In fact, most of the time I will try to respond to arguments with honest dialogue. I still, on occasion, will lose my shit with somebody. But arguments tend to fall into four categories:

1. A rational argument written civilly. Even if I disagree with this, I generally will try to engage it as fairly and civilly as possible.

2. An irrational argument written civilly. I will usually try to engage this civilly as well. Not always, mind you – if an argument is gratituously stupid enough I will backslide into mockery (witness my response to that “If I Was A Poor Black Kid” thing a while back). But even then I’ll usually try to direct my ire at the argument rather than at the person making it. I will not always succeed, of course. But I’ll try.

3.) A rational argument written uncivilly. I can go either way with these. Sometimes I’ll be civil to be “the reasonable one.” Sometimes I will write a civil response and then go back and throw in some insults. It really depends a lot on the original argument being made and the person making it. Some people, when they are uncivil, will drop back and apologize if challenged. Some want you to rise up and engage in a boxing match. (My sense for this isn’t perfect – nobody’s is – but I tend to think it’s not bad.)

4.) An irrational argument written uncivilly. Short version: fuck these people. Long version:

I understand Dustin’s point. An offensive response to an offensive post can turn off those who would potentially agree with you. And you know what, he’s not wrong. But here’s the thing: for those people, there is David Brothers’ logical sledgehammer of a post at ComicsAlliance about creator abuse, or Tom Spurgeon’s essay about “more Watchmen“, or many others besides (although those are the most important, I think). Those are both calm, insightful pieces that lay out the ethical and moral failings that have led us to this point in comics history. Both were widely read. And, if you look at the comments on Brothers’ article, a lot of people still didn’t get it.

When I first read the Kurtz article, my initial response was to say “just go read Brothers and Spurgeon and the others and they will show why Kurtz is full of shit.” But after a second reread of Kurtz’ post I decided otherwise, and this is where Dustin will likely disagree with me: I do think there is value in the expression of anger and disgust. Simply saying that Kurtz’ article is morally abhorrent and full of wind is not enough to convince some people; there are those who will be swayed by the expression of how horrible you found it, and I think viscerality plays a part in this.

The Overton Window is one of those things that has been bandied about far, far too often in the past decade, to the point where many people would prefer the phrase never existed in the first place, but the Overton Window gets shifted when one makes an outrageous argument on the far side of an argumentative spectrum. Kurtz’ post fell into this category (“not only was Kirby not that important, but the people supporting his side of the story are bad people”). When an argument like that comes around, I think it must be engaged and driven down as forcefully as possible. And at a time like that, there is value in scorn.

That’s my two cents on it, anyways.

And now every action/blockbuster movie has to have a Wilhelm Scream in it somewhere. All of the Harry Potters had them, The Hunger Games had one, all of the Marvel flicks have one, I think The Expendables had about half a dozen, et cetera. But the problem is this: whenever I hear a Wilhelm Scream I am taken out of the movie experience. My suspense of disbelief ends and I am just a guy sitting in a movie theatre who realized he just heard the same damn scream for the umpteenth time, because I recognize it. Every time.

I hate that feeling of being reminded I’m watching a movie, and for the sake of a cheap in-joke at that. When I watch a movie, I want to be thrilled during the fight scenes and exciting bits where a Wilhelm Scream might conceivably be heard. I want to experience that “ooooch” feeling when somebody really gets it, and if that moment is punctuated with a Wilhelm Scream then I’m not going to get that feeling. Instead, I’m just going to be thinking “oh, a Wilhelm Scream. Huh.” I mean, it would be as if a character stopped acting and suddenly just turned to the camera holding a handful of bacon and said “look! Bacon!” Because people love bacon. You would want to smack them if they did that, right? I mean, I already want to smack every webcomic artist who uses “bacon” as a punchline, and I’m not even paying for the webcomic, whereas I am typically paying in some manner for the movie.

Seriously. Sound people in Hollywood. Go find some other scream noise. Don’t use the Wilhelm Scream for another ten years at least. We all need a break from it.

1.) Jack Kirby’s estate is not getting the share of funds derived from the various properties Kirby helped create for Marvel, and
2.) this is wrong,

are, basically, self-important assholes. Of course, because this is Scott Kurtz, it’s not terribly well written or intelligent. But hey, let’s have at it.

You may not know it, but in many comic book industry circles, there’s a lot of hand-wringing going on about how all that money is being generated by Jack Kirby’s creations and none of it is going to his estate. And there’s a lot of slacktivism happening in the facetweets and twitsbooks trying to get people to boycott the movie or give to the Hero Initiative to counterbalance the karma-carbon footprint you left when you saw the movie three times and enjoyed it. You monster. Don’t you know that you’re just filling the coffers of an evil corporation while the estate of Jack Kirby goes unpaid. He created ALL THOSE GUYS!

It wouldn’t be a Scott Kurtz post if it didn’t start out with a gratituous amount of pre-emptive whining, would it? Also, note that he’s complaining about the Hero Initiative idea. This will be important a bit later on.

Even Thor (which was incidentally created by the Norse).

Also derived from ancient Norse myth: Jane Foster, the Warriors Three, the Destroyer armor, Sif as a warrior maiden (as opposed to the demure earth goddess she was in the Norse Eddas), only Thor (or someone worthy) being able to lift Mjolnir, the Odinsleep, the Bifrost being a wormhole… really, one could go on at length about all the things Stan and Jack lifted directly from Norse mythology!

Now some people are saying “hey, this isn’t about the money. It’s about proper credit. It’s about Jack Kirby’s legacy. About how he created the Marvel Universe and nobody cares. This is about creator rights.”

Except wait. Here’s a picture of the Avengers from Jack Kirby’s Avenger’s #1. And here’s a picture of The Ultimates from Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. Which looks more like the movie you saw?

This isn’t terribly relevant – never mind that Movie Cap was much closer to being “classic” Captain America than Ultimate (a more “classic” costume, not a jingoistic asshole but instead a peaceful idealist forced into battle by ethics), ditto the Hulk (green and not grey, not a rape-obsessed killing machine when Hulked out), ditto Thor (Thor’s whole movie was a glowing paean to the Kirby vision of Asgard, right down to emphasizing that the Asgardians were super-science aliens rather than actual gods), with Black Widow and Iron Man splitting the difference and Hawkeye being the closest Ultimates analogue – because, wait for it, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch did not create the characters in question. As I am sure they would be the first to admit.

Jack Kirby worked for Marvel until 1970, and then he returned for another three years in 1975. But since then. in the 30 some-odd years since he left Marvel, hundreds of creators have added to the mythos and stories of the characters that Marvel owns and Jack helped create. Hundreds. And many of them added integral aspects to these characters which are just as important to their legacy as Jack and Stan ever did Take a look at Walter Simonson’s run on Thor and tell me that he doesn’t deserve as much credit as Jack or Stan when it comes to the lasting mythos of that character as a modern day super-hero. Or how could you have the Tony Stark we saw on screen in Iron Man without David Michelinie and Bob Layton’s “Demon in a bottle” run on Iron Man in the late 70’s?

Certainly all the other creators who have added their own little touches to the characters since they were created are to be appreciated as well. But there is a difference between putting an awesome flame-job on your car, and building the car. It is easier to build on established work than to create something effectively from scratch – it just is. Any creator should know this in their bones. Scott Kurtz should know it better than most, as he created a whole lot of original characters (even though he relies on cheap pop culture references for many of his punchlines).

I don’t like that Jack Kirby got screwed over by Marvel back in the day. I don’t like it at all. It’s a sad story. It’s as tragic as the story of the men who created Superman. These guys got screwed over. But that was over 40 years go,guys. The men involved are dead and buried. The policies that screwed them over were changed decades ago. Things have changed for the better, even when it comes to doing work-for-hire with the big two.

This is a classic “look, I’m not unreasonable, but…” paragraph right here. Kurtz concedes that Kirby got screwed over by Marvel and that this was tragic and wrong (after arguing for several paragraphs that it wasn’t because Kirby was no big deal really but, whatever, it’s not like expecting Kurtz to be internally consistent within a single blogpost is a good bet), but then goes for the “this is not a big deal, because it’s all in the past and things are better now.”

Of course, Alan Moore is still being screwed over by DC today, and Chris Roberson was booted off his titles post-haste when he said he wouldn’t re-up with DC because their actions were, you know, wrong and stuff, but I guess we have all learned since that happened a couple months ago and now it’s all in the past and DC isn’t going to release Before Watchmen after all. And of course Marvel isn’t going to attack sketchbook artists at conventions who draw Marvel characters, even though they’ve asserted that they have the right to do that if they ever chose to exercise it, because that’s all in the past and things are better now; I mean, just because Disney has a long track record of harassing absolutely anybody who uses their characters without permission (right down to unauthorized nursery school murals) doesn’t mean that they’re going to force Marvel to follow suit. Also, Alan Moore is (let’s be honest) kind of a dickbag, so it’s not really a big deal that DC is screwing him over.¹

In fact, the comics industry has screwed so many people over that there is an entire charity dedicated to helping destitute comics creators. It is called the Hero Initiative. You may have heard of it because Kurtz mocked the idea of donating to it in tandem with going to see The Avengers – not boycotting the movie, simply donating to charity in recognition of creator’s rights.² Because donating to a charity is, apparently, now a selfish thing to do somehow. I’m not sure how the moral math in Scott Kurtz’ head works here.

Bluntly: Kurtz’ argument here is so dense that it’s hard to imagine anybody seriously interested in actual argument making it. Corporate control over their IP is growing more grasping and tenacious, not less, and it is corporate IP that dominates comics even today, thirty years after the independent comics movement first began to pick up steam in the 1980s. That IP is so dominant that it reflects upon a good chunk of the “independent” comics scene – how much of said scene consists of reactions to or riffs upon those characters owned by DC and Marvel? Most indie superhero books (and there are so very many of them) read like DC/Marvel fanfic with the labels buffed off. (This isn’t to say that many of those books aren’t excellent. There are some true gems in there. But consider that Alan Moore’s run on Supreme, one of the most highly praised “indie” superhero comic book runs ever, is widely acknowledged as “Alan Moore’s never-going-to-happen extended run on Superman.”)

How many comic strips less would Kurtz have drawn, if he was forced to delete every single strip containing a reference to Marvel Comics? It would be a fair chunk of them.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t learn from this. I’m saying we’ve ALREADY learned from it. I have no doubt that we learned from it. The black and white creator-owned books of the 80s. The exodus of Marvel creators to form Image in the 90s. The indy comics movement now. Webcomics. Kickstarter. We’ve learned this lesson, folks. You’re getting angry over nothing. You’re suiting up for a battle we’ve already won.

Now, don’t get me wrong: it’s good that indie comics creators can use the internet to promote their work. Heck, I do it. But whenever people make this argument as a solution to the problem of corporate control of IP that has become part of the common ground of our culture, it’s inevitably someone who has already made it. The phrase we are looking for here is “confirmation bias,” and it becomes more and more obvious as fewer and fewer webcomics “make it” to the webcomicking big leagues. I’ve discussed Kickstarter here previously and that’s not an answer either – again, Kickstarter is fine for delivering product to an established fanbase, but by its very nature it isn’t great for trying out new stuff (and looking at Kickstarter funding lately, it seems the market has started figuring this out as funders get more selective).³

But even were indie comics to be flourishing – and let’s just say they are rather than diving into numbers to see if they in fact are flourishing or just scraping by, because that whole issue is a major derail – the issue here is that a significant part of our common cultural language (and as noted above, common cultural language Kurtz frequently uses himself) is private property, and how we choose to engage with that fact. Some of us think that the private-property nature of the beast is fine – these are the comics fans who bitched endlessly when the Siegel estate exercised its rights over the Superman copyrights. Some think that the public domain needs to be more aggressively pursued. Some want a middle ground. And some, like Kurtz, have chosen to bury their heads in the ground and assert that there is no problem.

It’s a child’s argument to say that Marvel is the bad guy and the Kirby estate is the good guy. It’s just infinitely more complicated than that.

It really isn’t. Marvel aggressively did their best to browbeat Kirby, during his lifetime, out of rights that were his by any reasonable moral standard.

Now, granted, there is an argument against Kirby-screwage. It demands that you take the position that we must all be eternally vigilant against others who might try to screw us over or exploit our weakness for their own advantage rather than believe that we should rightly expect some sense of community and fellowship even from corporate entities. It is Randian and it is cold and it is heartless, but it is intellectually consistent and had Kurtz made it, I could at least maintain some respect for him even if I thought making it made him, by default, kind of an asshole. But Kurtz hasn’t made that argument (I expect in part because he recognizes that it is cold and heartless and doesn’t want to be thought of that way) and has instead defaulted to the “come on, guys, can’t we all just get along?” whine of the enabler. Which also means he’s still kind of an asshole.

And to say that Jack Kirby is responsible for that Avengers movie is a ridiculous notion and insulting to the combined hard work of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of creators who have put their efforts into keeping our modern mythos of super-heroes alive and well.

I don’t think anybody is saying Kirby is solely responsible for the Avengers movie. Because that would be stupid. But Kirby created the characters, so maybe, just maybe it is worthwhile to argue that he (or his estate) should be justly compensated for creating the characters which have starred in a movie that has made one billion dollars in its first month of release, as opposed to the share of profits from the film the Kirby estate has currently received, which is… let me check my figures here… ah, yes, nothing.⁴

And these are men and women who are well aware of Jack Kirby. They’re doing this in the spirit of Jack Kirby, not to spite him.

Of course! Spiting Jack Kirby is apparently Scott Kurtz’ job.

Am I really expected to be angry at Joe Quesada for something that happened before he was even born? Just because he’s a big-wig at Marvel now?

Of course Joe Quesada bears no responsibility for Marvel screwing over Kirby back in the day. However, Quesada certainly bears responsibility for how Marvel chooses to conduct itself now. Addressing the issue of fans being upset that the Kirby estate is not being justly compensated for Marvel’s success is, when you get down to it, part of Joe’s job. It is not in any way a repugnant or inflammatory act to address the major executive of a company and say “your company is not behaving as I would like it to behave,” no matter how much Kurtz wants that to be the case.

Part of the change in comics culture over the last couple of decades has been the transformation of Marvel and DC from being relatively small-potatoes publishing concerns into massive corporate IP farms, and the con atmosphere where All Comic Creators Are Buddies often obscures the fact that Joe Quesada is the chief creative officer for a company worth billions of dollars rather than just another pencil-jockey. But Joe Quesada isn’t just another pencil-jockey. He’s a major player in a large entertainment conglomerate. It’s perfectly reasonable to request that he address concerns about the company’s behavior.

Am I really expected to be upset with Stan Lee for deciding to stop writing comics and get paid to be a tireless ambassador for Marvel? The man earns every penny he gets paid at that job. Ask anyone who knows him or spends any amount of time around him. Are YOU going to be traveling the globe at 89 with infinite patience and enthusiasm for every person that approaches you? Hell no you won’t. Nor will I. But Stan does. And that’s why he gets paid. And that’s why he get the cameos every movie. I’m sorry that I can’t muster the energy to be angry at Stan Lee for having some business sense and not dying.

In the words of Darrell Hammond playing Sean Connery in “Celebrity Jeopardy” sketches on Saturday Night Live: “Boy, I believe you may be functionally retarded.”

Seriously, what the fuck is this? I’ve read all of the major critical pieces arguing that Jack Kirby’s estate deserves greater compensation than what he and it received, and not in a single one of them has anybody ever attacked Stan Lee for starring in movies or argued that Lee had anything to do with Kirby getting screwed over. I’ve read more than a few articles and essays which argued that Stan Lee over-emphasized his role in creating all the great Marvel characters (which is probably true to some extent because Lee’s always been a self-promoter, although I’ve never bought the argument that some have made that Kirby/Ditko did all the work and Lee was just a glorified scripter), but I don’t think any of them ever said “and that’s why Jack Kirby got screwed.”

But even if Lee somehow was to blame for it, how would his actions as an “ambassador for Marvel” (which is a formless fictional entity designed to hold intellectual property to provide value to shareholders) mean anything? Jesus, Kurtz can’t even win the arguments he’s making up in his head.

I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to argue the merits of the Kirby estate’s case against Marvel. I’m not a theologist, so I’m not going to debate whether it’s a moral imperative for Marvel to just GIVE the estate a couple million dollars cause they can afford it.

“Look, this entire debate functions on two basic levels, but I don’t want to engage on either of those levels because… I don’t want to, okay?”

(Only theologists can discuss morality, you see.)

But I am a grown ass man, and I can tell you this: the real world does not operate like the morality plays we see acted out on the silver screen in movies like “The Avengers.” Life can not be summed up by “that’s not fair.” It’s not as simple as “Give Jack’s estate some money, Marvel. You can afford it.” That’s not pragmatic thinking. That’s cynicism. And I’m so tired of the cynicism.

I have read this half a dozen times and, putting aside the fact that Kurtz has argued a moral position right after saying he wasn’t going to argue a moral position, it still doesn’t make any sense. Seriously, what is he blathering about here? How is one position or the other “pragmatic thinking” or “cynicism”? Which of the two applies to people encouraging other people to donate to charity or put pressure on corporate officials? How are these even applicable terms? Scott Kurtz writes shit for a living! How can he write a sentence this meaningless?

Guys, learn from the Avengers movie. The real villains here are the cynics. They are our Loki. The people looking to pit fandom and an entire industry against itself to make themselves feel powerful. The worms who never had the courage to create anything themselves looking to forge an identity on the internet by getting in a good dig. By being the guy who got the awesome last word in. These are the real bad guys of our world. Not Marvel executives. Not movie studios. Not the hundreds and thousands of creatives who make movies. Don’t fall for it.

This paragraph strongly makes me suspect that Kurtz got in an internet slapfight with some nerd somewhere who said he was a shitty comicker and who, at some other point, also said Kirby got screwed, because this last paragraph is positively Kevin-Smithian in its levels of pre-emptive defensiveness. It’s the fans who are at fault here, because the fans are pointing out the entirely reasonable argument that Kirby got screwed and that’s making it harder for all of us (and especially Scott Kurtz) to enjoy watching The Avengers.

Chris Roberson, on Twitter, responded to this by saying “Standing up for fairness makes you a cynic and “bad guy,” but accepting inequity with a shrug makes you an “adult”? Do I have that right?” And that is basically accurate and much more concise than what I have written here, not least because Kurtz’ post is mostly empty wind and on its own merits isn’t really worth addressing. But a lot of people will read his stupid bullshit and think “well, he’s got some good points,” because if someone writes enough paragraphs about anything, there will be people who decide that he has written something of substance based on the number of words produced.

But Kurtz doesn’t have any substance. He’s just got attitude. And that’s not enough.

UPDATE: In comments, Pete notes that Scott Kurtz, in 2010, said this:

“If you’re a member of an industry that let Dave Cockrum die in a VA hospital after helping give us most of the X-Men characters that comprised three blockbuster films and you get pissy about what Mark Waid said, then you deserve to remain on this sinking ship.”

That Scott Kurtz! He’s so cynical.

1. I have honestly lost count of the number of times I have heard variations on this in the last few months. If DC was doing to Neil Gaiman a tenth of what they’re doing to Alan Moore, the nerdrage would measure on the upper end of the Richter scale.
2. Full disclosure: I donated the cost of my Avengers ticket to the Hero Initiative.
3. And besides, it’s not even good confirmation bias because when a Scott Kurtz or whoever “makes it,” they’re at best finding their own survivable little niche. There is not gonna be a PVP movie anytime soon.
4. The combined worldwide box-office revenue for the “Avengers universe” films is over $3.3 billion dollars. That doesn’t count the Fantastic Four films, which would take you to the $4 billion mark. Or any of the DVD/merchandise sales.

DC, on the other hand, has a high-profile Batman trilogy that isn’t even wrapped up yet, one which establishes an internally consistent mythos for the character that doesn’t involve any other superheroes. It’d be difficult to imagine Nolan and Bale’s Batman standing on the same screen with Green Lantern and Superman, even if it seemed likely that Bale would return to the role (which it doesn’t.) They have a Superman franchise whose most recent movie has been more or less entirely disavowed by the studio despite positive reviews and box-office success. And they have a Green Lantern movie that woefully underperformed both financially and critically. The Superman reboot that could serve as the beginning of a hypothetical Justice League launch is coming this year, but it’s anyone’s guess whether Warner Brothers had gotten its act together sufficiently by the time Man of Steel went into production to be able to think of their comics properties in these terms. (I have insisted, and will continue to insist, that the reason Marvel’s films have done so well while DC’s have done so poorly is because Marvel is in a position to be able to dictate terms to the studio, while DC is ultimately just “the hired help” at Warner Brothers.)

So the first thought ultimately leads to the second: There’s gonna be a lot of rebooting going on. Two of your three core members (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman) need a new movie to establish themselves as part of the DC Movie Universe, and one of your second-tier members has a stinker that needs to be swept under the rug (a la Ang Lee’s Hulk.) How do you handle this?

You start by ignoring it. You’ve got an Aquaman movie, a Wonder Woman movie, a Green Arrow movie and a Flash movie to make. By the time you get through those four films, there’s a pretty good chance that you can go back and do a soft reboot of Green Lantern that isn’t so obviously an admission that the previous film tanked. Then, with five films under your belt, you can go in and do your Justice League film.

“Wait, what, five?” I hear you say? “What about Batman? What about Superman? What about the Martian Manhunter?” But honestly, I don’t think you need a movie to establish Batman and Superman before putting them in a JLA film. Batman and Superman are, at this point, such iconic characters with such iconic origins that babies practically come out of the womb knowing that Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed and he was inspired by a bat to fight evil. The last thing we need, pardon my mild frustration, is yet another goddamn retelling of the origin of Batman and Superman. (You can see how excited I am for the Man of Steel movie, aren’t you?) Just mention them from time to time in the other films, establish that they exist, and then throw them in the final flick.

As to the Martian Manhunter, he’d be filling the Nick Fury role on the DC end. He’d appear in all of the different movies, talking to the different heroes about how he’s getting them together to face a larger threat, one that he knows about as a telepathic space alien. (Maybe even one that killed off the Martian race…) This would link the various heroes together, whet interest for later films, and give audiences time to get used to the Martian Manhunter, who is definitely something of a legacy from a very different age of science fiction and comics.

So who would the villain be? Actually, surprisingly enough, I’d pick Libra. Go back to his original roots, where he was a supervillain attempting to steal the powers of the entire Justice League, and give a tip of the hat to his recent role in ‘Final Crisis’ by a) having him do so in order to better prepare Earth for the coming of Darkseid, and b) having him recruit a passel of henchmen to help him out. Then, in the Justice League movie, you pull a big surprise at the end…in the third act, after he steals the powers of Superman and the Flash and Green Lantern and seems pretty much unstoppable, you find out that the Martian Manhunter’s been recruiting a lot more than just the heroes who have movies. The final battle would have cameos by dozens of superheroes, from Zatanna to Black Canary to the Elongated Man to Steel to everyone who you haven’t gotten the rights to, all dogpiling on Libra and his Secret Society. In the end, Libra overloads himself absorbing everyone’s powers and blows up (a la his original appearance…) but the greater threat is still out there.

But all that, of course, assumes that Warner Brothers is interested in replicating Marvel’s success, something which has never been particularly clear from their actions. Certainly, it’s hard to believe that the people who made ‘Batman and Robin’ are interested either in making money or in bringing joy to the lives of others.

So how’s being a lawyer going?

Well. I work here.

The thing about family law that the casual reader may not understand is that in law school, I’m pretty sure there isn’t another branch of law where you will hear more horror stories – many of them from former family lawyers who got out – about the practice of family law. You have to really be dedicated to the idea of practicing in it to want to do it while you’re still in law school, which makes my roundabout way of having become a family lawyer (I certainly never planned on it when I went to law school) all the more odd. I recently attended the Ontario Bar Association’s annual family law conference, and was struck by the age of the participants: I’m not exactly a kid any more but even so, I was still one of the younger lawyers there. Granted, the entire Ontario bar at this point is aging, it seems, but the family law bar is definitely older than many other subsectors of law, and I think young lawyers being scared away from it has something to do with that.

This is not to say that it is not emotional and difficult work. It is, and I had to learn early on to not take it home with me. A lot of people can’t do that – find that line where caring about your client and wanting the best for them stops at where it becomes onerous on your own emotional health. I can do it, though – that’s quite obvious to me at this point. (I’m not sure what that says about me personally.)

Clients can and will lie to you – most of them will do so unwittingly because they have become to believe their narrative so firmly that the points where said narrative is not really true in the classic sense will become lost to them, but every so often you deal with the client who just straight-up lies to you because they’ve realized that, as a lawyer, you actually aren’t allowed to lie on their behalf, as so many people assume is the case. I can not proactively mention details that are pertinent to my client’s case in a proceeding, but I can’t lie about the existence of those details.¹ But the active liars are easier to deal with than the self-convincers, frankly, because the self-convincers are, well. convinced. Most of the time, it is not so great an issue that it can’t be resolved. A lot of people just need their lawyer to tell them “this is how it is” and be a sympathetic but firm voice of reason. But sometimes it is an issue.

Ultimately, I like the work. I don’t know if it’s my life’s work per se, but I’m going to do it for a while because, well, I’m kind of good at it. The emotional thing aside, I quite like the fact that in family law, being somebody’s counsel isn’t just an empty word: I have to talk with my clients about much more than legal strategy because a large part of practicing family law in Ontario is explaining to clients that it doesn’t matter how much they might loathe their ex at this point: if they had kids together (and practically all of our casework involves custody in some way), then the other parent of your children is going to be a part of your life for the next twenty years regardless of how custody and access plays out because, hey, you had kids together, and the province takes the view that, where a parent isn’t abusive, it’s in the best interests of the kids to get to have a relationship with that parent. Which means you’re just going to keep seeing them. Which means part of my job, as a lawyer, is to get clients to accept that and move on – help them get past the emotional pain of the end of a relationship and work them through the five stages as quickly as possible so they can get to “acceptance” for their own sake. I’m not going to do all of their counselling – I’m not a therapist – but I have to be mindful of it. And I quite like the fact that my work is hands-on in that sense.

1. In many ways lawyering is much like being an Aes Sedai in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Yes, I said that with a straight face.

No. Really.

Prospective titles for this book include

Don’t Know Much About (Economic) History, The One Percent Solution,, and Hey, If You Turn That Chart Upside Down It Looks Great!

Why do I love Hawkeye? Because he’s absurd. It is fundamentally a crazy idea that a glorified carny would one day wake up and decide to show off his archery skills by becoming a full-time superhero. It’s something that shows off just how wildly implausible a superhero universe is; men in powered armor and Norse gods are actually easier to suspend one’s disbelief for, because there’s no way of knowing how the real world would react to a figure of myth showing up in the modern world. But we all know how it works in the real world if you decide to practice archery until you can hit the bullseye every time, and then proceed to decide to glue bombs to your arrows and fight criminals (while wearing what looks, let’s face it, like a purple dress), and the answer is, “YOU FUCKING DON’T.” The very existence of Hawkeye is a sign that you have left real-world logic behind, which absolutely infuriates some people but evokes in others a sense of giddy delight.

I’m with the giddy delight crowd. Hawkeye is wonderful because he is impossible and plausible all at the same time. It’s plausible that someone could be an extraordinarily gifted bowman, but good enough to hang with gods and sorcerers and aliens and twenty foot tall super-scientists? That’s wonderfully impossible. Hawkeye becomes mythic not despite his Everyman status, but because of it. He’s absurdly talented, literally. Even the look of his costume contributes to this effect. It’s the exact opposite of a realistic costume that a real human being would wear when fighting crime, which is exactly what a character like this should wear.

And it comes out in the text. Hawkeye is perpetually dismissed by villain after villain. “An ordinary man with a bow can’t be a threat” is a common refrain over the decades, despite the fact that for the majority of human history, ordinary men with bows were difference-makers on the battlefield. And time and time again, Hawkeye makes bad guys pay for overlooking his talents, because he’s not ordinary at all, even though he has no powers or abilities. He succeeds time and time again, simply because he refuses to acknowledge how out of his league he is. I could name a few favorites…his battle with Imus Champion, where Champion decides to show how amazingly skilled he is by shooting a bomb that Hawkeye is standing next to from a range that would challenge even a champion archer, only to have Hawkeye shoot his bowstring in half from the same range…his fight with Crossfire, which ends with Crossfire dismissing the “weakest Avenger” by preparing to shoot him with his own bow, only to discover that the pull on Hawkeye’s bow is more than he can draw…or his ‘fight’ with Scarecrow. “What kind of arrow is that? Acid? Explosive? What?” “No, I’m all out of trick arrows. This is my old stand-by, the ‘very sharply pointed, if I shoot you with it, it makes a big hole’ arrow.” “Why don’t I just get that cell door for you.”

But more than all that, I love that Hawkeye is a fundamentally straightforward, honest, and decent human being. He’s someone who found direction in life by joining the Avengers, by becoming one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and who wound up epitomizing their code of ethics better than perhaps anyone else. Hawkeye doesn’t believe in having an Avenger like Wolverine around to do the dirty work that the other Avengers can’t or won’t do, because he believes that you can’t call yourself an Avenger if you forget about your ethics when they stop being expedient. He’s someone who believes that there really is a better way of doing things, that you believe in justice even when it’s hard because it’s meaningless if you only believe in them when it’s easy, and that you really can show people a better path in life, and they’ll take it. (That’s why it worked so damn brilliantly when he became the leader of the Thunderbolts, BTW.) (It’s also why, in the interests of staying relentlessly positive, I am not discussing Brian Michael Bendis’ handling of the character.)

I love Hawkeye because he’s bold, brash, and uncomplicatedly heroic, and because that actually works for him despite all of the cynicism in our hearts that says it shouldn’t. And if none of that stirs your heart, I will leave you with Tom DeFalco’s words: “This bow is a work of art that should never be used like a common baseball bat! **WHACK** But I guess it’ll do in a pinch.”

She starts by asserting that Winter Wipeout is proof that gay people want heteros to suffer and… it actually manages to go downhill from there.

Also, watch the guy behind her. His reactions are hilarious.