Inside This Issue

December 7, 1999 at 7:30pm at the GIAC, Meeting room 2. Which Green Lantern is Best? A Debate.

December 21, 1999 at 7:30pm at the GIAC, Meeting room 2. Holiday Wish List.

January 4, 2000 at 7:30pm at the GIAC, Meeting room 2. Who is Supergirl?

January 18, 2000 at 7:30pm at the GIAC, Meeting room 2. Doctor Who Comics and Toys.

February 1, 2000 at 7:30pm at the G.I.A.C., Meeting room 2. Election Night and Simpson

February 15, 2000 at 7:30pm at the G.I.A.C., Meeting room 2. Romance Comics

March 7, 2000 at 7:30pm at the G.I.A.C., Meeting room 2. Toy Night. Bring your toys, but please share.

March 21, 2000 at 7:30pm at the G.I.A.C., Meeting room 2. Read Aloud Night

Club News

Will Kone, Jeff Hetzel - Taken from notes by Carmela Merlo

October 19, 1999 our Halloween night, and fright comics. People brought scary comics, like Vault of Horror, House of Mystery, Plop!, Haunted Tank, Weird War, and Reagan’s Raiders.

November 2, 1999 It was decided that the Club would now be holding only two shows a year, one in February, and the other our "Ithacon" in September. Then we heard about Americas Best Comics, Written by Allan Moore, and distributed by DC comics under the Windstorm imprint.

November 16, 1999 Read Aloud Night! Everyone loves this meeting. We got to hear from Jeff Hetzel who brought the GURPS Y2K sourcebook, Carmela who read about the 69 Mets, Dani Rotach who read to us from a Doc Savage fanzine, and many others.

December 7, 1999 The day that will live in infamy: Who is better Kyle Rayner or Hal Jordan—Answer: Allen Scott. A Debate over Which is the better Green Lantern. Subtitled: Wither or not a charter should be brought back from the dead.

December 21, 1999 Holiday Wish List: What do you want for the Holidays?

January 4, 2000 Who is Supergirl? Come to the meeting and find out. A great escape from reality after 4 days of dealing with the Y2K bug.

February 1, 2000 Election Night, Come and help pick the Club leadership for the new final year in the millennium. To be followed by Simpson’s Videos.

February 15, 2000 Romance Comics. (Hey we are close to Valentines Day.)

February 5, 2000 Tentative date for our spring show.

March 7, 2000 Toy Night! Bring all your favorite toys that you got for the holidays.

March 21, 2000 Read Aloud night. Everyone Love Read Aloud night.

Bring a friend, bring an enemy, meet new people, and let new people meet you.

This looks like a review of the Comic Book Business!

William Kone

_WilliamK@excite.com

Should comic books be held responsible for the harm they are involved in? I ask that because of the number of lawsuits going on today against unpopular industries.

The law suites against Microsoft, Tobacco Companies, Firearm manufactures, and Oliver Stone’s movie "Natural Born Killers" are basically over one person/corporation selling a legal product that is later miss used or used instead of another’s product.

No one forced individuals to buy windows, smoke cigarettes, or watch Oliver Stone’s movies. No one used force to get two previously convicted drug addicts to kill a convinces store clerk. (As Mr. Stone portrayed in his movie which the two addicts had watched an amazing 27 times in the week prior—a possible attempt at an insanity plea?)

Ok, so what does that have to do with comics? A lot. For starters, comics are often the most easy to point to when "kids go bad", though not as much today as the Internet and Chupuko-mon deflect a lot of it. Mr. Stone is being accused of contributing to the level of violence and for giving the idea to kill to two addicts he never met.

I wonder if comics have violence in them? How many Batman Comics do you want me to show you? Comics are often accused of being sexist. Other than the current Supergirl, name a normal shaped female superhero. (Even Wonder Woman, who was brought about by William Gaines to give girls a hero they could emulate is highly criticized today.)

If Tobacco companies can be found guilty of contributing to the illness of people who went out and bought their product, put it in their mouth, lit, and inhaled smoke on their own. And Firearm makers who have a constitutionally legal product, which is illegally misused, can be found guilty of contributing to crime. Is it any wonder that Oliver Stone’s movie, also a constitutionally legal product, can end up in court trying to defend its right to exist. And how soon before the authoritarian from both the left and right want to "do something for the kids" about what they read.

But what about the first amendment you ask? Thanks to the Paladin Press "Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors" court case, a president was set in the spring of 1999.

The history: 1983 — Paladin Press publishes Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors. More than 13,000 copies are sold.

January 24, 1992 — James Perry orders Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors from a Paladin Press catalog.

February 1992 — Believing he will inherit a $1.7 million insurance settlement, Lawrence Horn hires Perry to kill his ex-wife, Mildred Horn, and his disabled son, Trevor.

March 3, 1993 — James Perry travels from Detroit to Silver Spring, Maryland. He shoots Mildred Horn and Trevor’s private nurse Janice Saunders, and disconnects Trevor’s breathing tube. All three are left dead. Police search Perry’s home and find textbooks on criminal forensics and a Paladin Press catalog. An investigation reveals Perry ordered Hit Man and How to Make Disposable Silencers, although neither book is found in Perry’s home.

November 1995 — Perry is convicted and placed on death row; six months later, Horn is sentenced to life in prison.

January 1996 — The families of Mildred Horn and Janice Saunders file a lawsuit against Paladin Press. In September, U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. throws it out, finding no liability on Paladin’s part.

November 1997 — The 4^th US Circuit Court of Appeals reinstates the lawsuit, ruling that the book is not protected by the First Amendment because, "Hit Man is, pure and simple, a step-by-step murder manual, a training book for assassins."

April 4, 1998 — The Supreme Court refuses to hear the case, allowing the lawsuit to continue.

May 21, 1999 — Three days before the case is to go to trial in a federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, Paladin’s insurance company settles the case for undisclosed millions. Paladin takes Hit Man out of print.

And add in a $130 million lawsuit filed by parents of students killed in a Kentucky school shooting claims that the blood-and-guts computer game Doom, the movie The Basketball Diaries, pornographic Internet sites, and more than twenty other media companies transformed a normal teen-age boy into a murderer.

The First amendment does not apply to entertainment any more.

The likely hood of more such suits are very high. How soon before some kid tries to fly, or becomes an anorexia to get that Cat woman figure? What happens when that Joker fan gets confused as to what is comic book, and what is real life.

So take a look, you might be pleasantly suppressed.