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Join us each Tuesday as Bob Ingersoll analyzes how the law
is portrayed in comics then explains how it would really work.
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THE LAW IS A ASS for 07/16/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 153
Originally written as installment # 282 and published in World Famous Comics July 16, 2002
And sometimes something good can come out of the mess our industry has gotten itself into.
Quite a while ago, I produced several columns for Comics Buyer's Guide, which they never got to run. Unfortunately, CBG's page count is directly proportional to its ad page count and, with the industry being in its current doldrums, the ad page count for CBG is way down. More unfortunately, this means that my column doesn't run anywhere near as often as either CBG or I would like. The column which will run on this page this week, and the one which will run ext week, are columns I originally wrote for CBG which they were never able to run and which have become so dated, that I decided to pull them and run them on this page.
I mean for this page, which is presently re-printing columns I wrote in 1988, a column I worte in 2001, will seem positively timely.
THE LAW IS A ASS
Installment # 153
by
BOB INGERSOLL
So, after all the fussing and fighting--the Princess's love for someone from "the Man's World;" the Queen's selfishly forbidding her daughter from leaving Paradise Island to prevent queenly loneliness; the Princess's disguising herself to enter a competition and win the right to go to the Man's World; the tests of strength and agility; the bullets; and the bracelets--after all that, Wonder Woman came to the Man's World to teach us the ways of the Amazons; and the best she could come up with was hypocrisy?
To be sure, our world is hypocritical; one where the self-proclaimed "compassionate" teach people it's wrong to kill people by killing them. Where a woman who gained her fifteen minutes in a sleazy, exploitive, publicly televised marriage announced she wanted out of the spotlight and did this by posing nude in Playboy, while the rest of us just wondered what took her so long.
But if the Man's World is hypocritical, Wonder Woman provided the lesson plan back in 1943 and Wonder Woman # 4; or, if you go by the reprints, Wonder Woman Archives Volume 2. Back then, Wonder Woman's most persistent enemy, other than the sheer stupidity of her stories, was Baroness Paula von Gunther. The Baroness was a Nazi spy, a kidnapper, a murderer, a white slaver, a saboteur, and a really bad dresser. Carmen Miranda's hats were positively sedate compared to Paula's peplumed pantaloons. Paula kidnaped girls and forced them to attend her school for espionage, used a brainwashing machine to turn Steve Trevor and others into Nazi agents (which really honked off the Amazing Amazon), spoiled milk so that in twenty years America's milk-starved children would be too weak to fight the invading Nazis (talk about your long-range plans!), turned our movies into vehicles for Axis propaganda, and wore bracelets even Mr. T. would find gaudy.
But Paula's heart was never in it. We learned in Wonder Woman # 3, she only did the things she did, because the Nazis held her daughter, Gerta, prisoner and threatened to kill Gerta unless the Baroness spied for them. So, when Wonder Woman rescued Gerta from the Nazis, Paula pledged her life to Wonder Woman's service.
Which brings us to the law part of our program. (The hypocrisy part comes later. But the law part's most important anyway, it's what pays the bills.) Having a new-found ally who had pledged undying service to the Paladin of Paradise Island, wouldn't do Wonder Woman much good, if said ally had to spend the rest of her life in prison. So we find in the third story of Wonder Woman # 3, the trial of Paula von Gunther.
Because it was Wonder Woman's comic, she was co-counsel for the defense. At first I wondered where Wonder Woman got her legal training, then I remembered: Wonder Woman is a clay statue brought to life by magic. Having a clay body, puts her not just one up but several up on most attorneys; we only have feet of clay. And, truth be told, Wonder Woman made a better attorney than most super heroes drafted into trial work. When the prosecution argued it would prove Paula was guilty of murder, Wonder Woman correctly objected that Paula had already been tried and convicted for those crimes. Already Wonder Woman showed knowledge of both double jeopardy and the rule that the prosecution can't use a defendant's prior bad acts to prove guilt. Super heroes? Hell, Wonder Woman showed more legal knowledge than many judges.
Wonder Woman even had a defense strategy. She argued Paula was insane. Paula couldn't tell right from wrong, because the Nazis held her daughter captive and would kill her if the Baroness didn't cooperate. Okay, maybe an incorrect strategy, because Paula didn't have a mental illness so couldn't be legally insane, but it was a strategy. And who knows? Maybe Wonder Woman could even make it work by arguing Paula was so depressed over her daughter's captivity that she didn't know right from wrong. Depression is a mental illness. And, if insanity weren't available, Wonder Woman could also have argued duress: that Paula had no choice but to spy for the Nazis or they would kill her daughter.
Fortunately for Paula, she had a nice, convincing and believable super-heroine arguing on her behalf and the jury found her not guilty. If I made the same arguments, I doubt the jury would have been so forgiving. But Wonder Woman managed to pull it off, and in only six panels. (Hmmm, Wonder Woman used six panels. When Captain Marvel prosecuted Mr. Mind, he got a conviction in ten panels. It's enough to make you wish Barry (The Flash) Allen had acted as his own attorney all those years ago.)
So Wonder Woman got Paula acquitted and Paula helped Wonder Woman. Now comes the hypocrisy. Remember how it was bad when Paula used her brainwashing machine to turn American soldiers into Nazi spies? So how come one issue later, in the aforementioned Wonder Woman # 4, Paula and Wonder Woman used the brainwashing machine to force American rubber manufacturers to donate their rubber-making formula to the war effort rather than destroy it, when the government wouldn't meet their price? How come it was all right for Wonder Woman to brainwash businessmen and force them to give away their property? Isn't that a case of the ends justifying the means? And fighting people who believed the ends justify the means, wasn't that what World War II was all about? But there Wonder Woman was, justifying her means with her ...
Wait, I don't think I can go there.
Like I said, Wonder Woman was a hypocrite and brought her hypocrisy to the Man's World. Still, it is nice to know that Wonder Woman was able to teach us more of the Amazons' ways than how to set up an on-line bookstore.
******
BOB INGERSOLL can be found at P.O. Box 24314, Lyndhurst, OH 44124-0314 or law@wfcomics.com. In between all my work as a public defender in Cleveland, Ohio and the legal analyst for World Famous Comics, I just remembered something else World War II was all about. It wasn't just fighting people who believed the ends justified the means. It was also about providing programming for The History Channel.
Bob Ingersoll
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