7 posts from October 2009

Those poor schmucks in the video above decided to disguise themselves during their break-in by scribbling over their features with a black marker. Shockingly, It didn’t work.

 

But dammit! This would have worked in a comic book! Hell, all you need a domino mask or a pair of glasses to fool your most intimate friends and family. Clark Kent worked around photographers and even as an anchor man for a while and no one spotted that he was also Superman who was constantly in the news!

 

Hell, you don’t even need glasses! Take a peek at the disguises of the original Flash and Doll Man!  The Flash’s disguise was a dopey metal hat that might keep the CIA from beaming their mind controlling messages into brain (Stop denying CIA! We all know that the Culinary Institute of America is really a front for our alien overlords!), but it would hardly fool people into thinking you weren’t who you are.

 

Doll Man’s disguise was short shorts! Granted, Doll Man’s legs might have been distracting and he was small, but I’ve been able to recognize dolls based on famous people I barely know, so I’m pretty sure I’d recognize my friend if he was doll-sized.

 

Of course, the worst is the original Black Condor who had nothing to disguise his identity except that his bare chest might have drawn the eye away from his face.  Additionally, when the Black Condor, Richard Grey, Jr., was unable to save Senator Thomas Wright, Richard just took over his identity and no one noticed. That’s right! Not only didn’t people notice that a U.S. Senator was replaced by some guy raised by condors, they didn’t notice that it was the same guy who was flying around the Capital Building even though he did nothing to conceal his identity except take his clothes off. One of the people who didn’t notice was Senator Thomas Wright’s fiancée, Wendy, who Richard also appropriated with the Senator Thomas Wright identity. I will remind you that the Black Condor was the hero of his comic and not repugnant identity thief and rapist.

 

So be proud scribble faced crooks! Sure, you were caught in part because you had no way to remove the indelible ink from you faces before you were confronted, but you stand in long and illustrious line of American heroes with terrible, terrible disguises! Things may look bad for you know, but remember, no one will recognize you as those dimwitted burglars when you get out of jail, clean faced, years from today!

 

But just to be on the safe side, I'd invest in a pair of glasses.

Ant-Man, the Wasp, Swarm, The Queen Bee, all of them control insects. And guys like The Bug-Eyed Bandit used mechanical insects in their nefarious comic book adventures. Now, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has been working with University of California, Berkeley to create remotely controlled cyborg insects!

 

 

 

 

Electrodes were implanted into the pupal stage of a beetle. That beetle grows to a winged adult, and scientists could fly it around a room, controlling its direction with a lab top!

 

DARPA hopes to create a Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) using this technology that could carry ... who knows what? Tiny spying microphones! Electromagnetic field generators to scramble computers! Poison darts! It’s the Defense Department!

 

Read the story here!

This guy may be the best person you will ever see.

 

You may have watched Danyl Johnson’s audition for X-Factor, a British talent contest. It deservedly got loads of hits. It got me watching the show via YouTube.

 

So less deservedly on the show are a pair of Irish twins, who on diva week covered Brittany’s Oops, I Did It Again, which you can see above. Let’s for a moment forget the terrible singing and dreadful dancing and concentrate on the that weird segment where one twin presents the other with the diamond necklace from Titanic, arguably the most famous love story this generation. So are they saying they are in love with each other? Or because the song is about fooling some guy into thinking you are in love with him, is this suggesting that one twin is tricking the other into thinking he’s in love with him? Did they just feel they had to do it because it was in the original video? And what do the garment racks and motorcycle outfits have to do with the song or their romance? Is this supposed to be campy? I don’t know what the fuck it’s supposed to be.

 

But it’s not that innocent.

Unless you’ve been living on an alternate Earth where news organizations concern themselves with actual news, you are familiar with “Balloon Boy,”  a.k.a. Falcon Heene, the six year old who supposedly flew away on a flying-saucer shaped,  experimental weather balloon and disappeared before the balloon landed. As it turns out, Falcon was hiding in box in his garage and the whole thing may have been a hoax cooked up by his attention seeking parents. On one interview, Wolf Blitzer asked why Falcon didn’t come out of his box when he heard his parents calling for him. Falcon couldn’t hear Wolf, so Falcon’s father asked him, and Falcon said, “Umm, you guys said that ... mmm ... we did this for the show.” More than a little fishy, eh? And watch how dad hems and haws while trying not ask his son what he meant by that later. He is soooooo afraid of the answer.

 

Anyway, this story sounds a lot like a comic book origin except in a comic the reason Falcon wasn’t on the balloon when it landed would have been that he’d gained the power of flight from being exposed to cosmic rays or was mistaken for an alien by a race of bird people (Thanagarians?) who gave him flight powers and he had to battle Nazi zeppelins! Seriously, named Falcon and accidentally flown into the stratosphere on a flying saucer shaped balloon? You can’t get much more comic booky than that.

 

In fact, it’s very similar to the origin of The Ray. In that Happy Terrill was in a weather balloon when something went wrong, and Happy had to climb out onto the balloon. He was struck by lightning and voila! The power of flight and light control. Happy’s son gained the same powers because ... well, apparently Happy had lightning in his sperm or something, which sounds like something you’d see in the BDSM section of Xtube.

This ticked me off, so I’m going to write about it; even though, I know I shouldn’t. It’ll just cause grief.

 

OK, in a Spider-Man comic, a guy called the Chameleon disguised himself as Peter Parker and had sexual encounter with Peter’s female roommate that may or may not have been actual sex. When asked if sex between the roommate and the disguised Chameleon was rape because the roommate did not know that she was sleeping with the Chameleon, the author said:

 

My understanding of the definition of rape is that it requires force or the threat of force, so no. Using deception to trick someone into granting consent isn’t quite the same thing.

Which is not to say it isn’t a horrible, evil, reprehensible thing that Chameleon did. He is a bad man.

He insults parapelegics[sic] and dips people in acid too.

 

Most people looking at the question seem to fall into two camps.

 

1. Those who say, “Sex by deception in NY does not constitute rape under NY law, so the author was correct, but the act was still despicably immoral.” (I would be in this group.)
2. Those who say “Even though NY does not call it rape and would not prosecute the act as rape, it is still a form of rape because it is sex without actual consent, no matter what the law says.”

As far as I’m concerned either stance is fine. Although I would absolutely take issue with someone saying the act was not immoral, no one appears to be saying that. Everyone is saying the act was despicable.

 

However, some people looking at responses say that the people responding in the first option above (“It’s not rape as it is defined but it’s still evil.”) are also saying one or more of the following:

 

1. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception is ethical
2. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception is not a big deal.
3. Therefore, sex by this kind of deception should not be illegal.

 

I haven't seen anyone support any of those "therefores," and I know I don't. I think the act, had it been real, would have been terribly unethical, a big deal, and should be illegal. Despite the fact that no one seems to be supporting any of the "therefores" hasn't stopped people from claiming that people support them. One of the people in the “You are claiming that therefore ...” camp is a person going by the name Seafire. Seafire writes:

 

kalinara: one last thing though, I am still not sure the place of legal analysis in this discussion.
I'd give 2 reasons:
1. Just b/c it doesn't meet the legal definition of rape doesn't mean that it isn't rape.
2. More importantly I find it pretty odd that we are willing to have a discussion/analysis on the issue. there have been so many murders in comics have they ever been legally analyzed? I doubt it.
I have a feeling that the only reason why the legal analysis is being used is to say, "Ah well its not legally rape therefore..."
And I would argue that this type of mixing and confusing of legal issues with moral issue that give lawyers the bad reputation that they have.

 

And continues:

 

Madthinker: okay so I give up: why the legal analysis? What purpose does it serve unless it is being used to somehow say, hey its NOT rape.
Why not a legal analysis of the different types of murder that have occurred in comics?
Why not a legal analysis of Black Cat's actions as a thief?
I love analysis of comics for new insights etc. But I am not sure what the purpose of the legal analysis of whether it was rape under the law was.
Okay let's contextualize this; an event occurs, that possibly is a crime. That happens alot in comics. The character has not asked for a lawyer, there is no court room involved, no police action... why the legal analysis?
Are you saying that the purpose of the legal analysis by various blogs of this comic was a lesson in law?
- Seafire, not attacking but genuinely perplexed

 Not attacking, she says. I’ll give you three guesses where this ends up. Keep watching:

 

Madthinker: And just to clarify, we are not even talking about an analysis that involves legal policy; i.e. should this type of situation be considered rape. This is plain and simple an IRAC analysis of a crime. If that is the case, why not IRAC other comic crimes? UNLESS the purpose of the IRAC analysis is to show legally it wasn't rape and therefore absolve Chameleon of his crime.
I personally am a little uncomfortable with the story-line but not as much as other ppl b/c it isn't a violent rape. As notintheface has mentioned in his blog there are other comic stories of this type of deceipt rape. And such stories are also common in folklore, fairy-tales and myths, so I beleive that they have a purpose and reason for existence. That being said I just find it perplexing that we are IRAC-ing this issue. Obviously ppl are not mad over whether it is legally rape or not but whether it is morally/ethically rape or not. And IRAC-ing it does not add anything to the discussion unless you want to make ppl aware about the law to
a. have ppl change the law
b. let ppl know that it wasn't rape and therefore ok
-Seafire

 

Not attacking, just saying that I’m OK with deceiving people into having sex. How could that be seen as an attack on my character? But wait, there’s more “not attacking” to come!

 

(For those of you not in the legal profession, IRAC is an acronym for a method of doing legal analysis that stands for:

 

Issue: this is the question you are trying to answer. In this case, under NY law is obtaining consent for sex by disguising yourself as another person with whom that person would give consent an act of rape?

Rule: this would be all the legislation, case law (decisions of previous cases that were similar to this one), legal definitions, etc. that fit the facts above. kalinara dug that law up, which included a case where a twin pretended to be his brother to have sex with his brother’s girl friend and that was found not to be rape. (Yeah, I was a little surprised too.)

Application: combining the facts of the issue with the rules that you discovered on the topic. In this case, looking at the facts of the Chameleon case and comparing them to the facts of the twin case and the legislation.

Conclusion: your answer to the question posed in the issue. As the facts of the twin case are almost identical to the twin case, one would have to conclude that the Chameleon would not be found guilty of rape in NY; although, he would in other states and countries where the rape laws are written differently.)

 

Seafire continues:

Now as to why this is so upsetting, well for me its upsetting b/c I am a law student. I know that lawyers have a reputation for being amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy, while other professionals such as say doctors who probably prorportionally have the same amount of ppl who are amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy, are generally viewed more favorably.

This is 2x in as many days that I have seen lawyers/law students use either legaleese or legal reasoning in what I personally think are inappropriate ways. In this situation we are having lawyers trying to prove that this "rape" does not fit the criminal definition of rape and therefore isn't rape. Thereby we are absolving the Chameleon of having committed "rape".

 

Not attacking just suggesting that we're contributing to the reputation that legal people have for being amoral, immoral, arrogant, cold-hearted, greedy. And then Seafire ends with this gem:

 

In the end you never responded why this issue is being IRAC-ed and not other issues in comics. Its because at the heart of it many guys hate rape issues and automatically take the stance it wasn't rape. And in this case a lot of guys want to absolve Chameleon of rape. Oh it wasn't rape it was lie.

Okay so Chameleon came to Spider man in the form of MJ and had anal sex. Oh that's not rape, why its only a lie... Peter quit feeling violated. Its kind of cute when you get all upset over this thing. Aww look he's blushing. Poor Peter. Well at least you enjoyed it. And don't press any charges cause you are not going to win. What you want to kick his @$$. Ok Peter that is against the law, you are acting like a vigilante.. hold on let me get my law book out and IRAC it for you.

 

Totally not attacking my character, right?

Anyway, let me respond to Seafire’s question of why this issue is being IRAC-ed and not other issues in comics.

 

First, it was IRAC-ed because if you ask people involved in the legal profession something that looks like a legal question, we tend to respond with a legal answer. “Is this rape?” can be looked at as a religious question, a moral question, a semantic question, or a legal question. All are valid. Legal people, like me and kalinara (a woman who is generally opposed to rape in comics), will tend to give a legal answer.

 

Second, most murders and thefts in comics are pretty clearly crimes. There is no need to IRAC the Joker gassing people to death or the Black Cat steeling jewelry. The answer is clear. The thing speaks for itself.

 

Third, the premise that other issues are not IRAC-ed is absolutely false. Just off the top of my head I remember arguing all of the following comic book legal questions online:

 

1.  Would a confession obtained by Wonder Woman’s lasso be admissible in court? (I decided that it would not be, but given that she is not part of the government, other evidence that she obtained from the confession might be. Evidence based on that confession by agents of the government would probably not be admissible. However, it is entirely possible that a court might find that nothing obtained from the confession would be admissible, no matter who discovered it.)

 

2.  Was Wonder Woman guilt of the murder of Maxwell Lord? (Under laws in the US, I think she would have been. Although, Max made it clear that he would eventually get free to kill again, the affirmative defense of self-defense requires that the threat be eminent. Max was helplessly tied up, so the threat was not eminent so much as it was potential or even eventual. Wonder Woman would not be allowed to kill anyone she thought might pose a serious threat in the future, no matter how correct she might be)

 

3.  Would magical evidence be admissible in a comic book universe court? (The main opponent to magic evidence said that the thought it would be looked at as too suspect to be allowed. I think that magic is so common that it couldn’t be discounted entirely because there would be no way of clearly defining what “magical” even meant. For instance, could a person who had been raised from the dead be prevented from testifying because he was magically alive? Would elves be prevented from testifying? And then there was the problem of convicting people of committing crimes with magic. How could you convict a person of murder by magic if evidence of magic was not allowed in court? I decided that there could be no ban on magical evidence but that its value might be weighed in the same way other questionable evidence might be weighed.)

 

4.  Was Marvel’s Registration Act that sparked the Civil War storyline Constitutional? (I found that the government could draft people for all sorts of reasons, e.g. genetic traits (men but not women, and men registered but women didn’t), abilities (excluding people below a certain level of physical or mental fitness which would appear to allow them to draft people while excluding people below a level of super physical or mental fitness), skill (although I’d never heard of it, I knew there had to be law that would allow the govt. to draft people with medical skills because the govt. could draft regular folks and immediately give them those skills, and sure enough, there is; similarly there would in a comic book universe have to be a way that the govt. could draft people to fight threats that normal people couldn’t like magical or telepathic threats. Add in the fact that people who want to drive or use dynamite have to be registered to do so and it seems pretty likely that people who fly or summon volcanoes would also have to be registered. Some suggested that the deciding what was superhuman was too vague a concept, so it couldn’t be enforced and would be too vague to be Constitutional. I countered by saying that finding people disabled, i.e. significantly below norms of ability was Constitutional, so it seems that a similar system of finding people significantly above norms would also be. All in all, I couldn’t find any reason why people with superhuman abilities couldn’t be forced to register and be drafted into service. Having said that, it is illegal to use the military to arrest someone like a police force, so if super being were drafted into service, they would have to drafted into something that was not considered a branch of the military if you wanted them to be crime fighters. The question then becomes: can you draft someone into the FBI or CIA? And given that the Initiative would be battling mainly people breaking state laws, could these federal crime fighters be used? In short, it’s a very complex issue.)

 

Seafire’s conclusions of my character based on my legal analysis of a comic book are that I’m hoping to get away with rape and/or that I love rape loopholes. I’ll remind you that this is based entirely on my legal analysis of a comic book, not my rapey actions or any knowledge of my character beyond an IRAC of a comic book. Not only is this kind of judgmental attack on my character unjustifiable based on this scant evidence (which would also apparently stick to kalinara, a feminist woman who dislikes rape in comics), but one has to wonder why Seafire thinks I would support this loophole? Does Seafire think I’m hoping to develop shape sifting abilities so I can take advantage of this loophole? That I’ll get a clone or discover a long lost identical twin, who can pick up guys that I would fail at, and that I’d ditch my husband and piss off my clone/twin and his partner so I could get a piece of my clone/twin’s partner because I couldn’t be convicted of rape?

 

The staggering gall of Seafire’s accusation is mind-boggling rude.

OK, once more I want to look at the WiR article by Marron. But this is the last time, I assure you. This time I want to look at the theory that Marron espouses (and many people believe) that female deaths and other horrors for female characters tend to be more gruesome or less dignified than their male counterparts. In Marron’s article, she notes that Alexandra DeWitt was beaten, strangled to death, and then shoved in a refrigerator. And Marron is correct that that is a pretty gruesome death and having one’s body shoved into a refrigerator is awfully undignified. Marron then writes:

When drawing up a list of male characters who have had a hard time in the name of story advancement, it’s hard to even compare. Atom’s wife divorced him and wrote a tell-all book about their life. Captain Marvel died of cancer.

Really? That’s what Marron could come up with? Did she really consider those to be the worst things to happen to male characters in comics? Either Marron did no research whatsoever or she just didn’t want to mention some other deaths or events that were particularly gruesome and/or undignified. I mean seriously, a tell-all book?

 

Below are a few that I recalled off the top of my head:

 

The Angel: Warren's wings were  mutilated by Harpoon, which would have killed him but Thor's intervention saved his life. When the wings developed gangrene, Cameron Hodge willfully signed the paperwork, against Angel's wishes, to have Warren's crippled wings amputated. Suicidal over the loss of his wings, Warren escaped the hospital and commandeered his private jet, which exploded in the air in an apparent suicide. After events that included mind control and murder, Warren got his wings back only to have them torn off by a crazed werewolf girl. If Marron had written X-Force (vol. 2) #4 where that happened, she could have added this dialogue, “Oh god! The pain of having my wings ripped off is excruciating! Only having a tell-all book written about me could be more horrifying!” And remember Marron’s theory that men would not want to see a man defeated because they’d find it emasculating? Now, think about this: limb that is the source of his power ripped off by a girl. And remember when Warren was Callisto’s crucified boy toy and he was saved by Storm, who won him in a knife fight? Emasculating much?

 

Black Condor (Ryan Kendall): killed by a beam fired by Sinestro in an ambush by the Secret Society of Super Villains. His body was strung up on the Washington Monument. In Nightwing #140, a mystery villain was shown to grave rob Ryan Kendall's body and later showed up wearing his arms (his arms!!!) and wings.

 

Goliath (Bill Foster): Foster is killed by a clone of Thor (which is bad enough) during a battle between the Secret Avengers and the pro-registration forces. His death was predicted by Deadpool, who, described Goliath as "deserving of death and worse." Goliath's last words are "Get ready for the shortest comeback in history, Thor!" before having a hole blown through his chest. Tom Brevoort, editor of Marvel's Civil War, added to the indignity by stating, "Having died at giant size, and with the biological changes that go on in a human body after life has left, such as rigor mortis and the like, Goliath's body could not have been returned to its normal size by Pym Particle exposure again without destroying it-- it would have torn itself apart under the strain. They could perhaps have done so later on, but by that point it would have begun to smell" Foster is buried as a giant in thirty-eight burial plots required to accommodate him. In Mighty Avengers #24 Norman Osborn has dug up Foster's grave and removed his clavicle, hoping to use the Pym particle residue to track down Pym's Avengers.

 

Human Bomb: In one of the most brutal deaths in comics, the Human Bomb was beaten to death by the fists of Bizarro. Sound effects illustrated his bones being shattered and his flesh being pulped. Even after his death, Bizarro kept beating him, hoping to see more pretty explosions. His body was strung up on the Washington Monument.

 

Jack of Hearts: got tired of having to be in a containment room for 14 hours a day (Does that really sound so bad when you consider that about 8 of those would be when he was asleep?), so he shot himself into space and blew himself up ... and took a child molester along with him. Jack’s costume was blown off him, so he’s drifting naked in space. Then a mystically created zombie copy of him was created by the Scarlet Witch to kill his friend Ant Man and destroy much of the Avenger's Mansion, which really gives your rep a beating. 

 

(I have yet to discover a female superhero who just gave up on life and killed herself. I’ve certainly not discovered a female character who even considered suicide because she could only spend 10 hours a day outside. The closest female equivalent I could think of was Jean Grey nobly allowing herself to be blasted into oblivion when she realizes that the Phoenix force will eventually overwhelm her again and she’ll kill worlds of people again, not unlike other divine-ish male characters who flipped out over their power and then allowed themselves to “die” like Max Faraday, Thor, the Spectre, etc.)

 

Robin (Jason Todd): handed over to the Joker by his own mother! Ouch! The Joker brutally beats him with a crowbar. Robin is soon lying unconscious in a pool of blood, which the Joker complacently remarks is "a bit messy". The Joker then leaves him and his mother in the warehouse with a time bomb. They try desperately to get out of the warehouse but are still inside as the bomb goes off. Marron mentions in the comment section that the death part was voted on by the fans and acts as if it was the fans not the writer/editors who killed the character despite the fact that they were ones who put the death up to a vote, and of course, they came up with the crowbar part. One might also wonder if Marron thinks being tortured and beaten with a crowbar and being locked into a room with a bomb with your mother and having the bomb go off, nearly killing you and killing your mother, wouldn’t be as bad as having a tell-all book written about you. Apparently, a tell-all book about Marron would have some extraordinarily embarrassing details.

 

Skin: crucified and left hanging on the lawn of the X-Mansion, along with the Jubilee and Magma, and Bedlam. Only the female characters, Jubilee and Magma, survived the crucifixion. Later, he is dug up from his grave because the owner of the cemetery didn’t want mutants buried there.

 

Tasmanian Devil: In mini-series Justice League: Cry For Justice, it is revealed that Tas was killed and turned into a rug by the villain Prometheus. It is perhaps worth noting that Tas was in far more comics than Alex DeWitt. His first appearance was in 1977, so he’s appeared in comics for over 30 years and was a member of the Justice League, but his death was barely mentioned. Perhaps the worst kind of death for a superhero is one that does not even appear on the page ... and then you appear as a rug for your killer.

 

Vigilante (Adrian Chase): As the series progressed Chase became ever more conflicted over his role as Vigilante, the violence he engaged in, and the harm he caused to those around him. He also became increasingly mentally unstable—alternating between bouts of enraged violence, paranoia, and terrible remorse for his actions. Near the end, he even resorted to murdering innocent police officers who got in his way. His mounting guilt culminated in the final issue of his series where, after contemplating the course of his life, Chase committed suicide. This is another suicide that was not a heroic, save the universe, but a guy who just gives up on life.