Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 32

Could Batman patent the Batmobile? Is it murder if you kill Wolverine, knowing he’ll regenerate? Does Superman need a warrant to use his X-ray vision on your house? How much trouble can Stark Industries get in if one of Iron Man’s fights levels your business?

James Daily, J.D. and Ryan Davidson, J.D.’s The Law of Superheroes answers these and more questions about the legal implications of super-heroic tropes. You may recognize the names or the concept: The pair of lawyers and self-described comic-book nerds also write the blog Law and the Multiverse.

You’d think a book about law would be a dry read, but it’s actually a lot of fun. That’s sort of the point: some land dispute might not grab the average reader’s attention, but Superman’s troubles with the IRS? That’s something anyone can relate to. More than a “what if?” collection, the book works as an overview of U.S. and international law, told through the lens of comic books.

Examples

Some of the implications are kind of surprising. For instance: Music from a parallel universe where the Beatles never broke up (New Excalibur 4) might not be protected by copyright, because Earth-2182’s U.S. and U.K. never signed our universe’s Berne Convention. On the other hand, the surviving Beatles might still be able to control distribution through trademark law.

Another interesting thing to think about: if Commissioner Gordon calls Batman in on a case, he’s legally required to follow the same rules as the police regarding search warrants and the like, or else evidence may not be admissible. But if Batman goes after the Riddler on his own, he can probably sneak into the villain’s hideout looking for clues and not jeopardize the case (although he’d technically be guilty of breaking and entering).

As a non-human, Superman might not be legally entitled to legal rights as a person, though he and Gorilla Grodd would probably both be protected under animal cruelty statutes and the Endangered Species Act. This is one of several cases where it seems likely that law would change to settle the question (sort of like the DCU’s twelfth amendment allowing masked testimony).

As for that question about Wolverine: It really does depend on whether you know he’ll shrug it off. If you shoot him and think he’ll die, you’ve attempted murder and can be charged as such. If you know it’ll barely slow him down, it’s only assault. On a related note, if you kill Ra’s Al Ghul and then he climbs out of the Lazarus pit, you’re still culpable for murder. You did kill him, after all.

Missing

I was kind of hoping for a little more depth on some subjects, but they cover a lot of ground, and there isn’t really room. (Good thing they have a blog!)

The other thing that disappointed me is that they rarely stray from the mainstream DC and Marvel universes. Hob Gadling from Sandman is discussed at length in the chapter on immortality, and Moist from Dr. Horrible is mentioned in passing during the chapter on super powers as disabilities, but that’s about it. In particular, I would have liked to see some discussion of an Astro City story in which a defense attorney, under extreme pressure from his ruthless and well-connected client, successfully uses the doppelganger defense.

Overall

The Law of Superheroes is one of those fun books that you can take with you when you know you’ll only have sporadic reading time. It’s broken down into broad areas of law and then specific issues, so it’s easy to take a few minutes to read about mutant civil rights or immortality and property inheritance, then put it down for a while and come back later.

Verdict: Recommended. And then head over to their blog for more!

Randy Cassingham has been collecting and sharing strange news stories for almost 20 years now on his newsletter, This Is True. Often funny and always thought-provoking, this e-book collection features weird-but-true stories ranging from outrageously funny to just plain outrageous.

The format – all single-paragraph stories, each with a headline and tagline – makes this a good book to keep on your phone to pick up whenever you have a few minutes. Watch out, though: it’s way too easy to read “just one more story”…over and over and over!

Some stories feature follow-ups, such as a couple who marketed a bizarre invention who later brought it to “Shark Tank,” or how politicians’ careers fared after some embarrassing incident. Others feature links to expanded stories on the author’s blog, opening the story up to additional related thoughts or discussion.

One of the interesting things about this book is that it spans 2001-2002, so it offers a look back at the post-9/11 days, the paranoia of the anthrax scare, and the early spread of “zero tolerance” school policies. It’s an interesting view of some of the events that have shaped today’s political climate.

Available in paperback and multiple e-book formats at This is True Books.

Open and inviting, with friendly staff and a wide, well-organized selection. New and recent releases take up an entire wall, broken down into kid’s books, media adaptations (find your Dr. Who and Star Trek comics easily, no matter who’s publishing them this year), DC, Marvel, Vertigo/Max, and indies.

They also have a large selection of paperbacks and hardcovers, though that’s a little harder to look through since some are filed by author, some by character, some by title, some by publisher and some by topic. If you can’t find something, just ask. And if they don’t have it, they’re happy to special-order it for you.

They don’t have much in the way of manga that I’ve noticed.

It’s also kid-friendly: if you have a child who’s too young to read the kids’ books without destroying them, there’s a toddler-sized table with one of those bead-track toys, and the back area where they do signings and games has a TV where they often show superhero cartoons or movies.

Did I mention signings? They frequently get artists and writers from the LA area to do signings, and I mean big names. Mark Waid was in a few weeks ago, and the first time I walked in the store there was a flyer for a Mike Mignola appearance.

I’ve been going to this store weekly for about a year and a half. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to review it.

The Game Hub

Update: They’ve expanded into the next storefront over for gaming events and supplies. Mostly collectible card games (Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, etc.), some tabletop.

Today we drove down into San Diego to see the new touring version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast stage musical. The simpler staging and costumes work (though the castle set from the 1995 Los Angeles production really added a lot to the mood), but the big numbers like “Be Our Guest” do suffer from the smaller cast. And while I don’t really miss the two songs they cut (“No Matter What” and “Maison Des Lunes” were the weakest of the score), I did miss the battle between the townspeople and the enchanted objects…and the new song (OK, not that new, but it wasn’t in the original production) they added, about how happy Belle is to have given up her dreams, is actually creepy. Seriously, did no one think that one through?

More specifically, good DC time-travel comics.

DC One Million is a Justice League story that spans 800,000 years. It was a big event, but there’s a collection that features the main story and the key tie-ins.

JLA: Rock of Ages is another Justice League time travel story. Grant Morrison revisited some of the same ground later on with Final Crisis (in this one, several members of the League jump forward in time a decade or so and find that Darkseid has conquered Earth), but IMO Rock of Ages hangs together better.

Time Masters from ~1990 is a good stand-alone story featuring Rip Hunter. (Not to be confused with Time Masters: Vanishing Point - I haven’t read that one, but as I understand it was built around Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne and Flashpoint.) It was reprinted a few years ago, so you should be able to find it. It’s a time travel conspiracy story with the modern team of time travelers trying to block Vandal Savage and the Illuminati in different periods of history.

I rather liked the short-lived series Chronos, about an industrial spy who stumbles into becoming a time traveler. It only lasted around 10 issues or so. Another short-lived series, Hourman, was about a time-traveling android and spun out of DC One Million.