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Join us each Tuesday as Bob Ingersoll analyzes how the law
is portrayed in comics then explains how it would really work.
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THE LAW IS A ASS for 06/12/2001
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 99
Originally written as installment # 88 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 674, October 17, 1986 issue
Okay, this one is definitely one set in its time. When I wrote this column, Comico's Jonny Quest comic was very popular and we were still in the Jason Todd as Robin era. "A Death in the Family" was, thankfully, a ways off yet, so it was Jason, not Dick Grayson and not Tim Drake as Robin.
What sparked the column were the letters in the Jonny Quest mail column about child endangerment, the ones I mentioned--especially the one that said Dr. Quest beat the child endangerment rap. Considering what Dr. Benton Quest used to expose his eleven-year-old son Jonny, not to mention his eleven-year-old adoptive son, Hadji, to, I wondered how Dr. Quest could have beaten a child endangerment rap.
That's when I started hypothesizing. The result was the column which follows. Not one of my deep analytical ones. It was more of a giggle. But giggles are fun, too.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 99
by
Bob Ingersoll
With time off for good behavior, The Batman was paroled from Gotham State Penitentiary for that child-endangerment rap he took over Robin after two years. He immediately sought out Dr. Benton Quest.
"Your Bat-Laser out of synchronization again, Batman?" Dr. Quest asked.
"No, it's Robin. I work best alone. You know, hiding in the shadows, sneaking into Commissioner Gordon's window, coercing confessions out of a cowardly superstitious lot. But, they keep saddling me with some kid sidekick, because of merchandising and the supposed youth market attraction. I've got to do something. Robin's cramping my style.
"First of all, there's his costume with that red "Shoot-Me" shirt. It's louder than a THX sound system promo. Hide in the shadows? Forget it! Robin couldn't hide in a total eclipse.
"Second, the marketing specialists insist that I take Robin out on my missions, but every time I do, Welfare has me arrested for Child Endangerment. Benton, T. M. Maple sicced Welfare on you over Jonny in the letter page of your first issue, but David Porta of Sacramento, California said you beat the rap. What's your secret? How do you keep them off your back about Jonny?"
"I hide him."
"What?"
"I hide him. Look, you and Robin live in the big city, answer the summons of an industrial strength spotlight, drive around in an Avanti you've customized so it's as conspicuous as Mr. T at a debutante's ball, capture colorful crooks, and make the front page every morning. How can Welfare ignore you?
"I live on Key West, where no one can see me. I keep Jonny on my estate, so he can't talk to anyone and brag about all his adventures. And I have him privately tutored. Pulled a few strings, wrangled a few connections to allow Jonny to be home schooled. That way no one knows where or when he's gone. Makes it much easier to sneak him off to those danger spots."
"I used to have government connections, before they revived all this 'Dark Avenger' garbage, because my sales were slipping. Now I'm a hunted outlaw again."
"And you should never have allowed that. Life's much simpler with contacts. You lost a great bargaining chip."
"But what about the globe trotting? Doesn't Welfare get on you for taking Jonny into all those dangerous foreign locales?"
"Who tells them? If I have to stop Dr. Zinn from bombing the Aswan High Dam, I don't tell Welfare that's what I'm doing. I just say, 'Jonny's off on a field trip to see the pyramids.' They think it's educational. Works every time."
"And if they find out about the danger?"
"Is it my fault some crazed terrorist picked my family as a target?
"It's camouflage, Batman. I pretend to live an ordinary family life and have my adventures in out of the way places like rain forests. You operate out in the open and make it too obvious what you're doing. Welfare can't even pretend they don't know about you and Robin.
"Besides, even if Welfare could ignore what you do, how could they ignore some kid who runs around in the winter weather wearing short sleeves and hot pants?"
"You let Jonny run around the desert in blue jeans and a black turtle neck in issue # 1. What's the difference between hypothermia and heat prostration?"
"That was a mistake. I keep telling Jonny that he doesn't need an identifiable uniform anymore. His original fans from the sixties are all grown up now. They're old enough to figure out who he is, even if he's wearing something different. But Jonny insists. What can I do? It's his TV show and his book. If he lights out on his own, I'm out of work. So he's something of a prima donna, it beats going back to S.T.A.R. Labs. Ted Kord has better bennies than S.T.A.R., but you've got to have a crooked relative to work for Kord.
"Look, Batman, just lay low for a while, Welfare will move on to someone else."
"Like who?"
"Airboy. A minor child whose father is murdered, covers up his father's murder and runs off with an Oriental tutor, so that he can be trained to use an M-16 and fight Contras and a skeletal villain. Now there's a Welfare problem!"
"Thanks, Benton. I feel better. I'd feel a lot better, if I could get Robin off my hands. You want to trade kids?"
"Nah. Jonny may not look a thing like me, but I'm used to him. Besides, with Dick playing Nightwing now isn't your new Robin's real name Jason Todd?"
"Yes. So what?"
"Certain things just have too memories tied up with them. The comic's named after my son and I don't think a book named Jason Quest could ever make it."
******
ROBERT M. INGERSOLL, long time comic fan, almost as long time Jonny Quest fan, short time attorney-at-law, and pressed for time CBG columnist wants to explain that last joke for anyone who's under the age of twenty-eight. In the late sixties, DC tried out a book in Showcase called "Jason's Quest." It had all the elements of the sixties in it: a boy, a bike, a guitar and his search for his lost twin sister.
It died. Hence my joke that a book called Jason Quest wouldn't work.
>>sigh<<
My father was right. If you have to explain the joke, it wasn't worth telling in the first place.
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