I had a successful band in the Northwest during the mid-to-late 1990's and we filed for trademark protection on our name, "Supervillain."

Then lawyers from Marvel and DC sent us cease and desist orders in 2000. They were threatening to come after my house because of the harm we had done to the image of The Hulk. I kid you not. We had damaged The Hulk.

(our songs had nothing to do with heroes and our marketing had more to do with James Bond than Marvel)

Marvel and DC does not have trademark on the name, but -- after consulting with my lawyers -- we were counseled to abandon the fight because they have much, much deeper pockets.

" The judge cited the same type of similarities in costume, appearance, powers, and actions as were listed in the Wonderman case as well as other points of interest, like the fact that both Superman and Captain Marvel had as a recurring antagonist a bald mad scientist bent on conquering the world, both were reporters, and the testimony from some Fawcett employees that they were ordered to imitate Superman."

Ok, both being reporters is stretching it, and Sivana was bold before Luthor (he became bold because of a mistake an artist made), but i guess the similar stories are enough for damages...

Also the fact that the new costume came from the alien planet during the Secret Wars series probably is the best evidence that the black costume was indeed planned to be a symbiote from the beginning.

Otherwise, I'm sure they easily could have had a sequence of Peter or MJ sewing together a new suit, or had Reed Richards make him a stretchy black kevlar costume. By the way, I'd love to see a variation of the black Spidey suit with the Fantastic Four symbol on it to kind of match the darker Fantastic Four costumes they were wearing in the late 1980's.

Great Legends, Brian! I love me some Secret Wars and those great toys back then!

Come on. EVERYONE's heard of "Flesh Gordon"... The others (and tonnes more) were covered in an issue of Empire over a year ago...

“Shaving Ryan’s Privates”, “The Sperminator” “Flesh Gordon” etc…

um, you seem to be pretty familiar w/this practice... :-O lol

"Oh great!" He would reply. "Let us do stories about Peter Parker and lots of them with Jonah and Robby, have them talk things out. Do a big story about what it means to be a hero and have great bits about how people finding out that SPider-man is this poor shmuck. Stories about how the world feels about it, how other heroes feel about. Stories about Peter in a his new status quo as the hero fighting Doc Ock, we can do a big Dock story. And the Jonah stuff will be great, imagine Peter even working for Jonah again and Flash Thompson finds out that this was the guy."

Editor replies: "No were just putting people on for a year and half while we do these generic stories. Jonah's hardly in it and it will all be about Civil War a story that has no plot and cap dies at the end... but you'll see it coming a mile away. Oh, and you and David will be doing the stories where Peter is still working at a school and you can do the stories about some Spider-people or something."

"Um... O.K. So when will I be helping out on the new status quo?"

"You won't be. You're fired. Also we want to make the books as less relevant as possible so write Peter as the lamest character of all time please. Because what the readers don't want, we want to sell them."

"You are the devil, aren't you?"

"No, but Speaking of Mephisto..."

"This is the worst comic book ever!"

I know I'm beating a dead Spider-man... horse, but that had to hurt the guy. Plus, you take the biggest concept ever and it's the biggest put on of all time. That poor guy.

"Actually DC only gained full ownership to the Fawcett characters relatively recently, five or ten years back I believe. Before that, they were licensing them from the current owners. DC would ask to buy them almost every time it came time to renew, and the company who owned them (who usually barely even remembered they DID own them, until DC came along to renew) would refuse."

DC/National didn't even get a =license= to the Fawcett properties until the early 1970s, almost twenty years after the lawsuit was resolved.

But ownership was finally transferred, after a weird period in the latter half of the 1980s where DC was actually paying a per-use fee to Fawcett for the characters, in the early 1990s.

Check the archive out to see them.

By the by, man, it is pretty funny how comparatively awful those early columns are compared to what the column is like now.

Actually DC only gained full ownership to the Fawcett characters relatively recently, five or ten years back I believe. Before that, they were licensing them from the current owners. DC would ask to buy them almost every time it came time to renew, and the company who owned them (who usually barely even remembered they DID own them, until DC came along to renew) would refuse.

If DC reckoned they had a good case for taking Fawcett to court over Captain Marvel, how comes they didn’t do the same thing with Image, Rob Liefield and Supreme? I bought the Alan Moore trade volumes a few years back. Great stories, but how did they avoid the attention of the DC lawyers? Maybe, there is something in the magic Alan practices?

Could be a bunch of different reasons, but I bet the #1 reason is that unlike Captain Marvel, Supreme was not a serious sales rival.

Remember, Captain Marvel actually OUTSOLD Superman during one the years during the 40s.

It's one thing when a small comic company is doing a take-off on your hero, it's another thing all together when what you feel is a take off of your hero is OUTSELLING your "original"!

That's not to say National/DC was correct, just saying that, from their perspective, Captain Marvel was a much bigger threat.

I thought that the actual first appearance of the balck costume, outside of a story, was in a preview of what’s up and coming, and it was all black with red, not white, like they were showing it off as a new spiderman idea?

Anyone know about that?

That's the Rick Leonardi turnaround sketch that is being referred to above.

Anyone know about that?

Not quite comics, but I'd love to hear the story of THAT lawsuit sometime.

Then there was the fanfic that led to the creation of the usenet group rec.arts.anime.stories (that would later morph into the group rec.arts.anime.creative when the rec.arts.anime.* heirarchy was restructured in the late 90s). The story, "Helping Hands", was a "My Neighbor Totoro" lemon (lemon = old term in anime/manga fandom for what's today's just referred to hentai or porn)

Through the power of the inter-web you can find Leonardi's sketches at my blog.

http://sunnydaysindoors.blogspot.com/2009/01/leonardi-request.html

Interestingly I'd read the accompanying text years back and had in mind that Leonardi had been responsible for the design but the text does clearly state that Leonardi "embellished" Zeck's design.

http://www.nptco.org

I saw a Charlie Brown-esque play when I lived in Nashville that dealt with Peanuts-type characters all grown up. The characters' names were changed, but it was obvious who they were meant to be. Judging from the description, I don't think it was "Dog Meets God", though. It was a musical, I remember that much. It featured one song titled "Girl Talk."