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Friday Runaround – It Was All Harlan's Fault!

Published Fri, 07 May 2010 03:34:02 -0500

Britain wakes up to a hung Parliament, all the politicians are running around like headless chickens, right now anything could happen. Personally I reckon we'll get a Tory minority government which won't be able to pass some of the madder pieces of legislation like closing down all the methadone clinics. So let's see, eh?

So. Comics.

LegalWatch: Lawyer Troy Benson looks at Green Arrow #32 and Blackest Night #0… and finds them lacking.

Factually, he killed a man but legally, he didn't commit a murder. Where did Green Arrow kill Prometheus? He killed him in Limbo. In order for a crime to be prosecuted the government has to have what is referred to as "jurisdiction" to prosecute the crime… Defendants in criminal trials are not allowed to just stand up and deliver a monologue to the jury. Green Arrow would have had to take the stand after being sworn in and been subject to cross-examination by the prosecutor… when the Judge orders Green Arrow to leave town he simply did not have any power to do that. He was punishing Green Arrow for a crime that he had already been acquitted. Not Guilty means not guilty. When the jury returned their verdict of not guilty the Judge lost all authority over Green Arrow and could not force him to move simply because he didn't like the jury's verdict.

Iron Heights is supposed to be a prison. There is no way they would let Captain Boomerang and Professor Zoom stay in their costumes… "Why are Captain Boomerang and Professor Zoom in jail?" They've been dead for years. What crimes did they commit after they were resurrected? I'm sure even in the comic book world the law loses the authority to punish someone after they are dead… Here's hoping that the future of the DC Universe includes some criminal due process.

PirateWatch: I have received a variety of insults for supposedly shutting down HTML Comics by, you know, reporting that it existed. Turns out it may have been scourge of pirates, Harlan Ellison. He writes

Several months ago, if you recall, we were advised of an internet pirate who was posting — along with about 30,000 other pages — DC, Marvel, Archie, Dark Horse, and on and on — my stories from HARLAN ELLISON'S DREAM CORRIDOR. When we advised him to cease and desist, he essentially told me to go fuck myself, and urged me to sue him. Just like every one of them, all the way back to my AOL suit, he told me he couldn't be found, he was impregnable, I could go fuck myself.

I warned him.

I asked four members of The Flying Blue Monkey Squad to help me. They found him in one day, unsnarled all his shunting devices, tracked his footprint back to his main server, we got his name, his location in Tampa, Florida, and sent that data on to, well, friends of friends.

Look around the net today, folks. You may find a HUGE news event that congratulates Dark Horse (publisher of DREAM CORRIDOR), DC, Marvel, a consortium of dealers and publishers, and a number of attorneys, who have decided to do what I was asked by the FBI to refrain from doing until they'd put out THEIR press release…announce the arrest of a guy in, well I'll be damned, Tampa, Florida on Federal Charges of illegal copyright infringement.

I claim nothing. But once again, and you may smile with naked pleasure again, their are demon-shaped hoofprints all over this reply to the arrogant "do your worst" of the pirates. What they don't ever seem to perceive, is that for some of us, our worst is our best.

Thank you, each and every.

Grin mercilessly.

Yr. Pal, Harlan
The members of The Flying Blue

RaceWatch: Okay. Am I the only one who didn't realise that Kyle Raynor was half-Mexican/Irish and therefore a minority character to be regressed upon? Possibly. Either way, Chris Sims looks at the "unfortunate consequences" of various moves to return legacy characters in the DC Universe to their sixties and seventies identities.

Another example can be found on Johns's "deboot" of the "Legion of Super-Heroes." It's a franchise I'm passionate about in the exact same fannish way that I mentioned above. Even though I came to the series later and have a huge appreciation for the Silver Age stories, and even though I really enjoy what Johns did with them, "my" Legion is still the first one I read, the post-Zero Hour "reboot" Legion.

Admittedly, the reboot lost non-white characters like Dawnstar, Tyroc and Invisible Kid II (the latter eventually returned, albeit in the same sort of supporting character role that Kyle Rayner's stuck in now), but at the very least, it brought in new characters like Kid Quantum I and II, Gear and XS. Even the "Threeboot" Legion had some diversity to it with Star Boy and Karate Kid.

The current Legion, however, doesn't have a whole lot of non-white faces:

Haven't you heard, Chris? They're all living on the disappearing-reappearing Marzal Island…

McLovinWatch:

Don't believe what you are hearing about Kick-Ass 2 guys. It is not confirmed, but I will love to do it when the time is right!less than a minute ago via webChris Mintz-Plasse
MintzPlasse