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THE LAW IS A ASS for 09/24/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 163
Originally written as installment # 145 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 772, September 2, 1988 issue
For the record, any of you who think the problem discussed in this column went away, you haven't been reading the Marvel Max line.
******
THE LAW IS A ASS
Installment # 163
by
BOB INGERSOLL
It was, to employ one of my typically pretentious literary allusions, Benjamin Franklin who wrote, "in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." It's obvious that Dr. Franklin didn't have TV, movies, or comic books in mind. The fact that none of them had been invented in 1789 only has a little to do with it. Even if they had been, Dr. Franklin's phrase would still be inaccurate.
In current TV, movies, and comic book stories, taxes are all but unknown, while death is as plentiful as ice cubes at a business lunch. You can't open TV Guide without seeing numerous shows full of indiscriminate violence, destruction, and death. And once you get past the Saturday morning cartoons to Australian Rules Football on ESPN, the fun really starts. Every newspaper's movie listings contain ads for the newest offerings with Clint E., Charles B., or Jason V--each of which contains a body count higher than the Titanic's but all of which combined can't equal the carnage from any one reel of whichever Roman numeral Rambo movie we're up to now.
But let's talk comics. Comics, like Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, aren't just for kids anymore. So, anyway, the major publishers keep telling us. To prove it, the publishers give us what they call adult fare. Does this mean intelligent, thought provoking stories about intelligent, thought provoking people with intelligent, thought provoking problems that prompt intelligent, thought provoking thoughts--or any kind of thoughts? Sometimes. Usually, it means stories that attempt adult themes--albeit in very simplistic ways--by having the protagonists respond to their problems both with bad words and in more graphically excessive ways than before. Stories that are, to use the word so much in the vogue, grittier.
Gritty: it's a perfect description. Think of grit and you picture food that has been contaminated with something hard and irritating and distasteful. In comics, gritty usually translates into death. Stories wherein the protagonist kills people with no more thought or regard or conscience than you or I would use to slap an annoying mosquito.
Witness, for example, the Catwoman story in Action Comics Weekly # 614. Catwoman wants to get vengeance on Arthur, a man who killed a friend of hers. To do this she breaks into Arthur's apartment, subdues two security guards--guards whose only transgression was that they tried to shake Arthur down earlier in the story--and pitches them out of a nineteenth story window, then frames Arthur for the murders. The result: Arthur is tried and will be convicted of two murders.
Catwoman felt no remorse that she murdered two people? Arthur got his, so the ending was happy. Catwoman was happy.
I was furious.
Sure a murderer got what was coming to him. But at the price of two innocent men whose peccadillos did not warrant death. Still, the story with its damnable happy ending advocates the immoral belief that because Arthur was caught, everything is fine; two murders notwithstanding.
It isn't. Justice at the price of willful murder is too costly and isn't justice. Any story which tells you otherwise is a bad, even evil, story.
Of course Catwoman is a super-villain. She's not supposed to act like the good guys. Except, Catwoman has usually been shown as a sympathetic character; a Raffles-like thief whose actions and star-crossed love for the Batman made us silently root for her. For a while, she was even a super-heroine. And by murdering someone, Catwoman was acting like one of the good guys.
Like, for example, the Punisher--Death Wish in navy blue Spandex. In The Punisher # 12, we learn that the continued existence of one Gary Saunders bothers the Punisher. Saunders is a serial killer and Ted Bundy clone who's been on death row for four years. Saunders is still appealing his case and hasn't had his date with the executioner yet. This is unsatisfactory to Punisher. He decides to break Saunders out of jail, so that he can kill Saunders himself.
A troublesome concept at best, and not just because the total botch which Punisher made of the job almost permitted both Saunders and a Charlie Manson live-alike to escape. It is more troublesome because it preaches that some people are not entitled to their constitutional right to due process of law.
We might as well get this out of the way right up front: I do not believe in the death penalty. Killing another human in the name of justice and retribution is immoral, impractical, and not even cost effective. However, my opinion of the death penalty, or yours for that matter, is also immaterial and I'm not going to talk about it anymore. (Don't bother writing letters. I don't intend to clutter future columns debating the pros or cons of capital punishment.)
However, if the death penalty is to be imposed, it can only be imposed by the government and after the condemned has had the fullest due process of law possible. Only in this way can we be reasonably certain that the death penalty is being imposed on the right person and for the right reason. If due process of law--which always includes the full exercise of appeal rights--is not to be afforded to those on death row, then there are no safeguards which prevent the death penalty from being imposed arbitrarily or capriciously; such as for the race of the victim or the religion of the accused.
No one except the state--after it has afforded the accused his full panoply of due process--can impose the death penalty. This is especially true for obsessed psychotics in blue body suits who have their own comic books wherein they can espouse vigilante lynchings and murder which, because they are voiced by the protagonists without anyone to represent responsibly any opposing viewpoint, seem correct.
Of course, the Punisher is a vigilante and outlaw. His views toward murder aren't the views of a mainstream society authority figure. Say someone in the government. Say Amanda Waller.
In Checkmate # 8, Amanda Waller wants to kill Black Thorn--Black Thorn being yet another obscessed, psychotic vigilante whose modus operandi is to kill criminals. "The Wall wants to kill Black Thorn, because Black Thorn is a security risk. At least in this story, Ms. Waller is shown to be in the wrong, so the story does take a somewhat more civilized and responsible position toward the morality of murder, even if it also makes a heorine out of the murderess, Black Thorn.
Two quick asides on Checkmate # 8. One: Black Thorn wins by blackmailing Waller with sensitive information Waller doesn't want disclosed. Should a certain confederate not hear from Black Thorn once a week at a pre-arranged time, he will release the information publicly. Not only is this tactic indigestibly cliched; it wouldn't work. Waller heads several spy agencies with agents who should either be able to spy on Black Thorn until they can get the information back--then it's bye bye Black Thorn--or they have no business being in the the spy business.
Two: Checkmate # 8 shows us another aspect of the adult comic. For three pages Black Thorn engages in a fight scene dressed only in a skimpy night gown and panties, which shows even more of her milky white flesh than the obligatory cut-outs on her skin tight costume.
Of course, Amanda Waller runs a governmental agency akin to the CIA. Nowadays, no one trusts the CIA. So maybe it's not typical of how real comic-book heroes act. How does a more traditional super-hero act in these days of grittier comics? Say Robin, the Boy Wonder?
Well, in Batman # 424, Robin encounters Felipe, a multiple rapist and drug dealer, who defiles and persecutes an innocent woman until she commits suicide, but who can't be prosecuted himself because of diplomatic immunity. At the end of the story Robin is so enraged by Felipe's smugness, that he confronts the rapist in his penthouse, and Felipe falls to his death. (At the rate bodies pitch from Gotham City windows, I'm glad I'm not a Gotham street cleaner.) The question is: did Felipe fall or did Robin push him?
It doesn't matter. Felipe was set up to be so vile, so degenerate, so much the straw man of evil personified that the reader was manipulated into hoping Robin did toss the scum. Again, the position regarding the taking of another man's life is callous and dehumanizing.
It remained that way in Batman # 425, wherein Robin suffered the "Consequences" of his actions. Were the consequences that Robin felt remorse about what he had done? That he realized the taking of another man's life is not to be condoned or glorified? That if he pushed Felipe or scared Felipe into falling; he was wrong to take another man's life?
No, the consequences of Robin's acts were that Felipe's father kidnapped Commissionar Gordon for his revenge and, in the course of the rescue, Gordon was wounded in the left arm but four more murdering drug dealers died by their own hands. Talk about your college of hard knocks! I'll bet if you asked, Gordon would be so upset that he'd offer his right arm for a crack at four more.
But Robin is the partner of the Batman, who is, himself, an obsessed vigilante only a few degrees removed from the Punisher. What about a more traditional super-hero. Like Superman?
Superman, who can bend steel in his bare hands, change the course of mighty rivers, and, in Superman # 22, act as judge, jury, and executioner, when he tried and killed General Zod, Quex-ul, and Zaora.
This concept, Superman as a murderer, was very troubling. Superman has always been the personification of all that is good and noble and pure in us, the essence of humanity. He doesn't kill anyone, for he could always find a better, more humane way. There were alternatives to killing the Phantom Zone villains which Superman could have--and should have--pursued. Superman's failure to find a better way cheapens us all.
However, if I am angered by Superman's having murdered, at least I must commend the stories which have followed, wherein Superman is deeply troubled by what he has done. In the months to come, he will confront his own personal demons over his actions. I hope it will be an honest and adult portrayal of what is a very serious, adult theme and not just a cop-out story line which runs for a few issues then peters out when someone's attention span lapses. An honest and adult story about how a man deals with the fact that he has killed and which treats killing in a sensitive and adult manner would be a noble effort. One which could even make me learn to tolerate grit.
As long as it's not on my breakfast plate.
Bob Ingersoll
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