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THE LAW IS A ASS for 11/02/1999
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 17
Originally published on World Famous Comics
November 2, 1999
This, the 277th installment of "The Law is a Ass" that I've written, is a change of pace. See, I didn't originally write this for either --Comics Buyer's Guide or World Famous Comics.
Among other avenues and outlets for my writing, I belong to --CAPA-Alpha, the granddaddy of all comic-book APA organizations. What's an APA organization? APA stands for Amateur Press Association. Basically, an APA is a group of fans of something--here comics--who get together by mail to share their interest. Each member writes a fanzine about whatever interests him or her--it's not even required that it be "on topic" to the APA, but that's nice--and sends it to the Central Mailer of the APA. The Central Mailer organizes the members' APA fanzines into a cohesive mailing and sends the mailing out to the members.
As I said, --CAPA-Alpha is one of the oldest and most respected of all comic-book APAs. I belong to it. So every so often, I have to write a 'zine for --CAPA-Alpha to maintain my membership. As you can guess, sometimes I struggle to find something to write about.
Recently, I had occasion to write what will appear as this week's installment as my 'zine, comic strips on the Web and where you can find them. Tony read it, found it informative--Thanks, Tony--and suggested that I also post it here as a column installment. I, being essentially lazy, realized I could get a week's installment with a minimum of work and saw how brilliant the idea was.
So I revised the 'zine slightly--basically lengthening the legal analysis section that came in the middle of the 'zine, so as to make it fit the column's venue more--and here it is.
Oh, if you're interested in membership in --CAPA-Alpha, you can write to the current Central Mailer: Joel Thingvall, C/O Nostalgia Zone, P.O. 6106, Minneapolis, Mn 55406 and he can send you a sample copy of a mailing along with membership information.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 17
by
Bob Ingersoll
It used to be so easy!
Okay to be more accurate: at first it was a problem, then it became easy and now it's a problem again. Not as much of a problem as it was at first, but more of a problem then it had been.
If you haven't figured out what problem I'm talking about--and there's no real reason you should have figured it out, I've been about as lucid as deposed testimony--it's what to do about those out-of-town comic strips we want to follow but aren't carried in our home-town newspapers.
When we were kids it was a problem. We didn't get to choose what city we lived in or what newspapers our families read. We lived where our parents lived. We read the paper our parents subscribed to--usually the home paper of whatever city we happened to be in--and maybe some out-of-town newspaper like the --New York Times or the --Wall Street Journal. And those choices--or lack thereof--were our choices.
If the local paper didn't carry a strip or strips we wanted to follow--say, --The Phantom--we were feces out of fortune. Convincing our parents to subscribe to the --Anchorage Albatross because it was the only source for --Brick Bradford seemed futile. Convincing them to subscribe to multiple out-of-town papers, so we could follow --all the strips we wanted was more pointless than a gross of unopened pencils.
To be sure, it wasn't fair of them to deny us claiming financial shortfalls, but that was the way of the world. Sure our parents had bills to pay but what's a few measly balloon payments compared to the joy of following --Dick Tracy, Pogo, Superman, Flash Gordon, Goodwin and Williamson on --Secret Agent X-9, Russ Manning --on Tarzan and --The Strange World of Mr. Mum?
Still, they didn't see it that way.
So we suffered, knowing there were all these really great comic strips that other kids in other cities were reading while we were stuck with --Mary Worth, Judge Parker and --Rex Morgan, M.D. (Hell, we weren't even lucky enough to trade --Rex in for --Ben Casey so we could, at least, get the wonderful Neal Adams art.)
Then, round about the time we all--or most of we all, anyway--went to college, we also discovered --The Menomonee Falls Gazette. One paper that came once a week which featured a week's worth of all the best continuity strips imaginable: current strips like --The Phantom and classic reprints like --Superman, Male Call and --The Spirit. Both domestic strips and foreign strips like --Modesty Blaise, Garth and --The Seekers. The --Gazette also had a companion paper, which featured humor strips, but I was in college and could only afford one, so bought the --Gazette. It was comic-strip nirvana. All the strips available in one source. It was one-stop shopping.
Then, the --Gazette began to falter. Strips disappeared. The frequency dropped to bi-monthly then monthly. Like Highfather encountering The Source, we could read the writing on the walls. We were not surprised when, like most of the strips it had once carried, the --Gazette disappeared.
Other papers tried to follow in the 70's and 80's. But their selection was small, their distribution spotty and their staying power shorter than the half life of an ice cube. They promised a little, delivered less, came and went as quickly as people in Oz and were, ultimately, as unsatisfying as abstinence. While the magazine --Comics Revue has had staying power, what it carries has decreased with markedly.
For a brief time in the late 70's and early 80's a local Cleveland newspaper, --The Lake County News-Herald carried just about every adventure continuity strip being published with two exceptions: --The Amazing Spider-Man (which was published in Cleveland's --Plain Dealer and precluded from the --News-Herald by an exclusivity clause) and --Modesty Blaise, for, I suspect the frequent immodesty of the strip. But much of the rest, --The World's Greatest Super-Heroes (which, ultimately, became --Superman), Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Mandrake, Rip Kirby, Steve Roper, Conan, Hulk, Howard the Duck, Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Hawks as well as the Sunday --Tarzan and --Prince Valiant were all there. Hell, it even had several of those soap opera strips, whose popularity I could never understand as a kid.
It was the return of one-stop shopping. And home delivered.
Of course, it couldn't last.
I once advised the --News-Herald to advertise its comic-strip holdings in --Comics Buyer's Guide, figuring it could pick up many out-of-town subscribers. It never did, so, of course, never did. And, ultimately, it too dropped most of the strips I had come to count on it for.
Within the past few years, I've turned to the World Wide Web as my new source for out-of-town strips. Many comic-strip syndicates and several newspapers have web sites in which they feature comic strips. You only have to go to these web pages and read the strips you want to read. Satisfying, but sometimes time-consuming as you have to visit page after page to get everything you want.
Then I learned about a wonderful web page. I've spoken of it in the past, the Comic Strip Cornucopia. What this page did was to seek out every web page that offered a comic strip, or, at least, as many as its webmaster could find, catalogue them and compile a list of all the strips available. Then the page gave you a menu in which you could select exactly which strips you wanted each day. You checked the strips you wanted and Comic Strip Cornucopia would build a personalized web page for you which contained hyperlinks to the various web pages in which the strips you choose could be found. Then, if that weren't enough, the page would pull all your chosen strips through the hyperlinks and load them onto your personalized page. So, once a day, you could go to your personalized Comics Strip Cornucopia page, leave computer running and go do something else while it downloaded your page--mine could take upwards of fifteen minutes, if the bandwidth was clogged--then come back and read all the strips you wanted in one place. No muss, no fuss, no hopping from page to page looking for the strips.
It was the return of one-stop shopping, a web page that brought the strips you wanted to see to your computer screen every morning.
It, too, was too good to last.
So it didn't.
On August 24, 1999, Comic Strip Cornucopia shut down. Several of the syndicates claimed the page violated the copyright on their strips. It probably did. And as I'm supposed to analyze the law somewhere in this strip, this is as good a time as any.
Let's face it; someone owns the copyright on all the strips CSC was reprinting, either the syndicate or the actual creators of the strip. That copyright owner did not, in most cases--if not all cases, grant permission to CSC to reprint the strips. Under the copyright law, the copyright owner has the right to control --all publication and reprinting of the property. It doesn't matter that the person who is reprinting the property isn't making any money from the reprinting, --any reprinting--save a few exceptions specifically spelled out in the copyright law and which would not apply in this case--would violate the copyright law.
Being a lawyer, as much as I wanted Comic Strip Cornucopia to survive, I knew it was probably living on borrowed time. See, if the copyright owners didn't act to stop the violation, they could lost their copyright. As no one, syndicate or creator, wants to lose their copyright on such properties as --Peanuts or --Garfield, the copyright owner had no alternative but to take legal action to prevent the violation.
The syndicates took legal action, and Comic Strip Cornucopia was forced to cease operations. Now I'm back to going to individual web pages for my strips, again. It's not the one-stop shopping I used to enjoy, but at least the Web allows me to follow most of the out-of-town strips I want to follow without having to subscribe to all of those out-of-town papers.
This month, I wanted to share some of my information with you. Basically what I'm offering is the names and Universal Resource Locator--URLs for those of you versed in "Webspeak" even if you didn't know what the speak stood for--of the web pages I go to and what strips are available there. In this way, those of you who would also like to follow out-of-town strips can do so on these pages. (For those of you who were wondering why I'm not following my usual three-column format this month, it's because some of these URLs are long and would go over lines in the three-column format. I wanted to keep these URLs on one line, so no hyphens or spaces would appear and cause confusion as to whether they should be in the URL.
And, if any of you know any good comic-strip web pages I'm missing, I'd be delighted to have you tell me about them, so I can add them to my daily regimen.
The first strip site is Universal Press Syndicate. This is found at Uexpress.com. It features the following daily strips: --Adam@home, Bliss, Boondocks, Calvin and Hobbes (archives, naturally), Cathy, Citizen Dog, Crankshaft, Doonesbury, Duplex, FoxTrot, The Fusco Brothers, Garfield, Geech, Heart of the City, Mister Boffo, Overboard, Second Chances, Stone Soup, Tank McNamara, Tradin' Paint, Us & Them. It also features the following panel strips: --Bizarro, Close to Home, Crabby Road, Cornered, The 5th Wave, In the Bleachers, Real Life Adventures, Tom the Dancing Bug, Ziggy.
The advantages of this cite are few actually. Every strip that's on it is available on another site. Moreover, the site is two-weeks behind publication date. More up-to-date strips can be found on the other sites. The only real reason I mention this site, is that it also has a link to an opinion page which features some good editorial cartoons including Pat Oliphant and Jules Feiffer. This page operates by giving you a page full of strip names with hyperlinks on them. Clicking on the name brings takes you to the page with that strip. To navigate to another strip, one must either use the back button to return to the site map or use the drop down menu at the bottom of the page, which lists all the strips by name.
Next on our migration through various comic-strip pages is the comics page at the --Detroit News. This page used to be a must simply because it was the only site for --Secret Agent Corrigan. Now that said strip has been discontinued, its utility to me is lessened significantly. It can be found at www.detnews.com/comics/index.htm. The layout is a framed page, with the names of the strips running down the left border. Clicking on a strip's link brings the strip up in the right part of the page. Its strips include in no particular order other than that used on the page: --Willy & Ethel , Mr. Boffo, Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet, Cornered, Zippy the Pinhead, The Fusco Brothers, Luann, Borderline, Mostly Business, In the Bleachers, Arlo and Janis, The Doctor Fun Page, Rose is Rose, Robotman, Dilbert, Drabble, Jump Start, True! by Daryl Cagle, The World of Lily Wong, Reverend Fun, Kev's World, Hobnob Inn Committed, Cathy, Today's Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen, Speed Bump, Farley, Toy Trunk Railroad, Doonesbury, Foxtrot, and -- For Better or for Worse.
A good feature to this page is that the strips are "day for day," that is to day the strip you can find on October 10 is the October 10th strip. Also navigation is easier, as the frame with the strip names always appears. The disadvantage is that the page does not include the Sunday strips. For the most part, the Sunday strips can be found on other pages. But that being the case, I only use this page for the strips which I can't find on other pages such as --Farley.
T--he Orlando Sentinal has a web page of strips. The URL for the site map is www.orlandosentinel.com/lifestyle/fun. The strips found there are --Bound and Gagged, That's Jake, Dunagin's People, The Middletons, Fred Bassett, Mixed Media, and --Mother Goose and Grimm. Again, this page has the disadvantage of Site map navigation (requiring use of the back button to return to the map page after a strip is displayed) but without any drop down menus for navigation purposes and no Sunday strips. The advantage of this page (other than the fact that it's the only site I've found for --Dunagin's People or --The Middletons is that it's day for day.
Creators syndicate has a page. It's one of the two sites I've found with --Zorro, which, by itself, makes it worth investigating. The URL is http://www.creators.com, but one can also find a site map at www.creators.com/corp/tree.asp. Yes, this is site map navigation. The strips found here are --Agnes, Ask Shagg, Ballard Street, B.C., For Heaven's Sake!, Heathcliff, Katie's Wee Dos, Liberty Meadows, Miss Peach, Momma, One Big Happy, Penmen, Raw Material, Rugrats, Rubes, Speed Bump, Strange Brew, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Toby, Wee Pals, Wizard of Id, and --Zorro.
The strips run one week behind publication date, so the strip that one can find on October 10th is the strip that ran in the papers on October 17th, which isn't too big a lead. Moreover, this site also has both the daily and Sunday strips.
King Features Syndicate has a page at
http://www.kingfeatures.com/comics. The page is framed, with the names of the strips running down the left margin and the strip running appearing in the right part of the page. So navigation is a bit easier. The strips that run are: --The Amazing Spider-Man, Apartment 3-G, Baby Blues, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, Beetle Bailey, The Better Half, Between Friends, Blondie, Bobo's Progress, Boner's Ark, Bringing Up Father, Buckles, Claire, Crock, Curtis, Dennis The Menace, Dinette Set, The Family Circus, Flash Gordon, Free for All, Funky Winkerbean, Grin and Bear It, Hagar the Horrible, Hazel, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Henry, Hi and Lois, Horrorscope, I Need Help, Judge Parker, The Katzenjammer Kids, The Lockhorns, Mallard Fillmore, Mandrake the Magician, Mark Trail, Marvin, Mary Worth, Moose Miller, Mutts, The New Breed, The Norm, On the Fastrack, Piranha Club, The Phantom, Popeye, Pops Place, Prince Valiant, Ralph, Redeye, Rex Morgan, M.D., Rhymes with Orange, Safe Havens, Sally Forth, Sam & Silo, Slylock Fox and Comics For Kids, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, They'll Do It Every Time, Tiger, Trudy, Tumbleweeds, Walnut Cove, Willy 'n Ethel, Zippy the Pinhead, and-- Zits.
This page is the only source for several of the King Features strips. As I said, it features frames navigation, which is better than site map, but worse that the navigation I'll come to later, which I call "one-stop shopping." The strips run two weeks behind publication date. Moreover, and this is a major disadvantage, there are no Sunday strips. No, check that, there are two Sunday strips. --Flash Gordon, which has re-runs for the daily strips has original Sundays. For this reason, the King Features page has does include the new Sunday --Flash Gordon and --Prince Valiant. For some reason, these get updated about every three weeks, when three weeks worth of strips upload. So one has to check back frequently. Still, this is the only source I know of for --Flash, Prince Valiant, Marvin, Redeye, --Steve Roper several other strips. So it is a must-see every day.
Nando Net has a comics page at www.nando.net. The strips it features are --Alex's Restaurant, Animal Crackers, Annie, Bottom Liners, Brenda Starr, Dick Tracy, Heathcliff, Gasoline Alley, Gil Thorp, Mixed Media and --Zenon. It features site map navigation but does have the daily and Sunday strips of most if its page. (For some reason, it doesn't have the Sunday --Heathcliff. (Small loss, it's available on other pages). One warning, the Sunday strips are huge, they more than fill up my 17-inch monitor, so take a long time to download.
United Media Syndicate has a page at www.unitedmedia.com and a site map at http://www.unitedmedia.com/html/sitemap.html. So, yes, this page features site map navigation. It's strips include: --12:01, Adam, Alley Oop, Andy Capp, Arlo & Janis, Ask Shagg, B.C., Ballard Street, Betty, Big Nate, Bizarro, Bliss, Boondocks, The Born Loser, The Buckets, Cathy, Cheap Thrills, Citizen Dog, Close To Home, Color Blind, Committed, Cornered, Crabby Road, Crankshaft, Dilbert, Doonesbury, Drabble, The Duplex, Eek & Meek, The Fifth Wave, For Better or For Worse, For Heaven's Sake, Foxtrot, Frank & Ernest, The Fusco Brothers, Garfield, Geech, Get Fuzzy, Grand Avenue, The Grizzwells, Heart Of The City, Heathcliff, Herman, In The Bleachers, Jump Start, Katies Wee Do Puzzles, Kit 'N' Carlyle, Liberty Meadows, Luann, Marmaduke, Meatloaf Night, Meg!, Mister Boffo, Momma, Ms. Peach, Nancy, No Huddle, Non Sequitur, Over the Hedge, One Big Happy, Overboard, PC and Pixel, Peanuts, Penmen, Pickles, Raw Material, Real Life Adventures, Reality Check, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Robotman, Rose Is Rose, Rubes, Rugrats, Second Chances, Speed Bump, Stone Soup, Strange Brew, Tank McNamara, Tarzan, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, That's Life, Toby, Tom The Dancing Bug, Top of the World!, Tradin' Paint, Warped, Wee Pals, Wizard of Id, and --Ziggy.
The page, as I said, is site map. It's strips run one week behind publication date. Moreover, the strips are both daily and Sundays, for those strips that have Sundays.
The next sites I'm going to are what I call "one-stop shopping" sites. They run like the old Comics Strip Cornucopia page, in that one can go to a "build your own page" page, click on the strips one wants and then bookmark the resulting page. In that way, only the strips you want will be brought to your browser and there's no need for using the back button to return to a site map or a drop-down menu, when one wants to get to the next strip. One merely cursors down a strip.
The first of these pages is at the Houston Chronicle web page found at http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/comics/archive/showComics.hts?date=today. As I said, there is a link from this page which allows you to build a customized page. The strips which can be found there are: --9 Chickweed Lane, Agnes, Archie, B.C., For Better or Worse, Bizarro, Boffo, Charlie, Close to Home, Committed, Crankshaft, Dick Tracy, Doonesbury, Drabble, Fox Trot, Fred Basset, Garfield, Gasoline Alley, Geech, Gil Thorp, Heathcliff, Herb & Jamaal, Ick, Jumble, Kudzu, Liberty Meadows, Lola, Luann, Marmaduke, Miss Peach, Momma, Mother Goose & Grimm, Non Sequitur, One Big Happy, Pluggers, Quigmans, Raw Material, Real Life Adventures, Robotman, Rubes, Second Chances, Shoe, Speed Bump, Strange Brew, Sylvia, Tank McNamara, That's Jake, Toby, Wizard of Id, Zenon, Ziggy, and-- Zorro.
This page is almost perfect. It's "one-stop shopping" and runs strips on the day of publication. It's only drawback is that it doesn't have any of the Sunday strips.
The next page is the page found from Ctoons http://www.ctoons.com. Again, this is a "one-stop shopping" page, which allows you to build a personalized page called MyToons. The strips run one week behind publication. It features both the daily and Sunday strips and even has some one color in some of the daily strips. It only loads three or four strips on a page, however, so you must click on little numbered links at the top and bottom of the page, to navigate to the next strip in your personalized selections. The strips it features are: --9 Chickweed Lane, Animal Crackers, Annie, B.C., Ballard Street, Bound & Gagged, Brenda Starr, Broom-Hilda, Dick Tracy, Dr. Katz, Fred Basset, Gasoline Alley, Gil Thorp, Herb & Jamaal, Homespin, Ick, Kudzu, Liberty Meadows, Lola, Mixed Media, Miz Butterman's Yard, Momma, Mother Goose & Grimm, Motley's Crew, Non Sequitur, Off The Mark, One Big Happy, Outtake, PC & Pixel, Pluggers, Quigmans, Rubes, Rugrats, Shoe, Speed Bump, Strange Brew, The Boonies, Tumbleweeds, Wizard of Id, and-- Zenon.
This is a wonderful site. It's only real disadvantage is that the strips run one week after publication instead of date of publication.
The last of the three "one-stop shopping" pages I go to is found at the San Jose Mercury paper whose URL is
http://www.mercurycenter.com/svlife/. This page includes a link to a create your own comics page site. From there, the usual one-stop shopping page can be created. The many strips offered are: --Adam (SUN), Against The Grain, Agnes, Alex's Restaurant, Annie, Apartment 3-G, Baby Blues (SUN), Ballard Street (SUN), Barney Google & Snuffy Smith, BC (SUN), Between Friends (SUN), Bizarro (SUN), Bliss (SUN), Blondie (SUN), Bobo's Progress, Boondocks, Brenda Starr, Callahan (SUN), Cathy (SUN), Cats With Hands, Citizen Dog, Close to Home, Cornered, Crankshaft, Croutons, Curtis, Dennis the Menace (SUN), Dick Tracy, Dilbert Classics, Dinette Set, Doonesbury (SUN), Dr. Katz, The Duplex (SUN), Fair Game, Family Circus (SUN), Fast Track, Fifth Wave, Fluff, For Better or For Worse (SUN), Foxtrot (SUN), Frank & Ernest (SUN), Fred Bassett, Funky Winkerbean, Fusco Brothers (SUN), Garfield (SUN), Hagar the Horrible, Hazel, Herman, Hi & Lois, I Need Help, Ick, In the Bleachers, Jump Start (SUN), Kudzu, Liberty Meadows, Lockhorns (SUN), Loose Parts, Luann (SUN), Mallard Fillmore (SUN), Mandrake the Magician, Mary Worth, Matt & Maynerd, Mickey Mouse, Mixed Media, Mother Goose & Grimm (SUN), Mister Boffo, Mutts (SUN), 9 Chickweed Lane, The New Breed, Non Sequitur (SUN), The Norm, One Big Happy, Overboard (SUN), PC & Pixel (SUN), Peanuts (SUN), Phantom, Pickles (SUN), Piranha Club, Pluggers, Popeye, Pretzel Logic, The Quigmans, Real Life Adventures, Rex Morgan (SUN), Rhymes with Orange (SUN), Robotman (SUN), Rose is Rose(SUN), Rubes, Sally Forth (SUN), Second Chances, Sherman's Lagoon (SUN), Shoe, Amazing Spider-Man, Stone Soup, Sylvia, Tank McNamara, Tom the Dancing Bug, That's Life, Warped, Wizard of Id, and --Ziggy.
Again a wonderful site. It features date of publication strips. It also colors some of the dailies. It's only real draw back can be found in that annoying (SUN) notation some of the strips have. Those are the only strips whose Sunday strips are included in the create your own page option. The other strips don't have the Sunday strips, for some reason. Thus the Sundays must be found on other pages. This is truly annoying as, otherwise, this would be a perfect site.
Two more sites I wanted to mention are Comic Strips with AstroNerdBoy at http://www.astronerdboy.com/comic-strips/ and Stu's Comic Strip Connection at http://www.stus.com. These two sites create site map pages for virtually --every comic strip available on the web. You need merely go to the main page, navigate until you finds the comics area and wait while the links load. Then one clicks on the link one wants and the page will take you to the web page where that strip is found (be it on the Uexpress page, the King Features page or any other page. Then the back button on the browser returns you to the Site map, so that you can go to the next page. The strips are listed alphabetically, for easy navigation purposes.
These are the strip web pages I've found and frequent. If you know of any others, please let me know about them. I'm always looking for a new strip source.
BOB INGERSOLL
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