Tagged: Daredevil

Marc Alan Fishman: The Times, They Are A Changin’

Can you feel it in the air, kiddos? Whether it’s our President’s RussiaGate investigation picking off staff members and placing others under house arrest, or the massive movement of that other three-named comic book creator being snagged by their rival comic company. The times? They are a’changin.’

And while I’m apt to discuss my continuing thoughts on our super-villain-in-chief slowly devolving our country into the antithesis of what it was founded upon, I think it’s more apropos I dive in instead to the recent(ish) announcement that Brian Michael Bendis is headed towards DC Comics.

In 2000, which I’ll be double-damned was seventeen friggin’ years ago, BMB was brought in on a little experimental book Ultimate Spider-Man. The proto-millennial Peter Parker of Bendis’s pen was what a generation needed from their comics. He was young, unencumbered by decades of backstory, and full of delicious teen angst. Paired with the artwork of stalwart journeyman Mark Bagley, the book skyrocketed Bendis’s name-value into the upper echelons of the modern comic book fandom. And over the course of his career at the house funded by the Mouse, Bendis had amazing runs on Daredevil, The Avengers, Alias, and the X-Men. But you have access to Wikipedia too, so, let’s just call it a day with the basics, shall we?

While some would be quick to point out that BMB’s clout may not be at the same levels it once was, anyone with a Facebook feed like mine when the announcement dropped surely could argue otherwise. Every comic book fan and creator I know had something to say on the matter. Most all of it was purely positive – save literally for that one friend who literally can’t say they like anything, ever. But, pardon my French, fuck that guy.

With Bendis headed to DC, the potential energy here outmatches the kinetic force of his Marvel departure. With decades (plus) full of ideas for DC’s pantheon of super-powered beings, there’s a change in the air of mainstream comics – if only for the time being until his name is actually attached to specific projects with specific deadlines.

Simply take a look at the modern comic landscape, and you’ll see how BMB moved the needle of mainstream comics like a nuclear-powered sharknado. He made a generation believe that Spider-Man could become a legacy character through Miles Morales. He took the idea of a Wonder Woman, removed all heroic chakras, and gave us Jessica Jones. He whispered through Scarlet Witch “no more mutants.” He disassembled and reassembled the Avengers. And even recently, he created RiRi Williams – giving us the female Rhodey we never knew we wanted. Like I said: needle-moving creation.

Now, take that mind, and give it the keys to a new kingdom. This move allows us to build on the potent world-building of Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, etc., and grant carte blanche to introduce the humanity that Bendis has built a career off of… ultimately (natch) allowing DC to have its cake and eat it too.

 

If we think big picture, it’s easy to see how the street-level vision of BMB could breathe new life into staple DC champions like Batman, or Green Lantern. Or, Bendis could lend his pro-woman-writing wares to Wonder Woman or Supergirl. Hell, they could just let ole’ BMB nab someone like Jamie Reyes or Kyle Rayner (please oh please) and let him steer their ships towards brighter shores. Again: the possibilities are endless, and exciting. Oh wait! Could Bendis be allowed to work with the Endless?! I digress, I digress.

Yes kiddos, the times they are a’changin’. Amidst all the hellfire and panic that exists in the real world? I’m happy to know that the fake ones that exist on paper now have a new voice and energy to distract me from the impending doom. And that is a change worth subscribing to.

The Law Is A Ass #421: Daredevil Ends The Art Show, Mural Less

The Law Is A Ass #421: Daredevil Ends The Art Show, Mural Less

Well, since they’re going to make it easy for me…

In Daredevil vol 5 # 11, there was a new villain in town, Muse, a deranged artist who painted a mural on a wall. Given that we’re talking about a comic book, I think you can Banksy on the fact that there’s more to this villain than meets the eye. Not just Daredevil’s eye, which is blind after all, but even more than meets the eye of an eagle with 20/10 vision. See, it’s not that Muse was using other people’s walls for his paintings; that would only make him guilty of vandalism. Muse was also using other people’s blood.

Yes, while some artists paint in oils and others in watercolors, Muse used the blood of his victims. I think for Muse, his medium is the message.

Muse painted a mural on the wall of a warehouse owned by one Freddy Durnin using the blood of over one hundred and twelve different missing persons. Freddy wanted to display the painting to the public for ten dollars a head. Did the public want to see this corpuscular – or should I say corpse-puscular – work of art? I think the idea grue on them, because there was already a line that went “around the block.”

Personally, I’m not too sanguinary about Freddy’s chances. DNA tests established that one of the victims whose blood was used in the painting was the niece of Andrea Pearson, Speaker of the New York City City Council. And Ms. Pearson did not want the painting displayed to the public.

Now, given that there was the blood of over one hundred victims in the painting, I’m not sure how any DNA sample wouldn’t have been so hopelessly contaminated that it would have been impossible to positively identify any one victim’s DNA. But I’ll give the story that one. After all, this is the Marvel Comics Universe. Reed Richards probably killed an hour one afternoon when the Internet was down by developing a highly efficient method of separating cross-contaminated DNA samples that’s used by whatever DNAgency operates in the MCU.

Anyway, back to Councilwoman Pearson. When Freddy rebuffed her, she went to the District Attorney’s office to get him to shut the display down. And DA Hochberg turned the matter over to assistant DA Matt Murdock. Hochberg was mad at Matt, who had been shirking his duties as an assistant DA. Seems Matt was out protecting the streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil when he should have been attending to his ADA duties. So Hochberg dropped the case, and a sarcasm bomb in Matt’s lap, “You are supposed to be one of best attorneys of your generation, Matt. Please… do us both a favor. Prove it.”

Wow, some punishment. Hochberg punishes Matt by giving him a job that was so easy even a first year law student intern assigned to filing duties because the alphabet was at the upper end of his competence could accomplish in half an hour? Yes, punish the guy by giving him punishment that basically amounts to a paid afternoon off, that’ll show him.

Seriously, while I was writing these words, I came up with three arguments Matt could use to shut down Freddy’s nightmare. And I wasn’t even giving any thought to the problem.

  1. Have the police say they’ve only finished their initial investigation and that the warehouse is still an active crime scene that has to be kept free of outside contamination. So no visitors allowed.
  2. Have it declared a public nuisance. After all, that blood will attract flies and rats and other vermin to the area.
  3. And, hey, human blood is biological material. Some of that blood may have AIDS or hepatitis or some other infectious disease. That means the mural is a health hazard which is too dangerous to be open to the public. Even more so when you consider that this is blood from one hundred twelve people in the Marvel Universe. So one of them probably had radioactive spider venom or cosmic Gamma rays or Terragin mists or just plain, old New York City water coursing through their blood. That makes it even more of a biohazard.

Once Matt had a theory or five he would petition the court for either a preliminary injunction, an ex parte proceeding in which the person or persons who wanted to enjoin – or prevent – an action from happening appear before a judge without the other party to the case also appearing. To get a preliminary injunction, Matt would have to convince the court both that allowing the act he wanted to enjoin – here Freddy operating his art gallery – to occur would cause some sort of damage and that Matt’s argument would more than likely prevail when the case came to an actual trial. If the judge agreed, the judge would grant the preliminary injunction, temporarily blocking Freddy from running his gallery and setting the case for a immediate hearing in which both sides could argue their cases.

And seeing as how several pages after Hochberg palmed this problem off on Matt, the police presented Freddy with a preliminary injunction, that must have been exactly what Matt did. See, I told you they made it easy for me. Matt did everything right, so all I had to do was explain what he did and why it worked without the extra step I usually have to include of explaining what Matt should have done but didn’t do and why he should have done it.

Still all I said was that Matt made it easy for me, I didn’t say he made it painless. There was that extra scene when Matt complained to Foggy about his possible moral conflict. The DA’s office is supposed to promote justice, not shut down some guy’s business “because it gets on City Hall’s nerves.” Matt, baby, don’t invite problems. You weren’t shutting a business down because it got on Andrea’s nerves, you were shutting it down because it presented a legitimate health hazard. That’s a good thing and what you’re supposed to do as a DA. Don’t go worrying about problems that don’t exist yet.

If Hochberg tells you do to something at a later date which you think is wrong, then you can have your moral crisis. Don’t worry about it now, before he’s asked you to do that thing, whatever it is, worry about it later when he actually asks you to do it.

And considering how loose your legal ethics have been the past few years, I’m not so sure you’ll worry about it all that much later, either.

Dennis O’Neil: Team-Ups!

So it’s a ball boiler inside the Manhattan office building because although I’m pretty sure air conditioning existed it did not become ubiquitous until after the war that the good ol’ US of A was sliding into. What we’re looking at is an open window on an upper floor and somehow (are we pigeons?) we get inside and behold! Three middle-aged men, suit jackets draped over chairs, ties loosened, discussing the comic books they edit. They have had solid successes with characters a couple of young guys named Bill Everett and Carl Burgos brought in. The topic under discussion: more! More of Burgos’s Human Torch, of Everett’s Sub-Mariner: and yes, of course, more profits, and maybe this year’s Christmas bonus will be worth more than a subway token. Then one of the three (wise men?) has The Idea: Combine ‘em! Put them in the same issue…no, put ‘em in the same story.

And so they did, and a few months later your grandpa (great grandpa?) was sitting on a porch swing with his best gal reading about the meeting of Subby and The Torch, and being scolded by Best Gal for wasting time and money on those stupid funny books! (Okay, skeptics, can you prove that this stuff didn’t happen? Go ahead, Mr. Philosophy Dude, let’s see you prove a negative.)

Whatever the particulars, regardless of what did or did not actually occur, the Torch-Sub-Mariner stories went on sale and the few readable copies left are very early examples of what would later be a comic book staple, the team-up.

And then, the passing of years and The Justice Society of America, the Marvel Family, and a plethora of other costumed teams, until the arrival of the X-Men just abut the time when comics as a whole were getting a mighty, second wind and emerging from a decade-long obscurity, victims of the Eisenhower era witch hunts.

Comics were back!

And movies were following the trail they blazed. After a few single-hero flicks, the movies found the X-Men and a billion dollar franchise was born. Hold it! – not exactly born: rather, evolved from earlier existence as comic book characters. Fortunes were, and are, being made. More of them to come.

And the fossil who goes by my name can kick back and realize that the Netflix video enterprise, a first cousin to the movies mentioned above, is a super-group comprised entirely of character I’ve worked on. Yep, The Defenders, starring Iron Fist and Power Man, who were partners in their comic book home, and Daredevil and Patsy Walker.

Who?

Patsy made the giant leap from comics about post-teens to grim superheroic private eye Jessica Jones. Patsy’s light and bright escapades were closely related to other Marvel stuff like Millie the Model and if you didn’t know that, well, now you do.

As of this writing, I’ve only seen two of the Defenders programs and so have not earned the right to have an opinion about the whole series.

Catch me next week. Maybe by then I’ll have earned the aforementioned figured out the subject of the preceding 517 words.

Martha Thomases: Defending…?

Last Friday, my pal Larry Hama invited me to a “friends and family” screening of the first two episodes of Marvel’s The Defenders. I mean the new series debuting on Netflix today, not the classic television show, The Defenders, the source of many many jokes made during the screening.

Also in attendance: Tony Isabella, Michael Gaydos and his adorable son, Arvell Jones, and the families of Archie Goodwin and George Tuska. Plus a bunch of current Marvel folks who had probably already seen the whole series, but who were gracious hosts.

Before the screening began, I was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about seeing so many of my old friends and meeting people whose work I admired. Hence, I was psyched to enjoy two hours in a comfy chair in a screening room.

Mostly, I had a great time. I have a huge crush on Charlie Cox, the beautiful man who plays Matt Murdock. And I love Rosario Dawson, Mike Colter, and Kristin Ritter. The production design for the series suggests the color schemes associated with each of the four main characters so that Daredevil’s scenes are dark and red, Jessica Jones’ scenes are blue, and Luke Cage’s seem to have been shot in the 1970s.

If only there were no Iron Fist.

I don’t blame Finn Jones. He’s working as hard as he can. Unfortunately, the way Danny Rand has been written for these series, he’s a narcissist. A benevolent narcissist, but still a man who only sees the world as it relates to him. Daredevil is trying to keep crime out of his neighborhood. Luke Cage is the Hero of Harlem. Even Jessica Jones goes out of her way to help a stranger.

Danny Rand only thinks about Danny Rand. Even in his guilt, he can’t see past himself.

I guess this makes a certain amount of sense, given that he was raised by Buddhist monks and taught to look within himself for strength. Buddhists can be rather solipsistic. They aren’t the only ones, certainly, and that’s not all there is to Buddhism, but that’s what I infer from the Netflix series. In any case, his self-absorption has the effect of making the character and his struggles seem less important.

(For another perspective on Buddhism and action heroes, you might want to check out this series, co-written by my high school friend, Tinker Lindsay.)

A few supporting characters from each series are here, so our heroes have someone to provide exposition. I like to see Colleen Wing and Misty Knight and Foggy Nelson and Trish Walker. Sigourney Weaver and Waitlist Ching Ho make excellent villains. And there are many many, many other characters, enough so that it feels like it’s actually shot in New York City, where many millions of people live.

I can’t give a real critical overview of a series from just the first two episodes. It felt like they were taking their time getting to the real story because when the screening ended, the four main characters had not yet all met each other. That seems to me to be a bit too slow.

Still, it’s the tail end of August. What else do you have to do this weekend? I certainly have nothing better.

•     •     •     •     •

mine-logo-150x84-6915485An important reminder: If you haven’t already, get thee to this Kickstarter page and pledge some money for Mine! the anthology book ComicMix is producing to benefit Planned Parenthood. You might not know it from the Fake News Media, but Planned Parenthood provides necessary health care to millions of people of all ages and genders. In some communities, it is the only place where women can receive pre-natal and post-natal care. In some communities, it is the only place where poor women can get vital cancer screenings. In some communities, it is the only health clinic available, for women and men.

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The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #413

MATT MURDOCK HAS SOME INTERESTING CONFLICTS

Has this ever happened to you? You’re sitting there, minding your own business, reading your comic books, when something in the story makes you go, “Now, that’s not right!” Of course you have. You can probably count on the fingers of one hand, the number of times you’ve read recent comic books and haven’t found something that made you say that. And probably still have enough fingers left over for an obscene gesture.

I have a confession to make, I’ve done it, too. The difference being, when you do it you can complain on a message board or something. When I do it, then I get to do this…

So there I was minding my own business reading Jessica Jones #9. I had just gotten to the part where Sharon Carter, acting head of S.H.I.E.L.D., arrested Jessica Jones, the super heroine turned private investigator, and threw her into jail for being uncooperative. Oh, yeah, and for insulting Sharon’s hairdo. No, seriously, that’s why Sharon tossed Jessica in jail.

No, that’s not the part that made me say, “Hey, that’s not right.” I mean arresting Jessica for bad hair day in the first and throwing her into a cell on Ryker’s Island is not right, but this sort of thing has happened so often in recent comic books that I’m rather inured to it. What is it about being head of S.H.I.E.L.D.? First it turned first Maria Hill  and then Sharon Carter into ill-tempered, officious, untrustworthy tenants in Apartment 23  who think a Bill of Rights is what you pay when you buy from the remainder table of the Leftorium.

No, the thing in the story that gave me pause was when Jessica’s attorney showed up and got her released with a writ of habeas corpus. At least, I assume it was a habeas corpus. The story didn’t say, but I kind of doubt Jessica’s attorney used a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Those things were only honored by Warden Crichton on the old Batman TV series; and, judging how many repeat offenders that show had, with alarming frequency.

It also didn’t bother me that Jessica’s lawyer got her sprung from her bogus arrest by using the great writ; springing people from bogus arrests is exactly what habeas was writ for. No what bothered me was that Jessica’s lawyer was Matt Murdock.

Remember, the Purple Children made the world forget that Matt Murdock was Daredevil, meaning the New York State Bar Association forgot why it had disbarred Matt  and reinstated his license to practice law in New York, Matt has been an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. Matt doesn’t get people out of jail anymore, he puts them in jail. So for Matt to show up with a habeas corpus for Jessica would be a dubious course oops.

Could Matt have been representing Jessica through a private practice he maintained on the side to earn extra money? Probably not. Some jurisdictions do allow their assistant district attorneys to run a private practice on the side. I don’t know whether New York is one of those jurisdictions, but it really doesn’t matter. Even those jurisdictions that allow their prosecutors to have private practices on the side, don’t allow them to accept cases which would present a conflict of interests.

And that means district attorneys can’t usually handle criminal cases in their side practices. Courts tend to find conflicts when the same lawyer is actively trying to put criminals behind bars in the job while trying to keep them out of jail on the side. Even if there are no actual conflicts, lawyers are supposed to avoid the appearance of impropriety and earning money on both sides of the criminal justice system doesn’t do that.

Matt could write wills, do civil litigation, negotiate contracts, and that sort of thing. In The Unstoppable Wasp #6, Matt showed up as Nadia Pym’s immigration lawyer. Even that could be permissible. Criminal law and immigration law sometimes intersect, but not so often that being a prosecutor and an immigration attorney automatically cause conflicts of interest.

If Matt were representing an immigrant who was being deported because he or she was being prosecuted for a crime in New York, that would probably be a conflict of interests. But the conflict of interests decision would be made on a case-by-case basis and not require an automatic withdrawal. But Matt representing criminal defendants while also serving as a district attorney in New York? That’s as iffy as a Bread song.

Beside which, Matt is already in enough hot water with his boss at the District Attorney’s office. So, even if it weren’t a conflict of interests for Matt to represent criminal defendants in his side practice, I doubt he’d want to risk incurring his boss’s wrath even further by eating prosecute-to ham with a side of defense work.

And why did the story have to use Matt Murdock anyway? Jennifer Walters is a practicing attorney in New York City, she could have been Jessica’s attorney without the whole conflict of interest problems. Or maybe Jeryn Hogarth could have represented Jessica. Why, there’s even a Manhattan-based attorney in the Marvel Universe named Robert Ingersol. He could have represented Jessica. I happen to have personal knowledge that he could use the money.

Mike Gold: Iron Fist – Your Mileage May Vary!

I must admit, I agree with Roy Thomas and Larry Hama.

Unfortunately, this puts me in opposition to at least three of my ComicMix fellow travelers – Martha Thomases, Joe Corallo and Adriane Nash. And, probably, many others who occupy these premises. That should make our next staff meeting amusing.

Iron Fist – I’m talking about the Marvel/Netflix series – most certainly is not The Prisoner of 21st Century. It’s not even as good as Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. But from reading the reactions of the aforementioned critics and many others, I do not find it to be the You’re In The Picture of the 21st Century, a show so obscure and godawfullousy that only Bob Ingersoll remembers it.

To be fair, I’ve only seen the first four episodes. Then again, Martha’s only seen the first four as well. But those critics who have been vocal in their distaste for the show seem to take umbrage at a number of the show’s elements:

  • It moves too slowly.

Yeah, well, there’s some truth to that but, damn, BFD. Epileptics deserve the opportunity to watch heroic fantasy without going into a seizure.

  • The lead, Finn Jones, sucks.

Maybe, maybe not. Stephen Amell was pretty lame when Arrow got its start, and he got a lot better. While Jones hasn’t quite reached the level of, say, Peter Capaldi, I’m willing to give him some time. How old is he, anyway? About 11, I think.

  • The plot is a rip-off of Arrow, isn’t it?

This particularly bothered my pal Joe. I respond: “Nope, it’s the other way around. In Arrow, Oliver Queen got himself lost in a purportedly fatal accident and came back five years later as a world-travelling, murderous superpowered member of the Russian mob who was cut off from the family fortune. Danny Rand got himself lost in a purportedly fatal accident and he came back some 13 years later a fully-powered superhero who was cut off from the family fortune. The difference is, the storyline in Arrow was mostly original to the teevee show – yes, Oliver did disappear for a while only to come back as a costumed non-superpowered, non-murdering hero­. But Danny Rand did it first: when Roy Thomas and Gil Kane created the character, at that time Oliver Queen was nothing more than an occasional back-up feature in Action Comics. So there.

  • Shouldn’t Iron Fist be Asian-American? After all, it’s 2017, damnit.

Yeah, well, here I agree with Roy. You want an Asian-American character, go create an Asian-American character. In fact, you should. Somebody should. And, get this, Joe – ComicMix’s diversity columnist – made this same point a year ago. Iron Fist was created in (arguably) less-enlightened times. You can’t change the past but – and here’s where I differ greatly from some of my revisionist brethren – you can learn from it. They call this a teaching opportunity.

There are many positive elements in the Iron Fist teevee series. First and foremost: there’s the character of Colleen Wing, as performed by Jessica Henwick. She is not a side-kick. She is her own person, a fully capable young woman struggling to make it in the Big City. Yes, I’d love to see her spin-off into her own series, but let’s face it: a Daughters of the Dragon series with Colleen Wing and Misty Knight (Simone Missick) would kick-ass. Quite literally. Besides, Tony Isabella could use the check.

The bad-guy, Harold Meachum, is wonderful. Sure, we figured out he’s a finger in The Hand roughly well before the first commercial, but his motivations and his truly bizarre technique in handling Rand are fascinating. Better still, actor David Wenham is wonderful in the part.

The Netflix crew, under the direction of Marvel’s own Jeff Loeb, understands the need for and the approach to Mighty Marvel Continuity. We’ve got Madame Gao as the big baddie. We last saw her in Daredevil. Jeri Hogarth appears in three episodes; she was the lawyer who didn’t get along with Jessica Jones in the series of the same name.

Rosario Dawson is in this show. Of course, Rosario has been in just about every superhero show or movie since Kirk Alyn hit puberty, and the world is a much better place for that. Her Claire Temple is the glue of Marvel’s Netflix miniverse and I enjoy seeing her move about the continuity.

I appreciate that Rotten Tomatoes has an 81% audience score but only an 18% critics score. This has nothing to do with your opinion. I mention this only to point out that the critics are sick and tired of being forced to watch all these superhero programs and movies, but they do not pay for the privilege. The audience does. It is their money that shows up on the balance sheets, and thus far, the audience seems to enjoy the genre greatly.

I have done little but give Iron Fist faint praise – Larry Hama, who knows something about martial arts heroes, liked it more than I did. Maybe my opinion will change when I finish watching the first series. Yes, there will be a second – it’s already been picked up.

But, as Dennis Miller used to say (and might still, but hardly anybody cares), “your mileage may vary,” and that’s totally cool.

Bob Ingersoll: Daredevil, Punisher and Where To Get A Fair Trial

 

The Law Is A Ass #395

daredevil_punisher_seventh_circle_infinite_comic_vol_1_1There’s an old joke I’m not going to repeat. It’s long; not very good; and, worst of all for a joke, not particularly funny. I bring it up because it’s punchline, “You can’t get there from here,” has a great bearing on the comic we’ll be discussing today.

What comic? My pun-ishing headline indicates, it’s a comic featuring Daredevil, Matt Murdock, and a change of venue in a trial. And that means it’s Daredevil/Punisher: Seventh Circle.

We learned in the first issue of this mini-series that there’s this gangster named Sergey Antonov, see, and he’s a bad man, see. How bad? Well, he didn’t shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but he poisoned a rival gang’s boss’s Christmas turkey just to get him out of the way. Unfortunately, the rival boss’s whole family was eating that turkey. Four generations – most of them innocents – died because of Antonov’s actions. That’s how bad.

Well, Antonov has been captured and is going to stand trial for his crimes. However, because “too many people hate [him]” in New York City, the District Attorney’s office feared it couldn’t get an impartial jury in New York City. So Assistant District Attorney Matt Murdock, moved for a change of venue. To Texas.

Which leads us to several points of discussion. First: what’s venue? To answer that I have to take us back to the time when we weren’t the United States but thirteen colonies under the British Empire. (Okay, I don’t have to, but I’m going to. How else can I show off all this historical knowledge I picked up in law school?) Back then, King George III had people who committed crimes in the colonies transported back to England for trial. The colonies didn’t like this. They even included it as one of their grievances with the Crown in the Declaration of Independence.

In order to prevent that from happening in the United States of America, the Founding Fathers put a clause in Article III of the United States Constitution requiring all criminal trials must be held within the state in which the crime was committed. But the Founding Fathers didn’t stop there. They also included a Vicinage Clause in the Sixth Amendment’s trial by jury provision dictating that the jury be composed of people who live within the state and district where the crime occurred. That district where the trial can be held, that’s the venue.

Killing four generations of one family with a Swift Botulismball Turkey would be a felony. Actually, it would be a lot of felonies; four generations worth of felonies. Felonies are tried in county courts in most states – Louisiana and Alaska have parishes and boroughs instead of counties – so for a felony trial in New York, the proper venue would be the county where the crime occurred. As Matt Murdock, who works for the District Attorney in Manhattan, is prosecuting the case, we’ll assume Antonov’s crimes occurred in the county that contains Manhattan; New York County.

Matt successfully moved to change the venue of Antonov’s upcoming trial, bringing up our second point of discussion: what’s a change of venue? Pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Sometimes a case is so highly publicized that it’s difficult to find people who haven’t heard about the case or formed an opinion about it before the trial started and the proper venue can’t assemble an unbiased jury. When that happens, the defense may seek a change of venue, so that the case can be tried in a different venue; one where the jury hasn’t heard about the case and isn’t biased.

In most states only the defendant can move for a change of venue. It is, after all, the defendant’s constitutional right to have the case tried in the venue where the crime occurred. And usually only the defendant may waive that right and seek to have the trial in a different venue. But NY Criminal Procedure Law § 231.20 specifically says that either the defendant or “the people,” i.e. the DA’s office, may move for a change of venue. So, having Matt Murdock ask for the change of venue wasn’t incorrect.

Having Matt Murdock request a change of venue to Texas, on the other hand…

And, yes, that is our third point of discussion.

Remember what I said earlier about Article III, dictating that a trial must be held within the state wherein the crime occurred. That means the only state that has jurisdiction to try a criminal case is the state where the crime occurred. Texas would have no subject matter jurisdiction over a crime committed in New York and a DA’s office could not ask that a New York criminal trial be transferred to Texas. The Constitution would permit changing the venue to some other county in New York. It would not permit changing the venue to some other state, like Texas.

There’s also no reason to move the trial to Texas. I’m a reasonably educated and well-read person but I’m up in Cleveland and I really couldn’t tell you much about the criminal goings on down in Cincinnati; except for this one noted case of vandalism involving a radio station and Thanksgiving turkeys. I don’t care how infamous Antonov’s crimes were in Manhattan, I can’t believe knowledge of his crimes was so wide-spread or pervasive that you couldn’t find twelve jurors in, say, Chautauqua County New York who hadn’t heard about or formed an opinion about the case.

For the record, I choose Chautauqua County because – check a map  – it’s about as far away from Manhattan geographically as you can get and still be in New York state, not because I think it’s provincial. I doubt they’re all that familiar with Manhattan’s crimes in, say, Jamestown or Celoron. Besides they’ve been a little preoccupied there with that “Scary Lucy” statue.

So why did the judge grant Matt’s unconstitutional request to move Antonov’s trail to Texas? I have no idea. We didn’t see the change of venue hearing or meet the judge, so I have no way of knowing why the judge did what the judge did. There could be a few reasons. Hell, considering Matt’s history of unethical behavior, we can’t even eliminate bribery.

Why did Matt Murdock choose the unconstitutional venue of Texas instead of the constitutional venue of Chautauqua County? That’s another story.

Literally. We found out why Matt chose Texas in Daredevil/Punisher: Seventh Circle # 4. And that’s another story. (Okay, it’s a later chapter in the same story but for the purposes of the joke that’s as good as another story.) And because it’s another story, it will also be another column.

Or, in the immortal tradition of comic books everywhere, to be law-tinued.

Dennis O’Neil: Priorities

Talia

Hey, ja hear? Two Supergirl episodes tonight! ‘Course, I’ve seen ‘em all, but it’ll be a pleasure to see ‘em again. You too?

And hey. Looks like the Cardinals won’t make the playoffs this year. Darn shame, if you ask me. But there’s always next year. One’a these years, the birds’ll go the distance.

Huh? You said something about water?

Netflix has a new sitcom streaming. Maybe that’s why you mentioned “water,” ‘cause water streams just like sitcoms. Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean. Anyway, we’ll give the new sitcom a watch right after dinner. Well, maybe not right after dinner ‘cause Supergirl’ll be on from eight to ten and we won’t be missing a single second of that. It’s important to know what Netflix is up to, though not as important as Supergirl. That Melissa Benoit – is she an actress or what! But I don’t have to tell you that it’s important to know what Netflix is up to. Ja hear that they’re releasing a Luke Cage movie, to go with Daredevil and Jessica Jones? We’ll be turning off the phone that day! It’s important to know what Netflix is up to. Did I already say that?

Rain? Is that what you said? Like what kings do? That kind of rain?

And ja hear about Brad and Angie? Apparently they’re talking divorce. Wow, I’d sure hate to see that. A darn national tragedy, that’s what that would be. Seems like Brad got caught kissing Marion Cotillard – she was Talia in the last Batman flick, you remember. No, no, not the tall woman, the shorter one. The tall one was Anne Hathaway – how could you forget that? She was Catwoman. No, not Halle Berry Catwoman or Michelle Feiffer Catwoman, or those other ones…We’re talking the lovely Anne Hathaway, darn it.

“Run for office,” did you say? Like, an office is on wheels and it’s going downhill and you have to catch it?

Oh, politics. Yeah, politics can sure be fun. I can’t wait to see what those wacky ducks’ll do next. One said the other was a “poopy head,” or something like that. I heard it from my uncle and he I think he was eating something while we were talking, and, you know, he was hard to understand. It was a doughnut, maybe. Anyway, those politics’ll come up with something funny every time – you can take that straight to the bank, my friend.

There you go again, yakking about floods. So there were some floods in some of those states we don’t know about and in Louisiana they’re saying it’s the worst disaster since Hurricane Sandy? Houses lost. Dead people. Stuff like that’s too bad. But they’ll get over it.

Ja hear that Ben Affleck is the next Batman?

Marc Alan Fishman: Gazing Beyond the Gender Gap

ghostbusters thor spiderman iron man

By the time this column posts, I will have seen the new Ghostbusters flick from the Freaks and Geeks guru Paul Feig. I have chosen to see the film based not on any lingering love of the first two incarnations of the franchise (but put a pin in that until next week). I am not seeing it because of any particular love of the paranormal. And I’m especially not seeing it because a who’s-who of amazingly funny women are starring in it.

I’m seeing it because it looks like a fun flick to shut my chattering brain off for a couple of hours. Maybe giggle and marvel at some special effects in the process.

Meanwhile I also saw this week that Iron Man will be played by a black woman in some upcoming issues of the series. I’ve literally no doubt that the move isn’t permanent. I’m chalking it up to Marvel’s occasional jones to do the unexpected. It’s a great marketing plot to enrage Old School fanboys, while making millennials have hope for the future. It’s the battle-cry of the embittered old farts of fandom… “It’s not my Iron Man / Ghostbusters / Peanuts / Voltron / Power Rangers!”

Ahh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Grandpa. It’s merely a horse of a different color.

I’m personally mollified by the continual degradation of our pop culture society’s abandoning the shades of grey that better fit our worlds of fiction. To take a hard line stance over the casting of a female in what was once a male role, a black person in what was once a white role, or even a CGI character where hand-drawn animation once stood is just lunacy to me. At the end of the day, I don’t care who. I care what, why, and how.

While the 2003 Daredevil film will be fondly remembered as dreck, I actually liked it quite a bit. Sure it was muddied by Collin Farrell clearly ingesting a bit too much coke before filming. Sure it introduced the Greek ninja goddess Elektra as a supremely white chick. But you know what? It also gave us Michael Clark Duncan owning the Wilson Fisk role. I recall some sects of fans going banana-sandwiches over the darkening of the character.  And then I recall seeing the film, and basking in the depiction. Duncan was strong, stoic, and the apex of scene-eating-villainous. It never mattered once that he was black. Nor did he speak in jive, or really reference his ethnicity at all.

And yes: Vincent D’Onofrio’s Fisk is a million times better… but you’re taking a slow burn performance in a carefully built show vs. a blockbuster built to bank bucks in the short term. But I digress.

In the last decade or so, specifically in comics, we’ve seen a veritable gold rush of diversity. To quote Vox: “[Marvel] has already given us a black Captain America, a female Thor, a Muslim American Ms. Marvel, and a black-Latino Spider-Man. That push has been met with applause from fans who want to be included, praise and recognition from critics, and prickly criticism from comic purists who believe their beloved titles have been shunted aside for gimmicks and stunts.” And while those purists poo-poo the notion of such hypocrisy, I’ve been able to enjoy hearing about new readers coming to comics because they now had a character to relate to. Comic books (and I’d go far as to say science-fiction and fantasy) have long been the secret playground for those with a better vision of society. Where the world is color and gender blind. Where the story above all else determines the validity of a character.

Maybe I’m just that liberal a person; I don’t balk at any casting of any character in any fiction for any reason with regards to sexual orientation, gender, creed, religion, or pizza topping preference. It will always be about the character in context to the plot around them. If Riri Williams dons the red and gold armor to do battle with nefarious ne’er-do-wells, so be it. So long as she provides depth and clarity to the book; giving me, a long time reader, something new to respond to. If the Ghostbusters of 2016 are women? That’s fantastic. More so, if they provide a new take on the classic model of snarky comedians waging war on special effects. Regardless of erogenous zone paraphernalia… plot overpowers all.

And at the end of the day, if you want to call it a marketing gimmick, so be it. Because if the final piece of fiction is good enough, then you’ll swallow your ignorance with a smile and a changed mind.

Mindy Newell: Wilson Fisk and Hell’s Kitchen

 

Wilson Fisk

“Today, the only reminder that this stretch of (Manhattan’s) SoHo was once a forest of filling stations known as Gasoline Alley is a coffee shop of the same name that sells single-origin coffee beans from Burundi.” • Sarah Maslin Nir, “With Gas Station’s Closing, A Fuel Desert Expands in Manhattan,” The New York Times, April 22, 2016

“On a block where a kebab could once be had at 2 a.m. from Bereket, the 24-hour Turkish restaurant that was forced to close in 2014, there will now be a 30,000-square-foot Equinox gym and spa with a lounge and juice bar; condo residents will be able to access the two-story gym through a private entrance. Gone too, are places like Ray’s Pizza and Empanada Mama. While such spots and the unmemorable single-story buildings that once housed them could not claim any historic significance, they were popular haunts that gave the area its character…” • Ronda Kaysen, “Alongside the Pastrami, Luxury Condos,” The New York Times, April 24, 2016

When we drive out to Long Island to celebrate Passover and other good times with the family, we go through the Holland Tunnel, up the Avenue of the Americas (also known as Sixth Avenue) to Houston – pronounced House-ston for you non-New Yorkers in the audience – then make a right onto the Bowery, a left onto Delancey and over the Williamsburg Bridge to the BQE – the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway for you non-New Yorkers in the audience, which, by the way, rarely deserves the “express” in its name – to the LIE – the Long Island Expressway, which also rarely deserves the “express” in its name. The most interesting part of the drive has always been through downtown NYC and the Lower East Side.

Over the years I have marveled (no pun intended) at the changes on the Lower East Side as gentrification and real estate developers have mutated the ramshackle buildings and tenement apartments into glass-and-steel buildings, luxury lofts, and upscale storefronts. Boy, has the neighborhood changed! The streets on which so many of our immigrant ancestors first claimed their status as Americans and which were indelibly imprinted in the public’s minds in movies like Crossing Delancey, Godfather II, and When Harry Met Sally are disappearing, only to be witnessed as black-and-white pictures from a Ken Burns documentary.

But one beat-up, dirty, and unobtrusive “landmark” remained: the gas station at the corner of Lafayette and East Houston, opposite the Puck Building. It was always there. The last surviving “member” of “Gasoline Alley,” it closed on Thursday, April 22, soon to be replaced by another glass-and-steel building with luxury lofts and upscale storefronts.

So what does this all have to do with comics?

Well, nothing much, really, except that in preparation for watching the second season of Daredevil on Netflix, I “rebinged” on the last half of its first, so that the “new” Lower East Side’s redevelopment into a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous episode, a “private” community for the 1% – or is that 0.25%? – seemed to especially hit me hard this year; I felt a mixture of poignancy for what has been lost, anger at the disrespect to history, and, yes, I admit it, an appreciation of the new metropolitan beauty of downtown. And I also thought of all those obscenely rich real estate developers and their corporations. Which made me think of Wilson Fisk.

Now I’m not accusing anyone of blowing up whole blocks or of killing tenants reluctant to move; still, Fisk’s plans for Hell’s Kitchen – which these days barely resembles the streets on which the Jets and the Sharks danced and rumbled in West Side Story – and, more specifically, what happened to Elena Cardenas and the apartment building in which she lived are only an extrapolation of what actually happened…

Built in 1881, making it the second-oldest apartment house in New York City, the Windermere sits at the corner of 57th Street and Ninth Avenue. In 1980, the owner, Alan B. Weissman, wanted in on the booming redevelopment and gentrification that was the first phase of the rezoning of Hell’s Kitchen by New York Cit, so he set about trying to get the tenants to leave. Apartments were broken into and ransacked, doors and locks were broken, prostitutes and junkies moved in, and the occupants claimed, in court, to have received death threats.

Weissman was never directly linked to these activities, but his managers were sent to jail and he and wife ranked #1 in the 1985 Village Voice edition of “The Dirty Dozen: New York’s Worst Landlords.” In 2007, the New York City court system ordered the building and the seven remaining tenants protected, despite the derelict living conditions. the state of disrepair of the Windermere itself. and the demolition of its neighboring buildings as redevelopment boomed. The tenants were finally forcibly removed in 2007 by fire department, citing dangerous conditions, and the building has remained empty. Last year, the new owner, Mark Tess, was named to the “25 Worst Landlords” list by the city’s Public Advocate office.

Fisk’s dream to remake Hell’s Kitchen stemmed, I think, from a desire to wipe out the memory, the last vestiges, of what happened in that dirty little rat hole of an apartment somewhere in the dregs and darkness of Hell’s Kitchen. (Spoiler alert – though you’ve had a year to catch up, and if I can do it, you have no excuses: For those who haven’t watched the first season Daredevil, Fisk committed patricide – justified, im-not-so-ho, since his father was a total piece of shit in every way imaginable–in defense of his mother.) And, oh, yeah, he was also a megalomaniac. But once you kill your father and get away with it, belief in your own indestructible power can be, um, inspirational.

Foggy and Matt of Nelson and Murdoch, Attorneys-at-Law, through the power of the courts, managed to get Fisk into federal custody. But one New York institution went another way.

From “Alongside the Pastrami…”:

“While other New York City institutions have succumbed to the insatiable appetite of a hungry real estate market, the 128-year-old Katz’s Delicatessen, with $19.95 pastrami sandwiches and a legion of fans, found a way to hang on.

“Last year, the family-owned deli at 205 East Houston Street sold two neighboring properties and its air rights for about $17 million, paving the way for a developer to build an 11-story condominium next door. The arrangement ensures that, for at least another generation, New Yorkers will be able to get corned beef and brisket at the Lower East Side deli that was immortalized in the 1989 film When Harry Met Sally.

“The sale was part of a $75 million acquisition of 12 single-story commercial spaces that spared Katz’s, but sealed the fates of all of the other mom-and-pop businesses on East Houston Street between Orchard and Ludlow Streets. They were all displaced to make way for the new condo. Sales are set to start by the end of the month at 196 Orchard, with prices for the 94 apartments starting at $1.075 million for a 551-square-foot studio.”

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

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