The Newsaic, home to FootnoteTV, Footnote Fahrenheit, and more

By Stephen Lee

	Footnote Comics: Truth : Red, White & Black Written by Robert Morales and art by Kyle Baker. Published by Marvel Comics What is this comic about? : For more than 50 years, comic-book fans have known that blond, blue-eyed Steve Rogers was turned into Captain America through the government's secret "Super Soldier" program. Now, the truth behind that program is revealed; before Steve Rogers was given the Super Soldier formula, it was tested on black men, and one of those men could have been – and perhaps should have been – Captain America first. Recommended Reading : The Truth is a seven-issue limited series that is published monthly by Marvel Comics. Issue #1 is already available in a special collected "must-have" edition with two other recent Marvel comics. The entire series will probably be published as a paperback collection a few months after the final issue is released. For more information, go to Marvel.com. Cover to #2 : Blacks in the Military circa World War II Cover to #3 : Human Experimentation Panel from #3 : Red Summer riots of 1919 All covers and panels are copyright Marvel Comics. Blacks in the Military circa World War II (last updated February 8, 2003) (back to top) During World War II, black soldiers and sailors had to struggle within their own government long before they could fight against the Axis enemy. In the Army, they were placed in segregated units, put disproportionately into non-combat service units, and as combat units were not allowed to go overseas until late in the war. In the Navy, blacks were relegated almost exclusively to steward and other service functions. The military did not even welcome blacks until ordered to do so in 1940, and then only grudgingly. Blacks were generally seen as second-rate troops who lacked the intelligence and ability to be good soldiers. This was in part due to their experience in World War I, which owed more to their lack of training, poor equipment, and unclear orders. Nonetheless, the military began opening its doors due to the Selective Service Act of 1940, which prohibited racial discrimination in military recruitment, and due to a new policy implemented by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that year, which required that blacks be inducted according to their proportion of the population. FDR's policy maintained segregated units, but made blacks eligible to serve in the Army Air Corps, eligible for officer training, and eligible for civilian jobs within the military. Like other minorities, blacks joined for a variety of reasons : because of the economic opportunities there, because of the hope that military service might lead to social change back home, and because Hitler would be worse than anything in the United States. Boxer Joe Louis, for example, was quoted as saying that "[t]here may be a whole lot wrong with America, but there's nothing that Hitler can fix." Brigadier-General Benjamin Davis Sr. (1877-1970) America's first black general, who served as an inspector and advisor on racial issues during World War II Photo from the National Archives Ship's Cook Third Class Doris "Dorie" Miller (1919-1943) Decorated with the Navy Cross for his actions during the Pearl Harbor attack, but still serving as a steward when his ship was sunk in 1943 Photo from the National Archives The Army With the changes of 1940, the Army accepted black troops in greater numbers and even more so after Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into the war. Nevertheless, blacks were still rejected from service more frequently than whites, and they were relegated to service units rather than to combat units more often than whites. By the end of 1943, blacks still were placed in service units more often than whites were. While 40 percent of whites were in combat units and 10 percent in service units, only 20 percent of blacks were in combat units and about 30 percent were in service units. Those blacks who did manage to serve in segregated combat units still did not see combat until later in the war, in part because of difficulties stationing black solders overseas in theaters of war. Several countries or territories in Central America, Africa and Asia asked that black troops not be stationed there, in part because of the tensions that might be created by introducing confident, comparatively wealthy black American troops into colonial-like environments with poorer black residents. England's Parliament even debated how they should handle black troops stationed there; the Army needed service and engineering personnel, and blacks were needed there in that capacity. Accordingly, the only black units that saw combat in 1943 were those pilots who are now better known as the Tuskegee Airmen after the base where they were trained (ironically, the first Tuskegee "experiment" was in whether blacks could be capable pilots; Tuskegee would later gain other connotations for the long-term experiment in which black men were not given syphilis medicine; for more on that, go here). But even they almost did not see combat. They originally were not to serve in combat and were to be sent to a token position in Liberia. The Air Force relented in 1943, after Judge William O. Hastie, a former dean of Howard University's law school who had joined the military as a special advisor regarding black troops, resigned in protest. The Tuskegee Airmen were sent to assist the Allied invasion of North Africa. They went into combat for the first time on June 2, 1943 in the Mediterranean Sea; they later assisted the invasion of Italy and were escorting bombers into Germany by the war's end. The 99th Pursuit Squadron, one of those comprising the Tuskegee Airmen. Photo from the National Archives Advocates within the government, the military and the black press continued urging the military to put blacks into combat. Finally, in March 1944, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson accepted the recommendation of a committee headed by Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy and issued orders that the Army wanted blacks introduced into combat; McCloy had argued that any doubts about black soldiers' capabilities could be rectified by improving training methods rather than barring them from the battlefield. Accordingly, on March 11, 1944, the black soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, who had been stationed in the Pacific theater and had been building fortifications before the change in orders, became the first black unit to see combat. In early August 1944, the 92nd Infantry Division became the first black unit to see combat in Europe. By late 1944, the Army began some further integration out of sheer necessity. American forces were losing enough troops on the European frontlines, and Lt. Gen John C. Lee, commander of the service troops in Europe, recommended offering black troops "the privilege of joining our veteran troops at the front to deliver the knockout blow." General Dwight Eisenhower approved the call, but had it phrased in a more race-neutral way. By March 1945, about 4,500 black soldiers had volunteered, and about half received training and were sent to join newly-formed rifle platoons which were incorporated into those white rifle companies whose commanders accepted them. The Navy The Navy was even more resistant to blacks, initially resisting any significant change in their racial policies during the pre-war period and the early days of World War II. Most blacks who applied to the Navy were rejected, except for a few who were accepted as stewards. Doris Miller, one of the celebrated heroes of Pearl Harbor, was just an untrained steward on the battleship West Virginia, when he saved his captain and shot down two Japanese aircraft; he then earned the Navy Cross but was again waiting on white officers when he died in the sinking of an escort carrier in November 1943. The Navy maintained its restrictive policies well into the war. First, it accepted only a small number of blacks so that it could avoid having racially-mixed crews; blacks made up just two percent of the Navy's enlisted force by February 1943, when the draft went into effect, and only about 5 percent by war's end. Second, the Navy continued to assign blacks almost exclusively into service and construction crews, far from the frontlines but sometimes still in dangerous conditions; a group of blacks relegated to such service positions refused to work at the Port Chicago facility in California after a massive explosion there in 1944 (for more on that incident, go blank. Bowing to political pressure, the Navy began to relax its policies in 1944. That summer, the Navy began a limited integration program in which blacks would serve in small numbers on auxiliary, non-combat ships. The next summer, the Navy ordered inductees to report to the nearest training center, regardless of race. Integration Despite some of the advances won by blacks during World War II, little had been achieved by war's end. The military was still segregated, opportunities for advancement were limited, and black soldiers still faced bias despite their participation in the war. Perhaps the most well-known example of the homefront problems faced by black soldiers was the 1946 blinding of discharged Sgt. Isaac Woodward. Riding a bus on his way home for the first time in a year and half, Woodward was arrested by South Carolina police under false pretenses and then beaten so badly that he was permanently blinded. President Harry S. Truman, who took office upon FDR's death in April 1945, was horrified by the Woodward incident but continued to resist calls for integration; the armed forces similarly stalled on making any further reforms. The splintering of the Democratic Party in 1948 -- when Southern Democrats opposed to civil-rights left to support Strom Thurmond – actually helped the civil-rights movement by allowing Truman to stop appeasing that constituency and to pursue integration and the black votes that such a move would secure. Accordingly, on July 26, 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9881, which would begin the end of a segregated military. "It is hereby declared that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin," the order stated. Truman's order was to go into effect "as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale." Nonetheless, actual integration was implemented slowly over the next few years. Today, blacks make up about 25 percent of the military's enlisted personnel and about 10 percent of its officers. And opportunities have changed; whereas Brigadier-General Benjamin Davis Sr. was kept far from positions where he might order whites, General Colin Powell held a command role during the Gulf War and is certainly one of the American military's most famous and most respected representatives now. Sources: Bernard C. Nalty, Strength for the Fight : A History of Black Americans in the Military (Free Press, 1986). Gerald Astor, The Right to Fight : A History of African Americans in the Military (Presidio Press, 1988). Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Center of Military History, World War II 50th anniversary commemorative edition, published in 1994). Marvin E. Fletcher, America's First Black General : Benjamin O. Davis Sr., 1880-1970 (University Press of Kansas, 1989). Sherie Mershon and Steven Schlossman, Foxholes & Color Lines : Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces (RAND Corporation, 1998). The Defense Department has information relating to African-Americans in the military through its African-American History Month site on-line here. Photos of Brigadier-General Benjamin Davis Sr., the 99th Pursuit Squadron, and Doris Miller are from the National Archives' "A People at War" exhibit, which is on-line here. Human Experimentation and Informed Consent (last updated August 31, 2002) (back to top) Informed consent has been the guiding principle behind ethical medical research involving human subjects for several decades, and in some ways even predates the Nuremberg Code that arose from the 1947 trial of Nazi German doctors. However, while the principle is now firmly rooted in federally-funded and federally-conducted research, it spread slowly and unevenly during the second half of the 20th century among various branches of the United States government and medical community, and it has not always been followed fully. In the 1940s and 1950s, in particular, branches of the United States government generally did not adhere to the Nuremberg Code's principles as they conducted a wide range of experiments to test radiation's effect on humans and to test the effectiveness of LSD as a mind-controlling substance. These efforts affected a wide range of citizens, including hospital patients, children considered retarded, and prisoners, and some did not come to light for years. Probably the most infamous example of medical experimentation in the United States was the syphilis study conducted in Tuskegee, Alabama. In the study, about 400 black men with syphilis went untreated for four decades so that the United States Public Health Service could see how syphilis progressed in blacks. The study began in 1932, when there was no widely accepted treatment for syphilis and when medical ethics were not of widespread concern, but continued without change for four decades, despite developments in the 1950s that saw both the widespread use of penicillin to treat syphilis and general acceptance of the Nuremberg code. The study was finally brought to light in 1972 and then terminated. The participants, who did not know they had syphilis and had previously thought themselves lucky to be in the study, received settlements in 1975 of about $37,500 each. Additionally, President Bill Clinton apologized in 1997 for the experiment. As a result of such controversies, the informed-consent principles behind the Nuremberg Code became more widespread in the 1970s. Today, all federally-funded researchers abide by the Common Rule, which requires informed consent in all research that could expose human subjects to any physical, social or psychological risks, and the creation of institutional review boards (IRBs) empowered to disapprove and stop any improper research. Additionally, pharmaceutical and medical companies are required to seek informed consent when conducting clinical trials. Prisoners were used widely in the 1940s through the 1970s, but such research largely has stopped due to federal rules and a shifting climate; participation was actually considered a privilege and was thus limited mostly to white men before the civil-rights movement, and prisoners actually tried suing to stop the federal rules designed to end the use of prisoners in tests. Now, companies use financial incentives to get students and poor people to participate. There are a few exceptions to the informed consent requirement, at least under the Food and Drug Administration's guidelines for clinical trials. According to the first exception, a test device or drug can be used one time in emergency situations (1) where the human subject is in a life-threatening situation, (2) when getting informed consent from the subject is impossible, (3) when there is not enough time to obtain the consent from the subject's legal representative, and (4) when no alternative method is available that provides as good a chance of saving the subject's life. The FDA made this exception in the mid-1990s, sparking some criticism that the FDA was backing away from the informed consent principle. Second, under 10 U.S.C. 1107(f), the President of the United States can also waive informed consent requirement when a new drug is given to a member of the armed forces in connection with a particular military option. The president must determine that getting the subject's consent is not feasible, is not in the subject's best interest, or is not in the interest of national security. Historical Development of Ethical Codes In 1946, 20 Nazi physicians went on trial for crimes committed against prisoners of war during World War II. The physicians tried defending themselves by challenging the idea that there were any well-established medical research principles and even cast a finger at the United States' own experiments, such as deliberately infecting prisoners who had volunteered with malaria in order to test anti-malaria treatments (one such volunteer was Nathan Leopold, who with Richard Loeb kidnapped and killed a young boy in an early "crime of the century"). There was some evidence that American doctors and government officials recognized the importance of seeking volunteers for use in experiments (such as the use of volunteers in the Army's yellow-fever research in 1900), but there actually was no law or official policy in the United States as to medical research when the trial began. Recognizing this weak point, the American Medical Association did adopt its first policy outlining ethical research involving human subjects the day after opening statements and the AMA's consultant to the prosecutors presented the policy as more thorough than it arguably was in actuality. In any event, the Nuremberg court convicted most of the defendants on other grounds but did also set forth 10 principles for ethical research involving humans. This set of principles, now known as the Nuremberg Code, is the most famous articulation of how ethical research involving human subjects should be conducted, but, on its own, it is not actually law in the United States or the world (for more on the code, go here). In the years following the Nuremberg trials, some branches of the U.S. government began adopting rules for ethical research along the lines of the Nuremberg Code. The National Institutes of Health opened its Clinical Center in 1953 with a policy requiring "voluntary agreement based on informed understanding" from all research subjects. That same year, the U.S. military adopted a formal policy reiterating the principles of the Nuremberg Code, requiring the written and witnessed consent from human subjects, and prohibiting the use of prisoners of war. The military policy was to govern the "use of human volunteers by the Department of Defense in experimental research in the fields of atomic, biological and/or chemical warfare," and it was implemented with additional protections by the Army in June 1953 (for example, about 2,300 Seventh-Day Adventist Church members who objected to combat did volunteer for experiments from 1954 into the 1970s), but it was not fully communicated among those it covered. Similarly, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Carroll Wilson, wrote two letters in 1947 expressing that clinical testing with patients was permissible only when the patient might benefit medically from the experiment and when the patient had been informed and given his consent to the experiment, but the policy was not disseminated and radiation experiments nonetheless were conducted in violation of such principles. This patchwork of unevenly-implemented policies showed that some people were thinking about how to conduct ethical research, but that the Nuremberg Code was not yet doctrine. In any case, some doctors and government agents in the 1950s and 1960s conducted a variety of controversial experiments on human subjects, often without their knowledge or consent. Informed consent took a large step into more widespread areas through the 1962 Kefauver-Harris amendments to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which generally required that informed consent be obtained in the testing of investigational drugs. The amendments ended a practice in the 1950s by which drug companies conducted loose research by providing samples of experimental drugs to physicians, who sometimes prescribed the drugs without their patients' knowledge or consent and who were paid to collect data on such patients. Broader changes resulted from the public disclosure of some government studies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, these changes still did not result in a centralized federal agency or an overall, consistent policy. For example, while some studies became publicly known and were to be prevented from recurring, other studies, such as the radiation experiments conducted by U.S. agencies and the military, went undisclosed for several more decades. Doctors and hospitals receiving federal funding were subjected to new requirements as a result of regulations published on May 30, 1974 by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW, the predecessor to today's Department of Health and Human Services). These regulations required that each recipient of federal funds for research involving human subjects form a special committee (now known as an institutional review board, or IRB) to approve all research proposals and to ensure adequacy of informed consent. In July 1974, Congress passed the National Research Act, which endorsed the DHEW regulations and which established the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Intelligence agencies were subjected to the informed-consent requirement in 1976 after revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had conducted experiments on U.S. citizens as part of an extensive program in the 1950s and 1960s, known by the codename MKULTRA, to test how psychoactive drugs could influence and control human behavior. At least two people died as a result of such experiments: Frank Olson, who was given LSD without his knowledge and committed suicide a week later, and Harold Bauer, who was injected five times with three different mescaline derivatives and eventually died. President Gerald Ford in 1976 issued an executive order prohibiting intelligence agencies from experimenting with drugs on human subjects without informed, written, and witnessed consent, and Presidents Carter and Reagan later expanded the order to apply to any human experimentation. The 1970s and early 1980s also saw the effective end of research involving prisoners. While the United States did conduct experiments on prisoners during and after World War II, and while pharmaceutical and medical companies conducted clinical trials using prisoners in the 1960s and 1970s, public opinion turned against such research with newfound skepticism that any choice to participate would be truly free and voluntary. By the late 1970s, a national organization refused to accredit any prison permitting any such research, and federal agencies issued or prepared to issue regulations governing such research. Somewhat ironically, some prisoners saw participating in experiments as a right and sued the Food and Drug Administration to prevent it from issuing its own regulations; the FDA's regulations thus remained officially in limbo. In 1991, 16 federal departments -- including the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Central Intelligence Agency -- adopted a single set of regulatory provisions specifying how research involving human subjects is to be conducted. This set of provisions, known as the Common Rule, was developed over the 1980s and is identifical to the basic policy of the Department of Health and Human Services. Even as such rules requiring informed consent have become more widespread and systemized, new information continues to come to light about experiments that were conducted in decades past and that are now seen as unethical. Some examples include: The deliberate injection of live cancer cells into indigent elderly patients at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute in the 1960s, and the deliberate injection of hepatitis into "retarded" children at the Willowbrook State School for the Retarded on Staten Island, New York, also in the 1960s. Experiments conducted to test the effects of plutonium on the human body. In 1945 and 1946, 18 patients at hospitals across the country – including hospitals at the University of Chicago, the University of California, and the University of Rochester – were injected with plutonium. Only the last patient gave some kind of consent. In October 1995, Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments concluded that 17 patients injected with plutonium did not know they were part of a study. Deliberate radioactive releases into civilian populations. Between 1944 and the 1960s, there were several hundred secret international releases of radioactive material, according to a 1995 report by the Department of Energy. These releases took place in Washington, in Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Idaho, and Alaska. These releases involved far less radiation that the emissions accidentally produced. Minimal health effects. Radiation experiments in the 1940s and 1950s at the Fernald School in Waltham, Massachusetts. A residential institution for children then-considered "mentally retarded." Fernald residents were fed breakfast cereals with milk containing radioactive tracers, so that researchers from MIT and Quaker Oats could track how the body absorbed minerals such as iron and calcium. Irradiation of prisoners' testicles in Oregon and Washington state penitentiaries from 1963 through 1973. The experiments tested a new male birth control technique, and the implications of long-term, low-level radiation exposure of testicles. Sources: The Department of Energy published a comprehensive report of human experimentation in February 1995; this report, Human Radiation Experiments: The Department of Energy Roadmap to the Story and the Records, is on-line here. The Food and Drug Administration has information on FDA-regulated clinical trials here. The National Institutes of Health has information on guidelines for human research here. Jonathan D. Moreno, Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans (W.H. Freeman and Company, 2000). James H. Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (The Free Press, 1993) (new and expanded edition). Red Summer : Washington D.C. in 1919 (last updated February 19, 2003) (back to top) A four-day race riot in Washington D.C. in 1919 was one of many that year, but it was the first to gain national attention and the first in which blacks actively resisted the white mobs that came after them. For some, it came to mark the rise of a "new" kind of black as well as an intermediate stage in blacks' long fight for equality between the end of slavery and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Sociologist Arthur Waskow later wrote that some blacks involved in the riots had at least found a "new self-respect," "a readiness to face white society as equals because Negroes had fought back when they were attacked. The Washington riot demonstrated that neither the silent mass of 'alley Negroes' nor the articulate leaders of the Negro community could be counted on to knuckle under, even in a largely southern city with a hostile police force and a press that had been harping on the unforgivable 'Negro' crime." The riots in July 1919 apparently stemmed from white men's fears of black men assaulting white women, fears that were fueled by local newspapers. The Washington branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) even warned the local papers by letter that "they were sowing the seeds of a race riot by their inflammatory headlines and sensational news articles," a prediction that soon came true. Former Washington Post reporter Chalmers M. Roberts later wrote that the Post "played a highly provocative and shamefully irresponsible role" in encouraging the riots. The riots began on July 19, a Saturday, as hundreds of white sailors and marines marched into southwest Washington on what the Washington Post described as a "mission of terrorism," seeking out blacks and beating several; police dispersed the mob and arrested two white sailors and eight black persons. The incident seems to have been sparked by a report in that day's Washington Post of two black men attempting to mug a white woman; the incident was quickly aborted, but it sparked a strong police reaction and a dramatic headline in the Post : "Negroes attack girl … White men vainly pursue." Fighting became even more widespread the next day, largely a result of white "uniformed men" again marching into southwestern Washington and making threats against the city's black population. "That no deaths resulted is remarkable, and attributable solely to the fact that few weapons were employed, most of the encounters being with fists," the Post reported. False reports then circulated that all service men in the region were going to assemble Tuesday night for a "'clean-up' that will cause the events of the last two evenings to pale into insignificance," as the Post put it in a much-criticized July 21 front-page article. Blacks began arming themselves out of self-defense, and some turned around and attacked whites themselves. Riots resumed that Monday night and resulted in their first deaths: at least five were killed (two detective sergeants, one private, and two black men) and eight people, including one white woman, were seriously wounded. "Blazing race hated turned the streets of Washington into battlefields," the Post reported. "Surging mobs of blacks and whites proved themselves stronger than the law in the nation's Capital. All authority, represented by the city's police force and the nation's cavalry, infantry and marines, was set at nought." That was the worst night of Washington's riots. Tuesday, President Woodrow Wilson called in 2,000 federal troops to help restore order, while black leaders called for a Congressional investigation and urged people to keep off the streets. These efforts, as well as a rain storm, helped disperse mobs. A few more incidents occurred Tuesday and Wednesday, but the worst was over. In many ways, little came of the riots. Some called for strengthening the police force to respond to such crises, though blacks called for a police force that would treat blacks equally. The FBI looked into whether Communists had somehow incited the riots, though it concluded that Communists had merely tried to take advantage of the situation. What did last was the feeling among some blacks of pride in how they responded to the situation. "One pamphlet issued soon after the riots crowed about the 'heroic resistance' of the young Negroes who 'defied the point of bayonets, the sting of blackjacks and the hail of bullets in defending themselves," sociologist Arthur Waskow wrote in his book about the 1919 riots. "Even the far more cautious and conservative statement issued by Emmett Scott of Howard University and Judge Robert Terrell of the Municipal Court placed the blame for the riots on the white mob and called Negro retaliation deplorable but natural." Washington D.C.'s riot was merely the first to gain national attention that summer. Other riots occurred before and afterwards in Chicago; Longview, Texas; Knoxville; Omaha; Charleston, South Carolina, and Phillips County, Arkansas. An NAACP spokesperson gave the entire interval the name of "Red Summer." Chicago's riot happened soon after Washington's, and was the worst riot that summer; it lasted one week, and 23 blacks and 15 whites were killed. Sources: Arthur I. Waskow, From Race Riot to Sit-In, 1919 and the 1960s : A Study in the Connections Between Conflict and Violence (Anchor Books, 1967). At the Hands of Persons Unknown : The Lynching of Black America, by Philip Drap (Modern Library). Chalmers M. Roberts, The Washington Post : The First 100 Years (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977). Peter Perl, Race riot of 1919 gave glimpse of future struggles, Washington Post, March 1, 1999 (on-line here). Washington Post articles from July 19 and 21-24, 1919.			Marvel * Alias * Daredevil * Truth * The Ultimates * Ultimate X-Men * X-Men * X-Statix DC/Wildstorm * Batman * Green Lantern * Superman * Wildcats 3.0 Vertigo * Sandman * Y : The Last Man Other * CrossGen * Eagle * Queen & Country * Supernatural Law * Three Strikes All art is copyright their respective owners. Footnote Comics is a service mark of Stephen Lee. Newsaic and FootnoteTV are registered service marks of Stephen Lee.
	DISCLAIMER. The materials contained in this website have been prepared by Stephen Lee ("Author") for informational purposes only and do not contain or constitute legal advice. These materials may not reflect the most current legal developments, verdicts or settlements. Furthermore, this information should in no way be taken as an indication of future results. Reading this website is not intended to create, and your receipt and/or use of the information contained herein, does not constitute an attorney/client relationship. You should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Reproduction, distribution or republication of material contained within this website is prohibited unless the prior permission of Author has been obtained. This page is part of Footnote Comics. Copyright (c) 2003 Stephen Lee, except for cover and panel art which are copyright of their respective owners. Newsaic and FootnoteTV are registered service marks of Stephen Lee. Footnote Comics and Mirror Law are service marks of Stephen Lee. All rights reserved. More information here.