Comic Book Resources

Maggott can be trademarked easier than Maggot.
Thus toys and a happy meal (surely not a happy meal!) can be named Maggott with the big TM to Marvel.

The extra “T” is for tremendous savings!

If Marvel had done a Maggott Happy Meal the character probably would have taken off. THAT would have been cool.

little like HAVOK with a ‘k’ no? why not just havoc?

I’m fairly certain that they thought it was cool at the time.
Whether you chalk that up to fashion mistakes of the post or the fact that the people behind it aren’t terribly smart is up to you.

I agree with the first commenter, a “maggot” is too generic a word to be trademarked, just like “havoc.” Hence “Maggott” and “Havok.”

But being common doesn’t make it that difficult to trademark a word. I mean, heck, look at Storm. Can’t get much more generic than the word “Storm.”

I think “it looks cooler” is PROBABLY the answer, which is odd.

Common words do have less trademark protection unless used in arbitrary or unusual ways or the association is longstanding. You can still trademark Storm, but it has a lot less trademark strength than a made up word like Xerox or a deliberately misspelled word like Bratz. It becomes a stronger trademark when you make the spelling more unique. Plus, like you say, it’s considered to look “cooler.”

They should have done Happy Meals for Maggott, Marrow, Husk, Skin, and Beak. Mmmmm.

I’ve wondered the same thing about the various New Gods characters. How, exactly, does anyone find out that ‘Darkseid’ or ‘DeSaad’ are supposed to be spelled other than the obvious phonetic versions without having the characters come off as the pretentious tools that would pick out that kind of Kewl spelling, anyhow?

I was buying X-Men comics when Maggott was introduced, and seem to remember that when he first showed up his name was spelled with only one “T”, and by the next issue or so, it had two. Can anyone else verify this?

Anyhoo…

Maybe there was already another comics character somewhere named Maggot?

It is an homage to noted comics writer Elliot S! Maggott.

Might it just be a spelling mistake gone awry? Kind of like how someone asked one of the creators of C what he’d change if he could do it all over again, and he answered that he’s spell the “creat()” system call properly.

Could be a candidate for a Comic Book Urban Legend…