Month: August 2003

Every time people discuss the Castillo case or any case with comics on trial, the everlasting gobstopper seems to be, “Well, it was obscene and therefore not protected by the First Amendment.”

Here’s a nutty thought:

That should not be the case.

I don’t care that it *is* the case. Once upon a time, the case was that it was okay to own people as property. Once upon a time, the case was that was okay for women not to be able to vote. Things change.

Obscenity is an expression of thoughts and ideas. As such, it can and should be as entitled to First Amendment protection as any other thoughts and ideas. That obscenity is thoughts and ideas that many people find repulsive is utterly beside the point. Was the idea of school integration any less repulsive to many people fifty years ago? You may say that people were being deprived of their God-given rights in that instance. Well so too are people being deprived of rights here: They are being deprived of their rights, as adults, to make adult choices as to the kind of entertainment they wish to peruse.

You may not *like* material some would deem obscene. Nor do I. But the First Amendment wasn’t created to protect popular material that everyone likes. It was created to protect material that people *don’t* like. And the fact that obscenity is so fluid a concept that what one person considers trash, another considers art, shows the incredibly slippery slope embarked upon when one attempts to regulate it. Why? Because it’s an endeavor by a court to regulate and quantify perceptions, ideas, and personal taste, and that never, ever works.

It is grossly unfair to elevate one person’s perceptions above the other in an attempt to disenfranchise one person or person’s artistic tastes. Why is it that if I want to look at something but my neighbors don’t, the courts can decide I’m not allowed to? Pursuit of entertainment should be regulated entirely by what the marketplace will bear, not the personal morality of people who may well not even constitute the majority opinion.

Of course, there’s the highly debatable notion that reading obscenity might cause people to go out and commit violently pornographic acts. And John Lennon’s murderer had a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” in his back pocket, so let’s round up J.D. Salinger. The moment you begin to argue that ideas and stories should be restricted or eliminated because of what people *might* do as a result of it, you open up a Pandora’s box of potential censorship which will sit just fine with those people who love deciding what you should be allowed to read, but is far less attractive to the rest of us. (And no, I’m not lumping in how-to manuals about bomb construction and the like. I’m focusing on entertainment, not material specifically designed to deprive others of life and/or property, okay?)

Obscene material should be entitled to First Amendment protection. There’s no reason for it not to be aside from puritanical intolerance.

PAD

My daughter Gwen, up in Boston, is going to need a new place come September. She’s looking for a two bedroom apartment in the $1000-$1200 range, preferably walkable to a stop along the Red line. Something reasonably commutable to University of Mass. in Boston.

Anyone who has a line on such a residence should write to me at padguy@aol.com.

Thanx.

PAD

Newsarama.com is covering the story that the US Supreme Court has decided not to hear the case of Jesus Castillo, a comic store manager who fell down the rabbit hole of Texas justice and found himself convicted of selling an adult comic book to–get this–an adult. The prosecutor managed to nullify unrefuted expert testimony as to the adult comic’s redeeming social value by winking at the jury, telling them that “Everyone knows comics are for kids,” and stating that the presence of such comics presented a hazard to local children. Granted, the comic store was across the street from a school. However, not only were the adult titles kept in a separate section away from younger readers, and not only are there adult bookstores within the same area, but the judge specifically told the jury the presence of a school could not enter into their deliberations. On the facts of law alone, there’s no way they could have found guilty. Yet they did, in no time flat.

The CBLDF knew that taking it to the USSC was a longshot at best, but sometimes you have to do everything you can.

A terrifyingly dangerous precedent has now been set. The Texas case essentially strips First Amendment protection from comics. There have been various instances in this country where titles as diverse as Spawn, Spider-Man and Elfquest have come under siege. None of those attacks ever went as far as this one. But with this law on the books, who knows how aggressive moralists can get in their pursuits to make sure that you won’t have the opportunity to buy whatever comics you want to buy.

PAD

We went yesterday to see one of the first teen productions of “Les Miserables,” up in Fairfield, CT. It featured Kate and Robbie Greenberger, daughter and son of DC editor Bob Greenberger, in the ensemble. Working from a script that was custom-pared for high schools by the show’s producers, the students performed admirably in one of the most demanding musicals in existence (how it’s called a musical and not an opera, I don’t know.) Particular standouts were the kids playing Valjean, Thenardier, Eponine, and I thought the kid who was playing Gavorche could easily step right into a professional production.

PAD

So having tired of the packed-in crowds at the Long Island Ducks baseball games, we opted instead for the relatively emptiness of major league baseball by going to Shea stadium on Saturday. The bit-more-than-half filled stadium was hemorrhaging fans by the seventh inning as the Mets found themselves down 10-4 to the Cardinals. We hung out since we had reasonably good seats in foul ball territory (although we didn’t catch any.)

Going into the bottom of the ninth, still down 10-4, the roving camera guy in the “crowd” aimed his lens at two nuns. The nuns appeared on the Jumbotron and one of them promptly crossed herself and clasped together her hands in supplication. The message was clear: Only Jesus could help the Mets now.

Whereupon the Mets promptly rallied. Before a stunned crowd and a fumbling Cardinals outfield, the Mets strung together five runs, bringing it to 10-9 and runners on the corners with two outs. Unfortunately Jesus must have sneezed or his attention was drawn elsewhere for a moment, because a long fly ball caught by a running Cards outfielder ended the game one short of a total comeback. Still, a 10-9 nail-bitter was a hëll of a lot more entertaining than the 10-4 blowout we thought we were going to end up with.

And apparently to make up to the Rally Nuns for his lapse, Jesus came on strong for the Sunday game and the Mets won 13-5.

All those times I sat there, watched the Mets and muttered “Chriiiist,” who knew? I’m only hoping the Rally Nuns come there regularly from now on. The Mets need all the help they can get.

PAD

I suppose, now that it’s hit the web (after all, Mark Evanier talks about it here) that we can let the cat out of the bag.

The film version of CODENAME: COURAGE will be out July 4, 2004, lord willing and the creek don’t rise. The beginning of the promotional site is up here, I assume it will get better as it gets closer to release. Here’s hoping this film is closer to Peter’s version of his comic than Hulk was.

Don Swan’s documentary about the process of this thing going from comic book to movie has also generated some interest, and may be distributed by Miramax. Peter does show up in the documentary, and details on that can be found here.

I used to post on the John Byrne board when he’d go off on another one of his inaccurate rants about me. No point nowadays. Not only does the merest mention of my name cause denizens to cry “Off topic” or tremble in fear that a fight might break out and disturb the peace), but John announced that he now has the power to lock up threads and delete posts to cut down on some of the “twaddle.” The hilarious bit was that he announced it in a thread titled “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.” It is gloriously ironic that he quoted the famed Shelley poem “Ozymandias,” a cautionary parable about the futility of egomania and the emptiness of self-aggrandization. It’s the most unintentionally self-revelatory thing John’s said since he used a quote from a fictional Nazi as his sig line.

In any event, John–who never hesitates to castigate others for proclaiming to be mindreaders, but doesn’t hesitate to put forward his opinions on my state of mind as fact–claimed, “PAD is evidentally one of those people who cannot separate himself from his work, and so has taken each of my comments as a personal attack, responding with personal attacks, including most unprofessional “commentary” in the comic books he writes.”

Well, no. I’ve pointed out that some of his critiques of my work were wildly inaccurate (for instance, holding up Spidey 2099 #1 as an example of how to do a first issue wrong because the hero never appears in costume…except he does, for eight pages. Later John admitted he hadn’t actually read it, but stood by his opinion nonetheless.) And I’ve taken his personal attacks as personal attacks (for instance, his claiming that I advocated the concept of people standing by and doing nothing while policemen were beaten to death.) But I’ve written quite a bit more than John has, and separating myself from the work has become pretty easy. Unfortunately, John doesn’t quite seem to be able to reciprocate. For instance, he obviously thought the sequence in “Captain Marvel #2” in which Rick Jones laughs at the Hulk Annual was some sort of retaliation directed at John. No. I would have done the same sequence no matter who wrote that idiot annual, presuming the editor let me.

Jeez. Jack Kirby created Funky Flashman and HouseRoy, obvious Stan Lee and Roy Thomas pastiches. What an unprofessional that Jack Kirby was. And hey, how about that story featuring a superpowered character visually based on Jim Shooter, right down to the acne scars as I recall, blowing off his own foot with a blast beam. Who is the unprofessional person who drew that story? I’m trying to remember…

PAD