress the surrounding property values. The place where people are incarcerated after they break the laws under justifications ranging from rehabilitation, so their criminal tendencies are obliterated; to warehousing, so the streets are empty of criminals; to retribution, so society can get back at the people that did it wrong.
I remember prisons.
I remember Mirror Master learning from the prison paper that he wasn't first on the super-villains' poll, and breaking out of prison to institute a massive crime spree designed to vault him back into the number one position. I remember Lex Luthor intentionally wearing his grey prison uniform for that extra anti-Superman edge he'd get by reminding himself that the Man of Steel put him behind bars. (I remember it, even if I never completely understood it.) I remember the Wonder Woman villain, Mouse Man, sitting in a bird cage suspended from the ceiling of his cell, because he was so small he could walk between the bars of his cell door. As I said, I remember prisons.
But that was before the Crisis On Infinite Earths and I have so-called pre-Crisis memories. Now, half the super-villains in the reconstituted DC universe are insane. They're sent to Arkham. Arkham isn't a prison, it's an asylum. The other half of the super-villains--the half that isn't insane--is sent to Belle Reve. Belle Reve isn't a prison, either. It's a recruitment center for The Suicide Squad.
I can understand this. Prisons are expensive. They have to be built out of the sturdiest, most expensive materials possible. Let's face it, a prison with cells made out of drywall just isn't going to get the job done. So, I can understand why prison officials don't want to put super-villains into their prisons, where said super-villains will knock those sturdy, expensive walls down and create tremendous cost overruns. Still, I thought the ordinary bad guys--you know the street punks which the super-heroes beat up on in the first seven pages of a comic so that what would otherwise be an eight-page story can be stretched out into a two-part, pulse-pounding, power packed epic--I thought they would go to prison.
But I guess not, otherwise Professor Emil Hamilton would be in prison.
The first time we saw Professor Hamilton was in Adventures of Superman # 424, where we learned he had developed a machine which could harness magnetic waves and turn them into a force field even Superman's super-strength couldn't crack. We also learned that the government had cut off his funding, because it believed that his machine was dangerous. The government didn't think Professor Hamilton knew what he was doing. The Feds got suspicious of him, when they learned that Hamilton was only charging thirty dollars for a screw.
The next time we saw Professor Hamilton was in Adventures of Superman # 425. In that story (and stay with me, because it gets a little complicated), Lex Luthor claimed that Professor Hamilton created his force field machine on Lexcorp company time, so the process belonged to Luthor. Hamilton refused to surrender his machine, so Luthor sent some muscle--two guys to hold the professor's arms, while a third guy beat the professor up. Luthor should have sent only one guy and a pair of handcuffs. Not only would it have been more cost-effective, it would have introduced a new form of binding arbitration.
Hamilton went to the police for protection. The police didn't help, because Hamilton couldn't prove it was Luthor that beat him up, which was silly. I mean, just because Hamilton couldn't prove who was beating him up, someone was. The police should have helped him stop it from happening, then arrested the people who were doing it, and worry about proving who was doing it after they had stopped them from doing it.
Hamilton went to the Defense Department, but they wouldn't help, because they still thought the machine wasn't safe. Which, again, is silly. Just because the Defense Department thinks a potential weapon isn't safe, doesn't mean it wouldn't want to keep said weapon out of criminal hands.
Later, Professor Hamilton used his machine to contain the damage created by a fight between Superman and a Transformer from Qurac. Unfortunately, he was ignored by the adoring public which wanted to thank Superman and didn't believe that his machine actually helped. The last guy who had one of those days where everything goes wrong that lasted this long was Noah's next door neighbor.
Professor Hamilton cracked. He wanted the world to stop ignoring him. He wanted to prove his force field was safe. He decided to prove it was safe by killing Superman with it.
You were expecting maybe logic? Get serious! This was a scientist in a comic book. Scientists in comic books do things like trying to prove an experiment is dangerously unstable by intentionally turning off the fail-safe devices and then, when the system overloads, saying, "See, the fail-safe devices didn't keep the system from overloading."
Anyway, Hamilton kidnaped a woman, tied her up, held a gun to her head, and kept her hostage on Fifth Avenue until Superman showed up. When Superman did arrive, Hamilton surrounded Superman and the street with his force field. Hamilton, who had set several death traps along the street, then told Superman he would free the girl, if Superman would walk up the street and through the gauntlet of death. (And they say good incentives are hard to find!). Superman's death would prove the effectiveness of Hamilton's machine to a doubting world. Of course, so would using it to stop a charging rhinoceros. I guess that's the disadvantage of living in a big city, there's never a charging rhino around, when you really need it.
Superman successfully navigated the gauntlet and captured Professor Hamilton. When we last saw Hamilton, he was in the Metropolis city jail awaiting trial on what should have been charges including kidnapping in the first degree, at least six counts of attempted murder in the first degree (remember, impossibility isn't a defense to an attempt crime), about a bazillion counts of criminal mischief in the first degree (A.K.A. vandalism). Yes, I said jail. They do appear to have jails--the place you go while awaiting trial--in the DC universe; they just don't have prisons--the place you go after you've been convicted. Or maybe no one's convicted in the DC universe. Maybe they all get off on technicalities. That would certainly explain how Adrian Chase kept on finding work.
I figured that would be the last we saw of Professor Hamilton for a while. After all, according to Superman # 16 attempted murder and kidnap are capital offenses in Metropolis. After he was convicted--and there is no doubt that Hamilton would have been convicted; he hid his crimes about as well as you can hide a full grown camel in a rain coat--Hamilton should have received either a real hefty prison term or the death penalty.
So why did we learn in Adventures of Superman # 439 that Professor Hamilton, "a fairly harmless sort of... mad scientist," as Clark Kent put it, is not only not in prison, but Clark's pen pal? (No pun intended.) And why did we learn in Adventures of Superman # 440 that Hamilton not only still possesses his force field apparatus but has perfected it and miniaturized it to the extent that it can be housed in a belt and that Professor Hamilton is actively working with Superman to perfect Superman robots?
Hamilton can't have gotten the same sweetheart deal that Doctor Thomas Moyers, the nitwit scientist with the aforementioned deactivated fail-safe devices, got in Superman Annual # 1; you know the one where Moyers stayed a free man by giving his discovery to the Pentagon. After all, the Pentagon didn't want Hamilton's discovery, so he didn't have a bargaining chip. So why, I asked myself, wasn't Hamilton in prison?
The closest we got to an explanation from Adventures of Superman # 440 was Superman's statement that working with Hamilton was, "the least [Superman] could do, considering all the trouble you got into courtesy of Lex Luthor." That explanation is to logical jurisprudence what the Titanic was to maritime insurance. I don't care how much pressure Luthor was exerting on Hamilton to get the field generator or how anxious Hamilton was to get attention and accolades; neither excuses kidnapping or attempted murders. If the Maytag Repair Man went berserk from all those years of loneliness and beat people to death with the lint trap, would we forgive him because his obsolescence drove him to it? Is the Pope Jewish? Does love really mean never having to say you're sorry?
Professor Emil Hamilton should have been convicted of kidnapping, several attempted murders, and several more counts of criminal mischief. He should be behind bars for a good long time; at least until Ronald Reagan's hair turns grey. He isn't. And, I can't think of any good reason why he isn't except for the one I mentioned earlier. They don't have any prisons in the DC universe anymore.
I figure first, I'll explain to the government how you build a prison and what you use it for. Then I'll trade my law degree in on a steel foundry and a cement plant. My fortune will be made!
******
Now a quick aside. I noted with a certain sense of deja vu that the Doom Patrol may have some problems, because their presence in Kansas City will drive that city's insurance rates up. The fact that this would make the second DC comic to use this sub-plot isn't what I want to write about, however. What I want to write about is the following sentence from Doom Patrol # 8, "How long do you think the city's insurancers are going to stand for this?"
"Insurancers?"
My dictionary is big. It has over 2,600 pages of incredibly small type. And nowhere in those 2,600 plus pages can I find the word, "insurancer". Of course, I can't find the word, "Mxypztlk," either.
Maybe I should get a new dictionary.
Bob Ingersoll
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