Mother Jones: Superpowers as a Disease

Mother Jones

I have no idea what this Mother Jones interview is about, but it’s funny, and at least some of it has to do with children, albeit ones with undesirable super-powers, so therefore, I feel justified in running it at DadWagon:

MJ: If a superhero has sex with a woman who doesn’t know he’s a superhero—say Clark Kent, rather than Superman—can she sue if the child turns out to have undesirable uncontrollable superpowers?

JD: I don’t think so. I mean I’m not positive, but I would think that by analogy to, for example, someone who knows that they are the carrier to a hereditary disease.

RD: Yeah, a hereditary condition is different than a disease. If you know you have a disease and you give to someone else through sex and you know you have it, that’s a crime.

Read the whole thing, and perhaps explain it to me.

Published by Theodore

Theodore Ross is an editor of Harper’s Magazine. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, Saveur, Tin House, the Mississippi Review, and (of course), the Vietnam News. He grew up in New York City by way of Gulfport, MS, and as a teen played the evil Nazi, Toht, in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. He lives with his son, J.P. in Brooklyn, and is currently working on a book about Crypto-Jews.

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2 Comments

  1. It’s an interview with the founders of the Law and the Multiverse blog ( http://lawandthemultiverse.com/ ). They’re lawyers who are also interested in comic books and discuss how various comic book issues/situations would play out in our current legal system. It’s quite interesting. (Though saddening as it shows that a real-life superhero wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful as Batman, Superman or Spider-Man.)

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