Simpsons Did It!: “A Streetcar Named Marge”

Today’s episode was actually blocked from the Fox affiliate in the city of New Orleans when it first ran.  Apparently, some critic got ahold of the lyrics for one of the made-up songs in the fake musical Marge appears in.  Said lyrics describe New Orleans as being full of pirates, thieves, whores, and the like.  That angered people.  What they didn’t see was the song was a joke and the lyrics were way over the top and that no one involved with the show actually was saying that stuff about New Orleans was true.  The people there found that out when the episode was back as a rerun.

Meanwhile, the estate of Tennessee Williams blocked using A Streetcar Named Desire from being used, but American copyright law allows for the use of a handful of lines so long as it doesn’t go beyond that.  That was why Marge is in a musical in the first place.

Slightly Misplaced Comics Hero Case Files #20: Mr. A

This is his happy face.

I am approaching this particular case file with a bit of trepidation.  Every other character I’ve used for this ongoing column has been owned by DC or Marvel.  Some were misguided, some were inconsistent, some of them sucked, and some of them were used really well at some point and then just forgotten about.

Today’s entry is about a character that I only know about secondhand, but I’m feeling philosophical about the whole thing, so here we are.  Today’s character is creator owned by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko and has appeared only a handful of times over the years.  His name is Mr. A.