Marvel’s Lawyers Insist Mutant’s Aren’t Human. Duh!, Homosuperior.

Never doubt the intrepitude of lawyers. Apparently there’s some sort of financial high-five that can be acquired through action figures if they’re of non-humans. Thus, they’re arguing that mutants aren’t human, promoting Charles Xavier to telepathically wank them with flog-objects.

Slashfilm:

The great Radiolab podcast  has a show  that begins with two international trade lawyers who noticed an interesting distinction in taxation for categories of products being imported into the US. ‘Dolls,’ which are toys that represent humans, are taxed at 12%. ‘Toys,’ meanwhile, are, well, toys, but ones that don’t represent humans. Those are taxed at 6.8%. You can probably see where this is headed.

These two trade lawyers, as it turns out, had a big client when they noticed these tax rates: Marvel. So the pair went to customs and argued that Marvel’s licensed products are toys, not dolls. To do that, they argued that the figures do not represent human beings.

This seemingly minor trade argument led to quite a few legal cases, and a big part of these cases involved Marvel’s lawyers arguing that the X-Men are not humans, and therefore licensed products representing the characters should be taxed at half the rate of dolls that represent human characters. Do you think they won? Of course they did – there wouldn’t be much of a story otherwise.

It’s such a dorkily arousing topic. I hadn’t really ever thought of this. I mean, if they’re homosuperior, then aren’t they technically not  humans? A new species. Or are they an off-shoot of humanity, and thus they fall underneath that umbrella? C’mon guys and gals, geek out with me.