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THE LAW IS A ASS for 10/09/2001
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 116
Originally written as installment # 105 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 698, April 3, 1987 issue
I find, as I get older--and older, and older and older--that nagging, little aches and pains come my way. Nothing major. Just one of those, get up and for a second there's a throbbing in your knee kind of thing.
Much like the topics in today's column. No major gaffs in the law in any of the stories I'm writing about. Just slight throbbings which I needed to address so that the mistakes in them wouldn't go uncorrected. Just for my own piece of mind.
Now, none of these little throbbings were worthy of a full column, but I still wanted to address them. So I'd throw several of these small naggers into one column and correct them. Just to relieve the throbbing.
Call these kinds columns Excedrin for the soul.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 116
by
Bob Ingersoll
I've been a lawyer long enough to have heard all the stories. The whispered rumors, the snide innuendos, the caustic witticisms repeating one fact: Los Angeles is a loony tunes town, and it's got a legal system to match. Los Angeles is famed for its innovative decisions which--depending on your philosophical bent and whether or not you were on the winning side of the decision in question--are regarded as either flaky or the cutting edge of the law. Los Angeles, you see, tends toward a liberal court system, which is expansive in the areas of plaintiff or criminal rights.
So, why were the two LA precedents, I encountered in this weeks' perusal of the mass media law, so markedly anti-human rights? That's what I want to know. That, and do they really represent the state of L.A. law?
Speaking of L.A. Law that's where I encountered the first of the two precedents I was talking about: L.A. Law. (Show some appreciation there, son. It takes, I say, it takes years of practice to come up with catchy transitions like that.) There was this gang member, who was successfully prosecuted by D.A. Grace Van Owen (played by Susan Dey) and sentenced to death. The gang member was sentenced to death, that is, not Grace. The Partridge Family may have been a crime against humanity, but it doesn't deserve the death penalty. Reviving Let's Make a Deal maybe, but not The Partridge Family.
Anyway, the gang member threatens Grace, and a fourteen-year-old member of the gang tries to carry the threat, but he only wings Grace. (After all, if Grace were killed, who would they have to engage in coy bedroom scenes with Harry Hamlin?) This kid is brought to trial in juvenile court for attempted murder and hunting partridges out of season. He is judged delinquent and sentenced to the Youth Authority until he reaches the age of twenty-four.
That's where I was puzzled. According to the story, the California Youth Authority retains jurisdiction over juvenile delinquents for six years after the kids reach the age of majority--assuming, as I do, that the age of majority in California is eighteen. This means the Youth Authority can institutionalize juvenile delinquents within its penal system, until the juvenile reaches the age of twenty-four, even though the kid stopped being a juvenile for six years. I suppose it's possible. In Ohio, the Youth Authority retains jurisdiction until the age of twenty-one, despite the fact that Ohio's age of majority is eighteen, so maybe California does vest jurisdiction until the tender age of twenty-four. If so, however, it surprises me to find out that California is stricter than Ohio is.
If you listen to the stories, California isn't even stricter than the Good Ship Lollipop.
The other instance of Los Angeles precedent was found in Adventures of Superman # 429. It has to do with child custody.
Catherine Grant had a son several years ago. Then she and the boy's father broke up, and Cat began, if you'll pardon the expression, catting around. Actually, that's what she was doing, whether you pardon the expression or not. There was a custody battle over the boy. Because Cat had shown herself to be of a questionable moral bent, she was deemed to be an unfit mother. So she lost the custody battle and the Court awarded custody to the father. What puzzled we was when Cat said, "The Court ruled I couldn't see Adam."
It is very unusual for a Court to deny all visitation rights. It does happen, usually because the one parent has been accused of sexually abusing the child. But all Cat had supposedly done was to engage in casual sex.
Yes all. I do not condone the practice of free sex, but I would hardly equate it with the type of reprehensible behavior usually required to deny a natural parent any and all visitations rights in her son. We're not talking about Cat's right to raise the kid, just her right as a mother to visit the kid on occasion and maybe take him to a movie. I can see the order, if there was an indication that Cat was such an insatiable harlot, that she would engage in free love while her son watched. There was, however, nothing to indicate that Cat would have done anything of the kind.
The order was, in my opinion, excessive, unenforceable, and begged to be overturned by a court of appeals.
It wasn't. As we later learned, Cat never bothered to contest the Court's ruling in an appeal. Granted Cat was upset that she had lost. She was even more upset that she could never see her son again. But she shouldn't have been so upset that she failed to take the simple expedient of trying to overturn the unreasonable no visitation ruling.
And even if she were that upset and not thinking clearly, her attorney must have realized how improper the ruling was and suggested appealing it. He wouldn't even have to be a nice guy to suggest it. After all, if he did the appeal for Cat, he would stand to make some more money.
I can only conclude one thing--Cat's decision not to appeal was a demonstration of her true love and regard for her son. None. That still doesn't justify refusing visitation rights, but it doesn't exactly lend support to Cat's cries that she wants to see her son, either.
Now then, let's talk about another aspect of Adventures of Superman # 429. Specifically Pages 2 and 3. What's wrong with those pages?
No, it isn't the fact that Superman went through several panels of angst worrying how he was going to keep an S.S.T. from crashing into Metropolis, without killing all of the passengers in the plane, when he dropped it into the ocean. Just because I realized Superman could angle the plane so it could make a water landing from which everyone could walk away, doesn't mean that it was wrong for Superman not to realize the same thing until several panels had elapsed. After all, this is a new Superman who's lost some four hundred issues worth of continuity which I happen to remember. As it stands now, I've had years more experience than Superman's had.
No, the problem was in the credits. Let me reproduce them here for you. "The Adventures of Superman" created by Jerry Siegle & Schuster, Written and drawn by Marv Wolfman & Jerry Ordway, Lettered by Albert DeGuzman, Colored by Tom Ziuko, Edited by Andy Helfer & Mike Carlin."
What's wrong with those credits?
I'll give you a little time to think about it.
I admit it's a subtle mistake. To my chagrin, I didn't notice it, when I read the story. Tony Isabella pointed it out to me.
Have you discovered it yet?
Superman was created almost fifty years ago by two Clevelanders, Jerry S-I-E-G-E-L and JOE S-H-U-S-T-E-R. I don't know who those guys Jerry Siegle and Fill-in-the Blank Schuster are.
This gaff was inexcusable. Quite simply, if there had never been a Superman, there wouldn't be a comic-book industry today. Everyone in comics owes his livelihood to Siegel and Shuster. The people at DC are no exception. Indeed, DC's debt to Siegel and Shuster is greater than anyone's. I think the least DC could do is to spell the names Siegel and Shuster correctly. Please, DC, don't ever let this error happen again.
EVER!
Bob Ingersoll
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