Heck, look at Five For Fighting. That guy had a hit with a song called Superman!!

Publications, but basically comic books and magazines. Also, cardboard stand-up figures, playing cards, paper iron-on transfers, erasers, pencil sharpeners, pencils, notebooks, stamp albums, and costumes.

So TV shows are okay. Novels and non-fiction books are, too. You'll find quite a number of books with superhero in the title.

Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

Two of them do not apply here, which are "Comparisons" (Coke can use Pepsi's trademark if it is doing an advertisement comparing the two) and "Parody" (which, I think, is self-explanatory).

The third, which DOES apply here, is when someone is using a trademarked word as simply a descriptive word, and not highlighting the word as if it were a mark of trade.

For example, Ocean Spray has advertisements for their cranberry juice where they refer to it as having a "sweet-tart" taste. This was allowed, even though "Sweet-TART" is a registered trademark, because Ocean Spray was using the term in the descriptive sense.

Now, if Kirkman were to highlight the word superhero - and make it more noticeable, or jump out on its own, then I think it WOULD be considered a mark of trade.

But here, though, it seems like Kirkman fits within the "descriptive" exception. He is merely describing his work - and please note, as I mentioned above, "superhero" IS a descriptive phrase - it's just one that has achieved secondary meaning, and therefore eligible for trademark protection. Words/phrases like that are much more likely to allow the "descriptive" exception.