DrAwkward

January 11, 2012 3:06 pm "This led to Marvel, a company that every week publishes books about the struggle for mutants to be treated like people, arguing in a court of law that mutants are not in fact people." Equivocation. The stories highlight treatment of sentient humanoid (usually) Marvel-styled "mutants" as it relates to similarly situated humans. The court case is about the taxation of containers of figures which either run afoul domestic statutory protection of human-like dolls or not as less-human toys. In other words, the case does nothing to answer "what is a human for the purposes of civil rights" but addresses "whether this inanimate figure invades the space of domestic dolls." That doesn't turn on in-story humanity, treatment, etc... merely whether the overall visual characteristics more closely resemble the industry protected or not. The determination of the entire licensed line was toys was not a declaration of inhumanity of Marvel characters on a story level, but one of administrative convenience... you tax by the container and so long as Marvel could prove the container was classified wrong with enough examples, they win. Highly technical, scientific, philosophical, etc. definitions and debates about what is "human" aren't legally relevant. The oft quoted case is Nix v. Hedden (whether tomatoes constituted fruit for the purposes of avoiding vegetable taxation), where the basic rule is that functional lay usage of words control (because that's what law makers and abiders are) and if more technical definitions are required, then the drafters can include it in the statute. So in-story, taxonomic, philosophical, etc. definitions of "human" are no more relevant than the botanical definition of "fruit"... instead, the definition that most serves the common understanding and function of the statute is applied (so culinary / common usage of tomato as veg; characteristics which makes a figure a human doll which would negatively impact the domestic industry being protected vs visual characteristics which make the figure more like other toy lines which don't directly compete with the protected industry). Bottom line: Saying the intent or outcome of this case has any impact on the civil rights / classification / or moral treatment of sentient beings is like saying the outcome of Nix warped all of botany, taxonomy, and science... that's not the scope of either case and they don't set any kind of relevant precedent.

December 23, 2011 11:26 am Besides the emotion and the technical aspects of the Daredevil cover it's also cleverly "written"... a devil making an angel.

October 13, 2011 9:33 am How far into American Vampire do you need to be to get the most out of this mini?

August 16, 2011 1:02 pm Small typo in the top paragraph... "Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 4". Strange's gameplay looks similar to Dorm... the beam counter hyper is an interesting mechanic... plus teleportation... looks like Capcom is still trying hard to make keep away viable. Looks like Strange will be frustrating to at mid to low level play, but a high risk character- like most keep away types- at high levels. Nemesis seems a bit uninspired... he might need more super-armor to be relevant because he looks like he has no real answer to smart rush down, making him just a big slow target.

August 4, 2011 2:57 pm if sam raimi had done this with all the shlock of "the quick and the dead" and "mars attacks" this could have been incredible. alternatively, if they were committed to a straight faced take on the mash up, the plotting, characterization, and dialogue needed to be a lot more airtight.the sci fi elements had to be harder, more logical, more authentic or more unknowable.instead they went a very generic route with the action and characterization while confusing the mash up with horror, revenge, redemption, etc tropes rather than sticking to the more proven genre conventions. still worth a look for genre fans but almost as bad a western mash up disappointment as "wild wild west" (that having much larger budget and marketing behind it).

July 21, 2011 4:26 pm @Spiffy  
@Slockhart 

They have to produce "in good faith"... the long production time of Returns was one of the issues in the licensing case.

A popular misconception is that this has anything to do with maintaining copyright ownership, it does not, it has to do with licensing... the heirs argue that DC- as co-owners of the copyright- "gave away" the movie license rights to Superman to the WB in a "sweetheart deal" denying the heirs fair licensing market value for their piece of the intellectual property; the court said... No, the value paid was fair provided the WB was obligated to actually exercise the license (so that the IP owners- DC and heirs jointly- could get generated profits).  If the WB didn't produce a film, the WB's movie license- not DC's character copyright- would be voidable (and not automatically void).

In any case, the production start date is short hand for a good faith use of the license, but it doesn't immunize the WB from losing the license if they don't actually make good faith efforts to release the film.  If it dragged out like the lead up to Returns, the heirs would have the license voided.

July 8, 2011 3:20 am Honorable mention has to go to DCU Online #11, where Superman vomits The Atom.

June 20, 2011 11:46 pm "Real Life Green Lantern"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDv-GZ9nfRI

June 20, 2011 6:57 pm The initial premise is TV magic.

The grizzled stranger in a suit.  The briefcase.  The untraceable gun, 100 bullets, carte blanche, damning evidence, and... a choice.

The ways that can spin, the ways it did spin in the book, and the ways they could spin it still to innovate for the TV series are wonderfully morbid, human, wicked, and even possibly inspiring.

The larger on-going conspiratorial story seems a lot more iffy for a general audience.  I enjoyed it still, but on subsequent rereads I've had to power through it more than the earlier volumes.  The potential for this series is pretty exciting.

June 20, 2011 2:57 pm Death of Spidey, Reverse Flash, Kid Flash top the list...

BQ: Sell all my power tools and the like to be replaced by the ultimate multi-tasking tool.  As for a specific application... form the best possible recliner + massage chair to maximize the mundane daily post-work decompression.

@redlibertyx: I think exploiting the ring's advanced AI for Blue Book citation would count as extraordinary... otherwise, you could use the ring to pick stocks, play hundreds of simultaneous tables of online poker, write software / books / high level law policy / etc, or run a call-center single-handedly (as it were).  I'm not entirely sure it's even possible (despite the AI functions of the ring), because Hal used to have to write mission reports to be sent to Oa after every adventure... if that kind of writing could be automated by the ring, Hal strikes me as the kind of guy that would let the ring take care of it.