Planet Comics

Originally published October 24, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1249

We write of heroes.

Yes, yes, I know there is a whole big, wide world of comic books outside the realm of the superhero. But it is there that I have most of my experience, and it is there that—for the moment—I am dwelling.

We write of heroes, gaudy and flamboyant and bigger-than-life. A veneer of “reality” has been added to them—several veneers, in fact, beginning with the addition of human frailties and foible to The Fantastic Four, expanded upon to the nth degree in Amazing Spider-Man. And DC followed suit with stories of “relevance” with subject matter ranging from bigotry to drug abuse.  But the heroes remained bigger-than-life, fantasy figures with spectacular powers and uncompromising viewpoints. Uncompromising in that good always triumphed. Had to triumph, completely.

You could argue that the triumphs were not always complete. Look at Doctor Doom, for instance. Didn’t matter how many times the FF defeated him; Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had hit upon the deliciously demented notion that Doom could never be arrested or prosecuted because he had diplomatic immunity. (Why America didn’t sever ties with Latveria and declare Doom an undesirable alien was never addressed.) So Doom could never be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But when villains in comic books were beaten—as they invariably were—they never felt good about it. They could never claim a victory in any sense of the word. The most that they could do was slink away, licking their wounds and growling that they would return at some future date with a newer, bigger and better plan that would, without doubt, polish off the hero for once and for all.

And the heroes triumphed. Always. Well—except Spider-Man, who would defeat the villain but always ended each Lee/Ditko issue by summarizing all the problems that were currently haunting his life. Frankly, it got to the point where you just wanted to slap him and say, “Hey, jerk! At least you’re alive! Hel-looo? Someone was just trying to kill you! You survived! You beat them! Be happy you’re still sucking oxygen, ya twit!”

He had just as many triumphs as anyone else; he just couldn’t find it within himself to celebrate them. The classic “is the glass half-full or half-empty” conundrum was insufficient for ol’ Spidey.  He would look at the glass as not only half-empty, but the liquid that was left was sour, the glass was now dirty, he didn’t have money to buy dishwashing detergent to clean it, and Aunt May had dishpan hands from all the other half-empty glasses she’d had to wash.

We write of heroes and their artificial worlds. A world where might makes right, and right always wins. A world of such skewed logic that if a group of super-villains gang up against a hero, it’s an ambush and a trap and an unfair battle. But if a group of heroes gang up against a villain, it’s called a team book.

And it’s so easy. So easy to write of heroes because the rules are clear-cut. The heroes will always go into battle because that’s what they must do, by definition. There’s never any question of it (again, except for Spider-Man, who will occasionally toss his costume into the garbage can and walk away, but we know it’s only temporary). They will give 100% every time out and, although they can be temporarily defeated, overwhelmed, trapped or outwitted, in the end they triumph.

Would that the real world were that simple. Would that it were that neat and tidy. Would that the world of Hunter and Kennedy, the former owners of Planet Comics, were as simple to navigate, instead of being the morass of treachery and duplicity that it is.

The requisite summary for those, as they say in the Phantom comic strip, who came in late: Hunter and Kennedy owned a comic book shop called Planet Comics in Oklahoma City, a place where city officials and watchdogs groups display a level of tolerance and live-and-let-live attitude that is several notches below what one used to see at the average auto-da-fe. Kennedy and Hunter’s store was targeted for the unspeakable crime of selling adult comic books to—get this—adults. The store was shuttered, the owners prosecuted and persecuted. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund got squarely in their corner as Kennedy and Hunter faced charges that threatened them with decades of jail time.

The case received a great deal of attention within the industry, although there was no national media spotlight to speak of.  One would think that, out of a sense of self-preservation if nothing else, the media would highlight any and all stories that feature a threat to the First Amendment. Apparently, however, the media had more important things to worry about, and it was left to those within the industry to try to rally behind Kennedy and Hunter.

At the eleventh hour, just before the case was to go to trial, Kennedy and Hunter took a plea bargain offered them by the DA. In essence, they pleaded guilty in exchange for a three-year probation, at the end of which time their records would be expunged. In a bizarre, sick, comic book way, it’s almost appropriate. After three years, they’ll be rebooted. Retconned. The great cosmic rewind button is hit. They were convicted felons—oh, wait! They’re not anymore! Now they’re just two guys with no criminal record. It’s like a Hawkman relaunch.

Unfortunately, the reboot is not going to include a return to the lives that they had led. The crime will be erased—but the punishment will linger on. Planet Comics will not snap back into existence. The police and their Gestapo tactics will not evaporate from living memory. The lost income will not be reinstituted, the broken marriage and shattered relationships sustained by the once-owners of the comic book store will not be re-knit (at least, in theory.) The damage will be done, and will remain so, even though the sentence that they are being made to suffer is just going to go away.

And the bottom line, as was pointed out by CBLDF representatives, is that Kennedy and Hunter will have been found guilty for the simple crime of practicing their First Amendment rights. By the standards of reasonable people (which lets out those who persecuted them in Oklahoma City, as well as those who condoned it) these guys didn’t do anything wrong. They shouldn’t be made to suffer—and yet they are.

They had rights, dámņ it. Why didn’t they stand up for them?

That’s really the most frustrating aspect to it all. One wants to cry out in frustration and say, “Blast it, guys! This isn’t right! This isn’t fair! You’re knuckling under! You’re letting the bad guys win! Don’t you get it? The reason they’re offering you a plea bargain is because they think their case is shaky! They’re running scared and think they won’t get a conviction! Now is the time to make a statement! Now is the time to refuse to back down! To say, ‘Hëll, no! We’re not afraid of you! We did nothing wrong! We shouldn’t be made to plea guilty to something that we feel we didn’t do! And we won’t! You know why? Because this is America! This is the land of opportunity, the land of freedom! The land where—to paraphrase—I disagree with everything you read, but I’ll defend to the death the right to read it!’

“To play ball with the DA, to roll over and take the plea bargain, is to encourage the DA to go after other comic book store owners, or booksellers, or TV stations, or whoever might be offering entertainment of any kind that offends the sensibilities of a select but vocal few. We will not stand for it! We will not suffer the villains to get away with such gestures!

“For we are heroes! We have profited off the four-color adventures of heroes, and now we’re going to give back some of that! We’re going to take a stand! Think of reporters who have gone to jail rather than betray a source. Think of the founding fathers and the people who fought and died to give us those very rights that zealots would now take away from us! No! By Crom, by Odin’s beard, by bye Birdie, no! We shall take the risk, throw the dice, face the odds, and we shall triumph!”

To which Hunter and Kennedy would basically reply, “Yeah, well—it’s not your butt on the line.”

And it’s not.

Perhaps it comes from a lifetime of reading comics wherein the good guys know triumph and the bad guys go down in defeat, every time. The problem is that real life interferes and creates a world of not black and white, but grays.

The real world doesn’t do well with absolute triumphs. More often than not, both sides wind up claiming victory. In this case, the DA can claim triumph, stating that a warning has been issued to other sellers of adult material, and that groundwork has been laid for more prosecution—to say nothing of tax payer dollars being saved by skipping a trial and going straight to sentencing (which, let’s face it, a lot of Americans wouldn’t mind seeing in any number of criminal cases.)

The defendants can likewise claim triumph, but theirs is not a societal triumph—for in their hearts, they know that they have let society down. Sometimes, however, society takes a back seat to watching out for number one. The defendants were more concerned about their own well-being. They wanted this ordeal to be over with, already. They didn’t want to risk their freedom on the outcome of a jury trial, because as a nation full of dropped jaws proved at the climax of the O.J. Simpson trial, no one can predict what a jury is going to do.

The real world is a gray area of compromise. The Justice Society didn’t get into extended negotiations with the Injustice Society; they just whupped them. For all the talk of diplomatic immunity, the FF never faced off against Doctor Doom in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations and sought official sanctions, demanding to know what the world was going to do about this guy. They just unleashed the Thing on him, and the Thing shredded his armor, after which we watched Doom limp away.

Intellectually, we are frustrated that Hunter and Kennedy didn’t see it through. Even reps from the CBLDF clearly sounded as if the cause had been undercut, in favor of selfishness on Hunter and Kennedy’s part. Is what they did wrong?

That, too, enters into a gray area. Right and wrong, like truth, can be extremely subjective. On a societal basis, they were wrong. For themselves, they were right.

One of the things that makes superheroes so effective—that makes heroes so attractive in general—is that we feel they appeal to the best in all of us. We imprint our own desires, our own fantasies and self-image, on the heroes. We identify with them. We want to feel that we, too, could fight the good fight unselfishly against evil. That we could stand up as heroically and faithfully against the forces of fear. We have to feel that way, because if we didn’t, then we could never read and enjoy these fantasy hero constructs because all they would do is remind us of our own shortcomings. They accomplish the deeds that we wish we could do, and even fancy ourselves capable of doing, were we in their shoes. But which of us really knows just what we do would if faced with a situation wherein we have the chance to be heroes? To risk our necks, to throw ourselves on the line in the cause of a greater good? Which of us really has the stomach to wind up being a martyr?

It’s a tough call. We all like to think the best of ourselves. We all like to think that we would rise to a challenge. But until you get to that point, until you find yourself staring down the barrel of that gun with the trigger cocked, you don’t know if you’re going to squint in your best Clint Eastwood manner and say, “Do you feel lucky, punk?” or if you’re going to say, “Uhm, look—let’s talk this over and see what we can work out.”

Blame the heroes, I suppose. We’ve read them, been influenced by them. We’ve seen Superman standing there, arms akimbo, smirking at those who would do him harm as bullets ricochet from his body. We’ve seen Batman outwitting, outthinking and outfighting all manner of villains using nothing but brains and a superbly trained body. They’ve given us something very powerful and very demanding to live up to. Perhaps what it boils down to is: Why do you become a hero? And I think the answer is: Because you’re put into a position wherein you simply have no choice in the matter. To just go around risking yourself for no reason at all is not heroic; it’s just reckless. It’s stupid. It’s the mark of a crazy person.

A Superman, a Spider-Man, they must use their powers to help others because they have no choice. They simply can’t stand around and not use their abilities. They are compelled, by upbringing or circumstance, to utilize them for the greater good.

A soldier in combat sees a grenade about to wipe out his platoon, and he cannot simply run. He must throw himself on the grenade to save his mates. He’s a hero.

And Kennedy and Hunter: Are they heroes?

To society, no. Society says, “You let us down. You’ve just made life harder for others who are to come after you and face persecution.” Because they were given a choice and they walked away from the harder road.

To their loved ones—probably yes. Because they decided to end an ordeal that had to be difficult on their immediate friends and family by publicly stating—even though they didn’t believe it—that they were guilty of a crime. They sacrificed their pride so that life could return to some vague semblance of normality.

How would the Thing have handled the situation? Probably waded into the headquarters of the obnoxious citizen groups and leveled the place. How would Captain America have handled it? Made a patriotic speech in a courtroom that would have moved the jury to tears, the judge to dismiss the entire case, and the DA to personally fund the launch of a new Planet Comics. How would Superman have handled it? He would have saved the DA and the judge and the obnoxious citizen group from a convenient alien attack and—having garnered their gratitude—cashed in a few favor chips and gotten Kennedy and Hunter off.

We write of heroes.

Would that it were that easy.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)