The Mix : What are people talking about today?

REVIEW: Pan

pan-blu-ray-cover-18You have to begin by asking yourself, do we really want an origin story for Peter Pan? J.M. Barrie certainly didn’t seem to think we needed it when he first wrote the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up in December 1904. The book we’re more familiar with, Peter and Wendy, didn’t arrive until 1911.

However, we have been conditioned to expect to understand everything there is about a character and too often we’re given origin stories that dilute the action. So, one has to wonder why Warner Bros and director Joe Wright felt we needed Pan.

The overwrought, over-produced production got bumped from summer to fall only to flop big time and is out now on Combo Pack from Warner Home Entertainment.

The idea of the boy who never grew up, who had wild escapades in Neverland should be sufficient lure for audiences. It certainly worked for Disney and Mary Martin but today, that’s not good enough.  Rather than a story to enchant children, this is aimed squarely at those of us to achieve adulthood and long for simpler days of youth.

The action is, we’re told, tamped down for younger audiences but it’s still in your face with a riot of colors, sounds, and frenetic energy that diminishes a script by Jason Fuchs (Ice Age: Continental Drift) once considered so strong it made the infamous Black List of great, yet-unproduced screenplays.

BlackbeardWorking from the familiar set pieces we’ve come to love, Fuchs takes the youngster Peter and sets him on the classic hero’s journey taking way too many liberties from the source material to satisfy.  Young Peter was abandoned by his mother, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), leaving him to be raised by the cruel Mother Barnabas (Kathy Burke).  Even though Barrie’s story was set at the turn of the century, we’re somehow told its World War II and the London Blitz is on. Peter (Levi Miller), now 12, and his friend Nibs (Lewis MacDougall) find out Barnabas has been hoarding food and there’s a letter from Mary foreshadowing how “special” Peter was meant to be.

Peter escapes the Nazis, snatched up Bishop (Nonso Anozie), aboard his flying pirate ship. The man is collecting orphans to work as slave labor. Upon arrival, Peter meets the infamous Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), the mine’s overseer. Now Fuchs wrote the part for Jackman and used the pirate because Barrie established it was he who trained Hook – so what’s a sea-faring man doing in a mine? Jackman’s plays the part as if it were a Broadway production, chewing his beard or the scenery.

Tiger LilyWhat are they mining? Pixum, or crystalized fairy dust. Uh huh.

We quickly meet the other denizens including Princess Tiger Lily (Mara) and her father (Jack Charles). Then there’s James Hook (Garrett Hedlund), cast in the swashbuckling role one expects from true pirates of yore. Hook is not Peter’s arch enemy yet but all the warnings are in place.

You get the idea. The movie is overstuffed with sets, characters, and anachronisms galore which spoils the sense of wonder the movie should have created. Wright’s a capable director but not here. Instead of something special, like Peter was meant to be, this movie can’t make up its mind what it really wants to be and who its audience should be. As a result, it leaves children overstimulated and parents shaking their heads in disappointment.

PanThe Blu-ray transfer is just lovely, which is needs considering the visuals.  The 1080p, AVC-encoded result maintains the rich colors just fine. There’s a 3D version but this was not screened for review. The Dolby Atmos soundtrack is strong.

For a film boasting so much effort, the special features prove disappointing. You start with Wright’s commentary which shows his head and heart were in the right place, although his defense of using “Smells Like Teen Spirit” fails to convince. There’s also Never Grow Up: The Legend of Pan (10:50), which does a nice job showing us how Barrie’s story grew from stage to book; The Boy Who Would Be Pan (6:07) introduces us to Miller, who at least looked age appropriate for Pan; The Scoundrels of Neverland (5:49), explores the pirates and Blackbeard’s origins; and, Wondrous Realms (5:01), a promotional tour of Neverland.

Mindy Newell: Two Reviews

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I loved it.

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Melissa Benoist, whom I first saw on Glee, packed up her beautiful singing voice to play Kara Danvers, nee Kara Zor-el, bears no blame for the general snorrrrre that is the hallmark of the show. Neither do any of the following: Chyler Leigh as kick-ass secret government agent-who-also-happens-to-be-Kara’s-Earth born sister, Alex; Mehcad Brooks as no-longer-cub-reporter-now-Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographer Jimmy Olsen, David Harewood as Hank Henshaw-Director-of-same-secret-government-agency-which-makes-him Alex’s boss-and-who-also-happens-to-be-J’on J’onzz the Martian Manhunter; Jeremy Jordan as lovelorn-for-Kara-and-not-yet-revealed-to-be-son-of-supervillain-The Toyman techie Winslow “Winn” Scholl, Jr., or Calista Flockhart as Ally McBeal-all-growed-up-and-head-of-her-own-media-empire Catherine (Cat) Grant.

No, the cast is fine. Especially Flockhart, whose Grant started out as a total caricature of Miranda Priestly (who herself was a caricature, albeit a sophisticated one, of Vogue’s Anna Wintour), but now is the only one demonstrating any of that all important ingredient for a successful television series recipe: character growth. But this isn’t the Ally-McBeal-All-Growed-Up show. It’s supposed to be about an alien millennial woman finding her adult footing with the albatross of an older, famed celebrity cousin slung around her neck. And, oh, yeah, she’s got super-powers.

As to the star of Supergirl: I watched her performance as Marley Rose, the anorexic and bulimic transfer student in the 5th and 6th seasons of Glee – and I say that poor Melissa Benoist is, im-not-so-ho, is being extremely short-changed.

By whom, you ask?

It’s the writers.

Ali Adler (Chuck, Family Guy), Greg Bertlanti (Arrow, Flash, Dawson’s Creek), and Andrew Kreisberg (Arrow, Flash, Fringe, The Simpsons, DC’s Green Arrow and Batman Confidential comics, and his own Helen Killer for Arcane Comics) certainly have the credentials and the writing chops, at least on paper. But what they’re doing with my childhood idol – oy!

Seriously, guys, just what the hell are you doing? Your Kara Zor-el Danvers is just the perkiest thing to occupy the small screen since Gidget. No, strike that. She’s just the sprightliest young woman to take up an hour on the boob tube since The Flying Nun. (The fact that both characters were played by the young Sally Field is just coincidental and absolutely not meant to be detrimental to Ms. Field – only to say that it could just be possible, who knows, that young Melissa goes on to mature into the outstanding actress that is Sally Field.) It’s like watching a living, breathing Barbie doll come to life. There is no Kara Danvers – just a one-dimensional mock-up, a fashion illustration in the New York Times, a walkway model at the Paris fashion shows. Nice to look at – but where are the guts?

Holy shit! The Giants are tied with the Panthers, 35 – 35, and there’s 5 seconds left!… 43 yard field goal attempt by the Panthers. Time out called… back in play… Shit! Fuck! Goddamn It!

Okay, I’m back.

Here’re my problems, in no particular order, just as they came to me while eating dinner and jotting them down. Although the first one is a big, big, big one, and from which all the others flow:

  • Everything is given to us on a plate. There’s no mystery, there’s no buried treasure, there’s no smoking gun. There’s absolutely nothing to hook the viewer into caring about Kara’s story now that we’ve seen her in the costume, which is what everybody was waiting for in the premiere.
  • How many times and in how many ways can Kara talk about proving herself? This fast became a one-trick pony that quickly wore out its welcome and became a whine that is repeated in each and every episode as expository statements to her sister, to Jimmy, to Winn, to Hank…hey, Kara, take a tip from Yoda: “Did not you see Strikes Back the Empire Does? Do, or do not. There is no try.” Seriously, I’m waiting for somebody to tell her to just shut the fuck up already.
  • We met Aunt Astra and we know right away that she’s evil. She might as well have had a mustache to twirl. We shouldn’t even have known who she was – tease us, fool us. Mix us up. Maybe sometimes she’s good, sometimes she’s bad, maybe she’s somewhere in the middle. What’s her relationship with Kara? And since we’re supposed to be identifying with Kara, that should have been her deal as well.
  • Kara was stuck in the Phantom Zone for years. And this hasn’t had any lasting affects? No emotional or psychological hang-ups? No anger issues at her cousin for dumping her in some strangers’ laps and flying off? No PTSD from seeing her parents, her civilization, her planet from being blown to kingdom come? Did the Danvers even attempt some sort of therapy? She should have trouble forming relationships, she should have trust issues, jeez, let’s see some anger.
  • What is Supergirl’s mission? Why should we watch it? Arrow is dark, fully noir and chiaroscuro. Flash is honorable, open, fantastical and rococo. Both shows dive into their characters’ lives; neither are afraid to explore the depths of the human experience while staying within (or despite) the parameters of their genre. Both are slowly building universes, borrowing from their comics’ origins and inventing new ones. Both shows know what they’re about. What the fuck is Supergirl about?

I could go on. And on. And on. But most of all it seems to me that the writers, or the suits behind them (which is probably the more likely scenario) are afraid, like they’re gingerly walking on a bed of nails, or handling a hot potato. They want Supergirl to be a role model, but they are afraid to let her be one. The most popular, the strongest, and the best role model young girls and women have had on television was another young woman with super-powers whose job it was to slay the evil dark things, and whose friends ranged from gay witches to werewolves to vampires to demons. She killed a god and had a sister made from her own blood. And her best friend flayed a man alive. Oh, and she had an adult male hanging around her all the time. Her name was Buffy Summers and the show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it became the hit of the 90s, winning critical acclaim and fans who will never let it go.

So why Adler, Bertlanti, and Kreisberg seem to be afraid of doing the same with Supergirl is beyond me. I suggest they sit down and watch all seven seasons of Buffy, then sit down again and take notes. Maybe call up Marti Noxon or Jane Espenson or Drew Goddard or Joss Whedon, get some advice, ask them to go over the scripts, maybe even have them do some ghosting.

Jeezus. Call me. Or Gail Simone. Or Kelly Sue DeConnick. Because the show needs help.

And not just the kind that Jimmy can signal for on his wristwatch.

Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick

There are times when I doubt that Feynman could possibly be real. A wild man physics savant who was also  a world-class womanizer, bongo player, and practical joker? No, no — that’s a fictional character, not a real man. But the world then gently points out that he was real.

Ottaviani has made a small career in comics out of telling stories about science and scientists, and this latest book-length graphic novel fits well into his oeuvre. Feynman is the most interesting scientist of the 20th century, beating out even Einstein and Hawking — quirky, fun, endlessly quotable, but still clearly brilliant at really esoteric theoretical physics and creator of a major explanatory theory that hardly anyone has ever understood.

(I know much less about Myrick — he’s got a lot of credits, but I haven’t seen much of his work. He has a slightly cartoonier style than I’d expect for a biography, which means his Feynman looks only slightly like the real man, but he has the skills to tell this story well, despite a lot of talking heads and big caption boxes.)

Ottaviani mostly tells Feynman’s story straight through, with a few digressions for style and framing. He uses unobtrusive captions to place each scene in a time and place, jumping forward occasionally to use a major lecture or discovery to frame earlier events. It makes what could have been a dull life — Feynman, for all of his energy and wit and wackiness, spent most of his time lecturing, writing, or sitting in a chair thinking about physics — into a thoughtful graphic novel that mediates on an interesting life lived well.

I expect this will mostly be read by physics nerds and young readers — it’s the kind of thing
that teachers and librarians hope will snare some resultant reader into a life-long passion — but that’s fine. Feynman was both of those things, in his time, and I think he’d be glad of the company.

Ed Catto’s Year End Favorites

1 Ed Catto Column Year End Books

There’s a lot going on in Geek Culture right now. I’m just amazed how shows like Supergirl, The Flash and Jessica Jones have engaged faithful fans and created new fans simultaneously. I’m surprised to be reading about Santa Con and noting the similarities to the explosive Cosplay growth at every comic convention this past year. And I’m encouraged by the all the great Geek Culture books, comics, merchandise and collectibles out there – and ecstatic that it’s so creative and fun.

So this week, let’s take a pause and look at a few of these treasures. This isn’t meant to be a Holiday Buying Guide – but if you get a little cash from your Aunt Agnes this yuletide season, you might want to zip down to your local comic shop or bookstore and check these out.

2 Wally Wood Artisan IDWWally Wood’s EC Stories Comics Artisan Edition, Edited by Scott Dunbier

Scott Dunbier is so much more than just an editor at IDW. He’s a passionate fan who’s committed to creating product the way he’d love to see them –and not afraid to blaze a few trails along the way. In recent years, his “Artist’s Editions” have created a new category, replicating the look and feel of holding the actual, oversize comic pages upon which artists typically pencil and ink their illustrations.

Scott has created books that are reproduced from the actual original artwork pages, so in addition to every ink line and stray pencil mark, you can also see the corrections, whiteouts, touch ups and scrawled notes in the margins. It’s an astounding experience for fiction lovers and art lovers.

HomeStay_Page01-Jpglo-650x957And in the “he’s done it again” category, Scott and IDW have created the Artisan Edition. This format is similar, but it presents the pages reduced to a size we’re all more accustomed to seeing the final printed product at; the typical book/magazine size. For an artist like the great Wally Wood, who packed every panel with brilliant and thoughtful detail, this is a feast for your eyes.  If artwork had calories, you’d go over your daily allotment reading just one story illustrated by Wally Wood.

The other rule that was “broken” here is that this Artisan Edition presents several different stories, and covers, from a bunch of different EC comics. This provides the reader with a fantastic assortment of artwork and adventures from this influential artist, clearly one of the greats of the industry.

Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz

3 Trigger Mortis 007Most of the folks reading this column probably saw the latest James Bond adventure, Spectre, and probably enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun for long-time fans but had a fresh cutting edge vibe that kept it from being stale or stodgy.

That’s exactly what author Anthony Horowitz has done with the newest Bond thriller, Trigger Mortis. This spy novel is set in the past, right after the James Bond adventure with Goldfinger. And the good news is that Pussy Galore, the quintessential Bond Girl –is still hanging around at the novel’s start.

This novel weaves in some original Ian Fleming chapters. These were pages he had written for a proposed James Bond television show.  And the nice part about a James Bond novel is that the reader can cast his or her favorite Bond actor in the lead role. This one seems tailor made for Sean Connery, and in my mind’s eye it played out like a lost James Bond movie broadcast on the old ABC Sunday Night at the Movies.

One other note: Horowitz provides Bond with exposure to alternative lifestyles in this book, and presents Bond rising to the occasion. In the original novels, Bond sometimes exhibits a misogynistic or close-minded side, but that was refreshingly absent here. Bravo!

4 Pistol Whip DHThe Complete Pistol Whip by Matt Kindt and Jason Hall

I’m blessed with an abundance of generous people in my life. One of them is my cousin Yamu. Despite a childhood filled with non-stop reading and re-reading old 60’s Marvel Comics bequeathed to him, and his brother Peter, by their baby sitter, Yamu is always enjoying new and different comics. He still enjoys the capes-and-tights stuff, but he’s great at finding fresh new voices and then helps spread the word.

Yamu gifted me The Complete Pistol Whip and what a treat it’s been. Dark Horse publishes it, but Top Shelf published the original series. Kindt is currently gaining accolades with Mind Management, but this is where it all started. In fact, Pistol Whip was named as one of Time Magazines Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2001. (How’d I miss that?)

This is a lovely book that still seems fresh and innovative, despite being almost 15 years old.

5 Out And About Dad Jim JosephAnd much like the Wally Wood book with all the imperfections and corrections, this collection also lovingly provides the reader with many thoughtful, small extra touches. One of my favorites – they’ve printed a tear in the book as if several pages were ripped in the same place. They aren’t of course, but it adds to the astonishing attention to detail that makes this volume a reading experience.

Out and About Dad: My Journey as a Father with all its Twists, Turns, and a Few Twirls by Jim Joseph

This book isn’t a graphic novel, but it does have many of the hallmarks of heroic fiction. On one hand, it’s the story of a guy trying to do the right thing and working hard to be a good father. He faces his challenges with a great deal of courage and humility. And in the end, he ultimately triumphs. Jim usually writes insightful marketing books (his Experience Effect series are marketing “must reads”) but this very personal memoir is outstanding and I can’t recommend it enough.

* * *

And in the meantime, I hope you’re enjoying your Yuletide. You (probably) deserve it.

 

John Ostrander: Christmas Anti-Heroes

grinch

T’is the season for Christmas related columns, fa-la-la-la-etc. I could write about Star Wars: The Force Awakens but that came out Friday so now it’s old hat and, besides, I haven’t seen it yet and, given the crowds, may not be able to see it until after the first of the year so let’s talk about something else, shaaaaall we?

Christmas is a time of peace, love, and goodwill to all unless you’re doing last minute shopping, running from store to store, and in a life and death struggle with some other harried shopper for the last iteration of a particular item that you both must have. So why is it that, aside from Baby Jesus of course, the most identifiable characters connected with the day are anti-heroes – the Grinch, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Mr. Potter (from It’s a Wonderful Life)?

Anti-heroes are what we used to call outright villains until it was found that we may identify with them more than perhaps we should. They’re bad guys who have a hint of good guy in them and these days we may sympathize with them more than the erstwhile heroes of the stories that they are in. They’re usually the most interesting and usually have the best lines.

Take the Grinch, for example, especially the Grinch found in the Chuck Jones directed and Boris Karloff voiced cartoon. He even has a song about how bad he is. Some of my favorite lyrics in it go: “You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch! You’re a nasty, wasty skunk! Your heart is full of unwashed socks. Your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Grinch!” Admit it. You now have the whole song running through your head. Merry Christmas.

The Grinch lives up the mountain with his dog Max, but is assaulted by the noise coming from Who-ville every Christmas and it is driving him just bat-shit crazy. So he hatches his evil plan: he’ll dress up like Sanity Claus and steal every present from the Whos and every scrap of food including the last can of Who-Hash. (That particular delicacy always troubled me; it implies that the hash is made up of ground up Whos which suggests that the village is a town of cannibals which might make them more interesting than they otherwise appear.)

Instead of tears, the Grinch hears a song of joy from the Whos on Christmas Day. Xmas came all the same. So he has a change of heart (it grew three sizes that day) and returns everything and even joins them for dinner, slicing the roast beast.

The change suggests a desire to change, deep down. Let’s be honest though – the Grinch is funnier and more interesting before his change.

And then there’s Ebenezer Scrooge from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the Grinch’s literary grandfather. Dickens describes him as “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.” His very name is a synonym for miser (look it up). When Carl Barks was looking for a name for Donald Duck’s rich and miserly uncle, what else would suit but the name Scrooge?

Ebenezer is a gold mine for bad Christmas attitude. Dickens says of him “To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call nuts to Scrooge.” Scrooge is famous for his “Bah! Humbug!” attitude on the season. Early on, he declares: “Out upon merry Christmas. What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”

When Scrooge is asked for money to help the poor, he says they should go to the poorhouse since that is what he pays his taxes for. Told that many would rather die than go there, Scrooge snaps, “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Oh, that’s cold.

Scrooge, however, saw himself as simply a good man of business and I suspect many on the Right today would see him as the put-upon hero of the story, just another entrepreneur trying to make his way past all those grasping freeloaders with their hands out.

Scrooge gets visited by four ghosts (including his dead partner, Jacob Marley) and, of course, gets reformed. By the end he vows, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Still, there’s enough of the old devil in him to play a rather mean trick on his clerk, Bob Cratchit, on the following day. Thank goodness.

That leaves us, then, with Mr. Potter of It’s A Wonderful Life. Let’s be honest; there’s nothing redeeming about him. He is a miserable old miser like Scrooge; of him it can be sung that he’s a mean one. He has the best – or worst – of the Grinch and Scrooge in him.

Here’s a sample of some his best line and worst attitudes: “I am an old man, and most people hate me. But I don’t like them either so that makes it all even.

“Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world. You once called me ‘a warped, frustrated, old man!’ What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help.

“He [Peter Bailey] was a man of high ideals, so called. Ideals without common sense can ruin this town.

“Ernie Bishop, you know the fella who sits around all day on his brains in his taxi?”

When Peter Bailey asks him why he is so miserly when he has so much money: “Oh, I suppose I should give it to miserable failures like you and that idiot brother of yours to spend for me!”

“You see, if you shoot pool with some employee here, you can come and borrow money. What does that get us? A discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. And all because a few starry-eyed dreamers like Peter Bailey stir them up and fill their heads with a lot of impossible ideas!”

I’m surprised that Mr. Potter isn’t running for the Republican presidential nomination. Or maybe he is and just has gotten lost in the pack. Maybe he’s changed his name to Trump.

Potter gets ahold by mistake of a deposit that belongs to George Bailey and the Savings and Loan he heads up. Knowing this will mean financial ruin and disgrace for Bailey (whom he describes as a boil on his neck), he conceals the fact that he has it.

And he gets away with it!

George is saved by the generosity of family and friends but, by the end of the movie, Potter is not exposed and he never gives the money back. He’s unrepentant and unreformed. You can sort of root for the Grinch and Scrooge but you really just want Potter to die with a stake of holly through his heart. He’s not an anti-hero, he’s an asshole. He’s an outright villain. Die, Potter, die!

Anyway, may your Christmas be merry and bright, one and all. Enjoy the day and enjoy some of these classics. They do embody the feelings of the season.

Even if that feeling is… “Humbug!”

“Mission: Impossible” returns to comics

images-5143143There hasn’t been a Mission: Impossible comic since Rob Liefeld’s adaptation of the first in the current film series. However, now that Rogue Nation is out on disc,  Paramount has dipped a toe back into comics with an eight-page prequel which explores what happened when Ethan Hunt went rogue and started tracking down The Syndicate. The comic with the story by director Christopher McQuarrie and artwork by Owen Freeman, debuted over at Wired.

Marc Alan Fishman: Our Legion Of Doom

Legion of Doom

Let’s just get this out of the way, kiddos. I know ComicMix is a site built on the back of the abundance of comic book geek culture that is out there to cover and pontificate on. But I imagine all of you reading my column this week are likely nursing a hangover from catching Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the eighth time.

I tend to write my articles a few days before we post it up here on ComicMix. It just so happened on the evening I was penning this article, I put the Republican presidential debate on my second screen. I wanted to write about Batman, or Deadpool, or something heroic. Instead, I find myself with villains on the brain.

Make no mistake: I’m as left as left can go. In college – prior to watching The West Wing – I was more or less a moderate. I thought waging war on people half a planet away was a great idea; it clearly keeps the killing away from us. And I thought big government and tons of taxes meant less money in my pocket, and drug addicts getting to prance around with my tax dollars. And then 9/11 happened. And I found The West Wing. And I started paying a bit more attention to the world around me. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, and poof! I’m rainbow-flag-waving, democratic-socialist-loving, left-hearted-softy. But I digress.

Watching the debate between the Republicans on Tuesday evening felt like spying on the Legion of Doom holding their annual holiday bash – as moderated by an old, bearded Jimmy Olson. Everyone was given free reign to voice their mutually exclusive opinions, loudly, while an audience of well wishers hooped and hollered at the end of every verbal stanza. But with these words tic-tic-tacking on my left screen, and the infernal musings from the best the GOP had to offer in my periphery… I find myself staring at the space between my monitors “Wait, no, seriously? People are applauding this?”

Take for starters, the wave of opinions on global threats like ISIS. I heard things like “carpet bomb them until the sand glows in the dark”, “arm like-minded people over there to fight this on the ground”, and “we just have to do what we did the last time we were there!”. Really? The term “bad guy” was bandied about with as much frequency as “kryptonite” might at a Legion kegger. When asked direct questions about their chosen methodology and tactics? We got exactly what we’d get from Solomon Grundy or the Riddler: either odd non-sequiturs or feckless verbal gymnastics.

When the Legion, err, candidates (I guess?) weren’t pandering to the crowd of blood-thirsty gun-toters (I assume, as all liberals do), they were arguing amongst themselves. We were treated to Toyman and Black Manta sniping at one another over who would be allowed into Keystone City (in short: no one). Bizarro and Captain Cold spent time calling one another “chaotic” and “weak”. And all the while… Giganta prattled on how she was a woman, and Grodd demanded people remember he was a lawyer, and around September 11th. Funnier still then, that the silly ape forgot the time he hugged the Flash after Hurricane Sandy. I bet that pissed off the Weather Wizard something fierce.

By the end of the evening I was angry and exhausted. It was only in the wake of the in-fighting, hate-mongering, and Blitzer-bashing that a voice of reason flew in from the Internet. You know the Internet, right? It’s that thing you can turn on and off on a whim, because… America. Or science. Or something. Anyways. The voice was clear, humble, and weathered. “…not one word about income inequality, climate change, student debt, or racial justice. Not one serious idea to defeat ISIS — just chest-thumping.”

But what was this Supermench really hoping for? And to be fair: they did title it the “Foreign Policy Debate”, so not mentioning the problems at home isn’t that big a surprise. But, I get the deeper point: it’s not enough to spend 2 hours with 9 people who all basically agree that the Justice League can’t stop the bad guys, and it’s time to get busy snooping and killing, or get busy crying and dying. Like we do.

It seemed to me that last night, those who are desperate to lead us cared more about violence in the name of freedom, boldly telling lie after lie, and spewing fearspeak… then they cared about using insight and wisdom to suggest solutions to the problems we’re all facing.

Then again… care is a concept not held highly by super-villains.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #376

THE SPIRIT AND LAWYERING OOPS

“Look at my diploma. Does it say Placebo State University?”

That’s what I wanted to say to my clients then they complained that they didn’t want a public defender, they wanted a real lawyer. Now I always thought I had made up good ol’ Placebo State. Then I read Will Eisner’s The Spirit #5 and the dialog of one Chadwick Swineheart attorney at law. Then I realized there really must have been a P.S.U., because Chadwick obviously attended that august institution. And based on the knowledge of law he demonstrated in this story, Swineheart attended it in July.

In said story, the Spirit, masked crime fighter of Central City, was trying to find out the current whereabouts and master plan of The Octopus, master criminal and the Spirit’s archenemy. Spirit broke into the office of the Octopus’s lawyer, the aforementioned Mr. Swineheart, rifled Swineheart’s files, and started reading like a teenager devouring the Twilight trilogy. When Swineheart caught Spirit in flagrante lectio, Spirit asked Swineheart, “So tell me … Where’s The Octopus? What’s his latest game?”

Swineheart steeled himself and said, “Private, stolen documents are against the law. Inadmissible as evidence.” To which Spirit answered, “One of the many reasons I’m not a cop.” After this compelling legal argument, Swineheart coughed up everything he knew about the Octopus. And, considering the way he was portrayed, Swineheart probably dislodged a hairball, too.

So how many different legal mistakes did Mr. Swineheart make in said scene? Surprisingly, not violating the code of professional responsibility by revealing privileged information about his client. That’s one of the few things Swineheart didn’t get wrong.

Swineheart told Spirit that the Octopus “is running some big scam to sell inferior plate steel to a government contractor.” I added the emphasis, because it showed the Octopus was running an on-going criminal activity and was going to commit future criminal acts. The Code of Professional Responsibility permits an attorney to reveal privileged information when a client is going to commit a future crime in order to prevent said crime from happening. So Swineheart was correct on this one.

However, one out of several is only a good record if you’re playing Football in Cleveland. For lawyers it’s lousy. Even Hamilton Burger won all the ones he tried after Perry Mason told him where to look.

So what did Swineheart get wrong? Let’s start with the concept that “Private, stolen documents are against the law. Inadmissible as evidence.” Sure they are. If someone stole a bunch of private documents from a business to sell to its competitor, wouldn’t those stolen documents be admissible in the industrial espionage trial as proof that the theft occurred? Of course they would. So private, stolen documents are admissible as evidence.

Now before you accuse me of being fast and loose with the law, because Swineheart obviously meant that you can’t steal private documents from him and use them as evidence against him or his client, let me respond to your accusation. You’re right.

But don’t go gloating that you caught me in an error; not yet. Sure Swineheart probably did mean you can’t steal private documents from him and use them as evidence against him or his client. It doesn’t matter. Either way you interpret Swineheart’s statement, he was incorrect.

Private citizens can break into lawyer offices – or other places – and steal private incriminating documents – or other incriminating evidence – and turn that information over the police. The police and prosecutors office may then, in turn, use that information as evidence in prosecutions against the persons who had evidence stolen from them.

I’ve written about this before, so everybody let’s say it together, It’s the Silver Platter Doctrine. Hey, Swineheart, I didn’t hear you back there. I said, “everybody!”

The Fourth Amendment forbids the police from making illegal searches and seizures. When they do, the evidence seized during said illegal search and seizure is excluded by the Exclusionary Rule. As the United States Supreme Court explained in Mapp v. Ohio, the rational of the Exclusionary Rule is that the police should not be able to benefit from it’s illegal behavior and excluding the illegally-seized evidence will deter the police from committing similar violations in the future.

The police don’t like the Exclusionary Rule. Prosecutor Offices don’t like the Exclusionary Rule. And, truth be told, neither do courts. In fact, the only people who seem to like the Exclusionary Rule are the criminals.

No one likes letting criminals go because key evidence that would have convicted said criminal has to be excluded. As a result, courts have carved some exceptions into the Exclusionary Rule. And by “some,” I mean courts have carved so many exceptions into the Rule it looks like a turkey one hour after Thanksgiving dinner.

One of the chief exceptions to the Exclusion Rule looks at the rule’s justification that it deters future police misconduct The courts routinely hold that if excluding the evidence would not deter future police misconduct, then there is no underlying justification to excluding the evidence and it should not be excluded.

So if private citizens make an illegal search and find evidence which they turn over to the police, the underlying future misconduct justification doesn’t apply. Excluding the evidence would not deter future police misconduct, as there was no police misconduct in the first place. The misconduct was all on the part of the private citizen.

Sure the private citizen might have broken the law by trespassing and stealing evidence, but the police did nothing wrong. So the evidence should not be suppressed. See, Burdeau v. McDowell, a decision of the United States Supreme Court which holds precisely what I just wrote.

Naturally it did. If Burdeau didn’t support the argument I was making, would I have cited to it as support? Maybe if I were Chadwick Swineheart. But I’m not, so the Burdeau case says precisely what I argued.

The Burdeau case came out in 1921. It’s not exactly new law. Even if this current Spirit series takes place sometime in the past, it still has to take place after 1921. After all, The Spirit didn’t even start until 1940. So there’s no reason for Swineheart not to have know Burdeau’s rule and that evidence stolen by the Spirit would be admissible in court.

Okay, there’s one reason: Swineheart is to legal scholarship what the Quadruple Bypass Burger is to Jenny Craig.

But here’s what really hurts in the whole Swineheart matter. I’ve written about the Silver Platter doctrine before. I don’t think several times before would be an exaggeration. You’d think that a lawyer who’s an actual comic-book character would read the column of the foremost comic-book legal analyst. But >>sob<< he doesn’t.

Maybe that’s why he’s such a lousy lawyer.

Martha Thomases: The Star Wars Conspiracy!

2014 NBCUniversal TCA Winter Press Tour Portraits

So since Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens today, and since I’m not going to go see it until after this weekend at the earliest, I thought I would do a trip down memory lane combined with a little bit of pop culture history.

You know, a nostalgic story about the experience I had seeing the first one in a theater, then a reference to Jack Kirby, and a sideline into older types of mythologies that tell similar tales. By the end, we would have deduced that there are no new stories, only new ways to tell them, and we would have been entertained and elevated.

And then, I got lost on the Internet.

Apparently, Star Wars in general and J. J. Abrams in particular are all part of a plan by the Jews to eliminate the Aryan race.

I’m not going to put in a lot of links to substantiate my points. I don’t want to drive any more traffic to the sites. I feel soiled enough that I looked at them.

Look, I get that there are crazy people out there, people who get set off by things that, for the rest of us, are innocuous. So when John Boyega was cast as one of the leads in the new film, racists went nuts saying the film is anti-white propaganda. Because, clearly, all leading roles in movies are by Divine Right given to white men. If they aren’t, it’s because of some social justice warrior affirmative action social engineering. Or, something.

I liked the original Star Wars trilogy. I liked parts of the next three movies (I would watch Ewan McGregor do just about anything, including crawling through sewers). Even when I didn’t like something, I was interested in what Lucas wanted to do.

When he sold out to Disney (and then gave most of the money away), I was nervous about what would happen. As it turns out, I like J. J. Abrams more than many of my fellow nerds. I liked his Star Trek movies, despite my friends’ attempts to prove to me, empirically, that they’re bad. I liked a bunch of the television shows he produced. I like saying “Bad Robot” when the animated logo comes on.

So I want to see what he does with Star Wars.

It is interesting to me that so many who decry “political correctness” and “censorship” and “social justice warriors” demand exactly those things when the person speaking has another point of view. in this case, the person speaking is Abrams (with the implied consent of Lucas and Disney). If he chooses to make a film about a white woman, a black man and scores of characters of many species, that’s his right.

I mean, Kirk Cameron made Saving Christmas, a movie I have no desire to see, and I didn’t call for his death.

I certainly didn’t see it as part of a millennia long conspiracy to destroy my way of life, and therefore a call to rain down violence and destruction on those who chose to buy tickets. The people at the crazy websites who don’t like Boyega & Co. use Hitler as a good example to support their positions. Because J. J. Abrams is trying to “kike” things up. (Yes, they use that word.)

You know, there are always the crazies in the world, of all stripes. Usually, they have enough common sense and/or shame to try to disguise their craziness. No one in the United States, in my lifetime, has wanted to be seen as a Nazi. Maybe an extreme conservative, even a racist, but not someone in favor of death camps.

Until this election cycle.

If you don’t want to see John Boyega, if that’s an affront to your morality, don’t go. More seats for me.

Tweeks Guide to Star Wars Bluffing

We won’t judge. It’s perfectly okay if the whole Star Wars fandom passed you by. We can’t all be into everything. Choices sometimes need to be made. Maybe you’ll come to it eventually, maybe it will be because of The Force Awakens, but until that time, you may feel really uncomfortable trying to follow everyone’s conversations.  So, this week, we are providing a service to those who need to bluff or  their way through conversations about the last six movies. We go through the major story arcs of six movies in 10 minutes stopping only for geeky nerd facts & a clip of Benedict Cumberbatch doing a Jar Jar Binks impression.  We know geek peer pressure can be hard, May the Force Be With You!

 

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