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Supreme Court Cites ‘Spider-Man’ Comics — Really!

Supreme Court Cites ‘Spider-Man’ Comics — Really!

In a ruling handed down Monday morning, the Supreme Court cited one of the great sources of moral authority in America: The original Spider-Man comics, created in the early 1960s by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

The case, Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, involved a dispute over patent royalties, in which Marvel Entertainment had invoked a 1964 case to declare that it no longer had an obligation to pay royalties to Stephen Kimble, the inventor of a toy imitating Spider-Man’s web shooters, once the patent itself had legally expired. (Marvel had previously bought the patent from Kimble, as part of a settlement from an infringement lawsuit he had filed in 1997.)

Thus, Kimble needed the Supreme Court to overturn that 1964 decision, which they declined to do for him — saying instead that Congress is the proper venue to change the patent law in this manner.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion, in which she was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. The decision was based on the principle of stare decisis — which states that the court should respect past decisions in the absence of deeply serious and compelling reasons to overturn them:

What we can decide, we can undecide. But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “SpiderMan,” p. 13 (1962) (“[I]n this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility”). Finding many reasons for staying the stare decisis course and no “special justification” for departing from it, we decline Kimble’s invitation to overrule Brulotte.

For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Kagan also wrote earlier in the opinion, on the key issue of patent law itself: “Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time.”

As Spidey Changes, So Does America

OK, people: chill out. Breathe. Relax.

Spider-Man is still white. He’ll always be white. He’s been white since that day in 1962 when Peter Parker, a high school science nerd, was bitten by that radioactive bug.

In the five decades since, he’s aged about 10 years, grown and lost four extra arms, been cloned, and made a deal with a devil that rewrote all of reality. It’s a litany of impossibilities that lends a certain context to the news that seems to have left observers meshuggeneh and verklempt: Marvel Comics has killed off Peter Parker and replaced him with a new Spider-Man, Miles Morales, who is black and Latino.

Fox News (who else?) asked if this represented “a radical left turn.” Gary Stein of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel wondered if this was a good idea or PC “run amok.” Simone Wilson, a blogger for the L.A. Weekly, celebrated a move that would “open the Spider-Man casting call from pasty crackers like Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst.” Someone on a message board at The Root, took Marvel to task for a “colored Spidey” created to make money. Someone on a USA Today message board derided “super hero affirmative action.” And that’s not to mention the folks who say President Obama had something to do with it. Or Glenn Beck, who blamed his wife.

As a Spider-fan of almost 50 years, I feel compelled to say a few things.

In the first place, this death of Spider-Man takes place in an alternate universe, alternate universes being about as common in comics as sex scandals are in politics. The “real” Spider-Man remains Peter Parker.

In the second place, this is the opposite of unprecedented. The “real” Nick Fury is a crusty white man who looks nothing like Samuel L. Jackson. And we learned a few years ago that the first Captain America was black.

In the third place, as your friendly neighborhood comics dealer will tell you, books starring, ahem, “colored” characters are usually poor sellers, so if this is a money grab, it’s a dumb one.

In the fourth place, the person who seriously thinks the Obamas had anything to do with this should seek help immediately.

In the fifth place, “affirmative action?” Actually, comics have long proven that courage comes in both black and white. Also, orange, blue and green.

In the sixth place, leave Maguire and Dunst alone. Pasty they may or may not be, but they seem to have a modicum of class, which is more than can be said of someone who calls white people crackers.

Of course, none of that addresses the underlying cause of all this angst. Meaning, the nation’s discomfort with its own changing face. America is fast becoming a country where no group will command a numerical majority. Whites will be just another minority group.

If some of us see that as a bracing challenge, others see it as cause for panic. But they better make their peace, because Miles Morales is just the tip of the edge of the rim of the iceberg. This change will not be forestalled. Seal the borders, gnash your teeth, bemoan the biracial Spider-Man. It doesn’t matter. The future will come, regardless.

A smart nation would prepare for that. So it’ll be interesting to see what this nation does.

That’s all I came to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my spider sense is tingling.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

(c) 2011 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.