Author Archives: Ryan Davidson

Iron Man 3: Surgery and Homicide

In this, our third post on Iron Man 3, we consider the question of whether Dr. Aldrich Killian could theoretically be criminally liable for the deaths of people injected with Extremis, or certain deaths caused by Extremis patients. The idea here is fairly straightforward. Deliberately doing something that one knows has a reasonable likelihood of killing someone else which actually does result in their deaths definitely constitutes some species of homicide offense in most jurisdictions. But surgeons do precisely that all the time, engaging in acts which, given only minute alterations, can be either life-saving or horrific. Every time someone goes under the knife, there is an at least minor chance that they will die on the operating table, and more serious conditions justify undergoing riskier procedures. Extremis has been shown to possess incredible restorative properties, including the regeneration of lost limbs, but it does carry with it certain risks. As such, which homicide offense, if any, would be the most appropriate to charge Killian with, and would he have any defenses?

Spoilers within, so be forewarned. Continue reading

Iron Man 3: Property Law and Medical Experimentation

We started talking about Iron Man 3 on Monday with some questions sent to us by a lucky reader who caught a sneak preview. Now we’ll take a look at two more issues: property law and medical experimentation.

Without giving too much away, we can say that at one point in the movie, Stark gives out his home address on live TV. Shortly thereafter, the press and bad guys show up and things start to get a bit hairy. The movie seems to assume that this would not have happened if Stark hadn’t given out his address. That strikes us as. . . dodgy. Further, the movie takes some inspiration from the Iron Man: Extremis storyline, and though the details of Extremis seem to vary quite a bit from the source material, both involve experimental medical injections. So we’ll talk about those issues as well. Continue reading

Morning Glories

Morning Glories is the ongoing 2010 series from Image about a group of “brilliant but troubled” high school students who enroll in Morning Glory Academy, some kind of exclusive prep school. Very, very bad things happen at MGA, and the series is a kind of supernatural mystery drama somewhat reminiscent of the first season of Lost. The first twelve issues are out in hardcover, the next seven are out in trade, and the most recent trade is available for pre-order and should be out in a week or two.

This post is about a flashback that occurs in issue # 7 and contains some pretty major spoilers, so read with care. But the substance of the post has to do with homicide and related defenses. Continue reading

R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D. is the Dark Horse comic about divine law enforcement officers which is being made into a movie starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds and scheduled for release on June 19.  The trailer was just released today, in fact.  The basic premise is that Nick Cruz (Reynolds’ character) is a cop who is killed at the beginning of the story. But upon awaking in the afterlife, he finds himself confronted by a figure claiming to be. . . well God’s lawyer, basically. Turns out the Almighty has a bit of a special program for law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty: in exchange for the opportunity to bring their killers to justice, and a shot at heaven, deceased cops spend a century of service working for the R.I.P.D., the Rest In Peace Department, which has the divine mandate to seek out and deal with ne’er-do-wells from the netherworld who don’t stay where they’re supposed to.

So what can we say about this? If we’re to take the story at face value, not questioning its theological assumptions (which are basically a version of Christianity with your standard artistic license), it’s not as if the US legal system–or any mortal legal system–has anything to say to God. Or Satan for that matter. Indeed, the Western District of Pennsylvania basically dismissed a suit against Satan because he could not be served with process. U.S. ex rel Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (W.D. Pa. 1971).

But we can talk about the general issues of the contract. We’ve already discussed deals with the devil in two posts (Reaper and Ghost Rider respectively), but what about deals with God? Continue reading

The Surrogates: Flesh and Bone

The Surrogates is a limited-run 2005-06 comic series about which we did two posts (1, 2) late last year, and which was made into a movie starring Bruce Willis in 2010.

This time we’re writing about the prequel graphic novel, The Surrogates: Flesh and Bone. The entire series is available in hardcover. Flesh and Bone is set fifteen years before the main series and deals with a sensational homicide case: a minor operating his father’s surrogate unit beats a homeless man to death, more or less just to watch him die. The killing has all the hallmarks of a major news event: the accused is white, the victim black; the accused is rich, the victim poor; the accused is operating a surrogate, the victim is a “boner,” the kid’s slang for someone who lives his life in the titular “flesh and bone”.

Like the comic series, Flesh and Bone includes various miscellany in the form of advertising materials, news stories, and scholarly articles, all about surrogates and their impact on the world. One of these involves a fictional Supreme Court case where the court ruled that employers may make owning a surrogate a condition of employment. In this post, we’ll look at both the homicide issue and that labor issue, which we touched on last year. Continue reading

NYC Councilman Proposes…A Ban on Superheroes?

We don’t normally talk about real-world issues, but this was too good to pass up.   A New York City councilman has recently introduced bills to ban costumed characters in the city, or at least impose tight regulations on them. The bills are aimed at what’s apparently becoming a problem, particularly in Times Square. There was “Anti-Semitic Elmo,” and now someone dressed as “Cookie Monster” has been arrested for assaulting a toddler.  We should point out that the people involved were not related in any way to Sesame Street; they buy or make costumes and wander around Times Square trying to get paid for photographs with people.

One bill would ban costumed characters outright.  The other would require registration and the carrying of a permission slip indicating that the character was licensed from the intellectual property owner.

But does Councilman Vallone really want to ban Spider-Man? (By which we mean an actual web-slinging superhero, not someone dressed as the fictional character.  Obviously he means to ban the latter.) Because something like this would probably interfere with him as much as it would interfere with costumed panhandlers. As a person in a costume, Spider-Man would be subject to a ban if it were passed. And though he would certainly be able to show that he had permission from the creator of his character for the purposes of the regulatory proposal, he’d still be subject to arrest unless Peter Parker registered, which kind of defeats the point of the costume.

Unlike some of the other laws we’ve discussed (The Keene Act from Watchmen, the SHRA from Marvel’s Civil War), this is a local government passing the regulation, so it starts out from a better position than the federal government does in this area. New York City participates in New York State’s general police power and has the power to regulate anything that the federal and state Constitutions don’t say that it can’t.

But there are still problems here. The ban proposal would simply prevent people from appearing in public wearing costumes. As the article points out, there are First Amendment problems with that. Wearing costumes is generally considered to be protected expressive conduct, and the government probably can’t just ban it outright. But they can institute content-neutral restrictions on the time, place, and manner of such conduct, such as requiring registration or banning the wearing of costumes while peddling or panhandling. New York City already has so-called “mask laws” in effect, which restrict people from appearing in groups wearing masks, and many jurisdictions have laws which penalize wearing masks while committing other crimes.

We don’t know if this will hold up.  At the time of this writing the text of the bills are not available on the NYC Council’s legislation site, so all we have to go on are second-hand descriptions.  The bills have certainly not been passed into law, and they may yet be significantly amended.  And whether or not either bill is a good idea is definitely a political question that is beyond the scope of this blog (and its comments section).  But it is interesting to see life imitating art, even if the danger posed by these “freelance costumed performers” is quite a bit different from the dangers posed by masked comic book characters.

ECHO

ECHO is the 2008-11 graphic novel series by Terry Moore about a young woman in the American southwest who gets mixed up in a secret military test and winds up with part of a high-tech battle suit seemingly grafted to her chest. Moore self published it under his own Abstract Studios label. The complete series is available in a single volume on Amazon and from Moore directly. I had the good fortune to meet Moore at WonderCon last weekend, and in addition to being a fantastic author and artist, I can say from experience that he’s also a great guy to be around.

The book ran for some thirty issues, all written, drawn, and lettered by Moore. There are rumors of a movie—it was optioned by a major producer in 2009—but I can’t find any recent confirmation of that project’s status. In any case, this book is totally worth checking out.

In this post we’re going to look at whether anyone (and if so who) might be chargeable with a homicide offense for the death of one of the characters in the first issue. Definite spoilers follow. Continue reading

Y: The Last Man

Y: The Last Man is the 2002-08 DC series written by Brian K. Vaughan, who also wrote Marvel’s Runaways, which we’ll be coming to presently. The premise is that, in the first issue, something happens (Vaughan is cagey about exactly what) which kills everything with a Y chromosome except the main character Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand. Needless to say, this causes society to basically collapse right away. Horrendous traffic accidents (including planes and trains), utility failures, etc. Society is never going to be the same. This is bad for this blog, because we try to limit our analysis to stories that are easily analyzed under the current legal system, and it’s pretty clear from the first few issues that laws are going to change, and even if the legal system is restored there’s going to be a significant period of discontinuity.

But those first few issues do contain some really great constitutional drama about elected officials who die while in office. The first ten issues are in hardcover, but most of what we’ll be talking about is in the first trade. Continue reading

Silence & Co.: Money Is Power

Earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of Silence & Co.: Money Is Power from its author, Gur Benschemesh. This is his first graphic novel, but the artist (Ron Randall) and letterer (John Workman) both have a long list of titles to their name, many with DC and Marvel. Silence is the story of Alexander Maranzano, the illegitimate but acknowledged youngest son of a major New York crime boss. After getting out of the Marines (for reasons which turn out to be important), he starts working as a hit man for the family. It’s a complete work in three acts, it avoids many of the common pitfalls in crime graphic novels, and it’s got one of the most realistic takes on the process of surveillance I’ve seen so far. Silence is scheduled to hit stores this May, but we’re taking an advance look at its handling of legal issues now. Continue reading

Mind Control and Sexual Assault

This post was inspired by an email from Cameron, who asks whether vampires with the ability to glamour people could potentially be liable for rape or sexual assault. That is a really good question, and we’re going to take a look at it here.

But before we do, a few preliminaries. First, we understand that sexual assault is a really touchy subject, personally, emotionally, and even politically. Please do not think that by examining the fictional issue of mind control that we’re taking this lightly. We aren’t. Second, the way the criminal justice system deals with sexual assault charges is widely recognized to be problematic. We understand this too. Indeed, it’s perhaps the single most conspicuous area of dysfunction in the criminal legal system. It’s far from the only area in which injustice is routine, but in most of the rest of the legal system, the laws are basically doing what they were passed to do. Not so here. So when we conclude that something is/is not legal or will/will not lead to a conviction, understand that we are not thereby saying that this is a desirable outcome. But the fact is that in real life, sex crime cases rarely go well for anyone involved. If we’re going to look at the implications of something like mind control in this context, we need to be able to discuss things the way they are, even if we wish they were different.

Further, there really isn’t any way of talking about these issues without being fairly graphic. We will attempt to be sensitive and circumspect about this where possible, but this is necessarily going to be one of our more family-unfriendly posts. We think this is an important enough subject to be worth posting about, but those who don’t want to read about this sort of thing should feel free to come back on Wednesday, when we’ll return to our usual fare.

With those things in mind, let’s think about this. Continue reading