Comments on: Comics Should Be Good Mailbag for 12/10

By: Thelonious_Nick

Thelonious_Nick — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:38:25 +0000

>>>Hmmmmâ€¦ the â€œheroes create villainsâ€ notion sounds like something J. Jonah Jameson might have pushed

Although this would be quite a hypocritical line for him to take, considering that he himself directly contributed to the creation of the Scorpion back in ASM #20. He later resigned from the Bugle after admitting his role in the Scorpion’s creation in a front-page editorial in the Daily Bugle, somewhere around ASM #250-251.

I’m exercising my Spider-Man continuity muscles today.

By: Blackjak

Blackjak — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:33:13 +0000

Oh, and the inside of the new Slaine books is all just as fully-painted as the covers…

I know he’s done more, but it escapes me at the moment…

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:21:16 +0000

It goes somewhere now!

By: yo go re

yo go re — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:16:36 +0000

The trivia link goes nowhere. Nowhere!

By: Jeff R

Jeff R — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:58:39 +0000

It was probably Miller who Batmanized the idea: the first place I can remember it was from the lip of the psychiatrist in Dark Knight Returns.

Although, now that I think of it, it might have also shown up earlier in one of the Earth-Prime Ultraa JLA stories as well, as the reasoning for why Ultraa had to leave his home dimension…

By: Stephane Savoie

Stephane Savoie — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:15:37 +0000

Hmmmm… the “heroes create villains” notion sounds like something J. Jonah Jameson might have pushed, but I couldn’t say for certain that he has. By the 80s it was certainly linked with Batman quite a bit, but I couldn’t point to an author.

By: Eric P.

Eric P. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:13:17 +0000

I am a CoH player too. If your character looks anything like Vance Astro, and/or has powers like his, you’ll be in trouble. However, if you are (say, for example) an Assault Rifle / Devices blaster who looks like Duke Nukem, they won’t care that your name is Marvel Boi.

By: Omar Karindu

Omar Karindu — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:54:12 +0000

Though “Marvel Boi” would be an especially tempting target for Marvel Comics, given how much effort they went to in making sure all comics-related uses of the word “Marvel” are treated as trademark infringements.

By: Greg Hatcher

Greg Hatcher — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:53:13 +0000

I’ll go ahead and suggest that it was Elliott Maggin that suggested the heroes-create-villains idea. He was kind of edging up to it in “Must There Be A Superman?” or whatever that early story was with the Guardians of Oa, but really hit it head-on in his novel Last Son of Krypton in the late 70′s.

I don’t know who co-opted the idea for Batman, though, which is really where it started getting the workout.

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:11:00 +0000

Right, Brian, the “use in commerce” would apply to the people who run the game, that’s why i was telling Ronn he didn’t have to worry about it himself – if anyone had to worry about it, it would be the people who run the game (which is why I figure they likely would tell people not to do it, because, well, why risk it?).

By: Brian Mac

Brian Mac — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:05:05 +0000

I’m an avid City of Heroes player, and while I try to make only original characters, I’ve followed some discussions on their forums about copyright issues. I’d say that “Marvel Boi” is probably going to attract some attention from the moderators, depending on what the character looks like. If he looks like Vance Astro, any version of Captain Marvel, or any version of DC’s Marvel family, you’re going to get generic’ed. (City of Heroes doesn’t delete offending characters, they replace the name with something like “Generic Hero 937406″.) Likeness has a lot to do with it, though. If you create a character named “Super-Guy,” with blue tights and a red cape, you’re in trouble. The same name would be OK if the character wears, say, purple tech armor.

In short, the “in commerce” defense doesn’t fly for City of Heroes characters, because all characters are property of NCSoft, not the player, being used in a game, which makes them “in commerce.” City of Heroes has the most elaborate character creator of any game I’ve seen, and they add more options constantly. Although the temptation to re-create your favorite comic-book hero is strong, there are so many options for creativity, it’d be a shame not to explore them.