Prepare To be Adapted: Raiders Of The Creators Rights, Part II

Believe it or not, Captain Marvel was one of the most popular superhero books during the golden age of comics. It even outsold Superman at times. Captain Marvel Adventures actually sold 14 million copies in 1944! Shazam!

Well, their origins and tone are very different, but not enough to stop Detective Comics (eventual to be called DC Comics) from suing the publisher of Captain Marvel, Fawcett Comics.

The legal battle went back and forth, but eventual the legal costs combined with the lower sales after World War II led to Fawcett Comics settling out of court and closing their doors.

As most of you may know, DC eventually got control of the character and now Captain Marvel plays in the DC playground. Of course DC has to call books starring Captain Marvel "Shazam!" instead of the character's name, because Marvel now has a character named Captain Marvel.

Odd thing, last time I talked about the Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman legal battle. One character that Gaiman was trying to gain legal rights over was Miracleman. A character that was originally created in the 1950s by a British publisher as a thinly disguised version of Captain Marvel, they even continued the numbering of the original Captain Marvel's British comic book series. Crazy, huh?

ACT II – And the audience says ...

I get lots of great e-mails from readers with each column. So, I've decided to highlight the best ones and put my responses here. I picked two favorites that bring up good points: one an email and another from the SyFy Portal forum.

I play "City of Heroes" and "City of Villains." It is an MMO (massive multiplayer online game) where you play a super powered hero or villain and run missions and such.

Two years or so they were sued by Marvel on copyright issues, as they said certain characters were infringements of their characters.

The funny thing is after they settled the lawsuit, Marvel and the "City of Heroes" designers started designing an MMO based on Marvel characters, so enemies one day, co-workers the next.

Talk about this story