Whether DC actually gave Marvel problems or not, the key was that Jim Shooter believed that DC had given Marvel a problem over the use of the word wonder, and then a year after Marvel introduced Power Man, DC introduces Power Girl? That was certainly cause for irritation.
So Shooter quickly moved for Wonder Man to come back from the dead. He did so in The Avengers #151 and #152, which came out later in the same year as Power Girl’s debut. An interesting situation happened in The Avengers #151. Because of delays over the script (Steve Englehart had left the title but still owed a script for his last issue), Gerry Conway (who had come back to Marvel) ended up scripting part of The Avengers #151 for Shooter, so Conway ended up both introducing Power Girl, which caused the problem, and writing Marvel’s retort to Power Girl’s introduction—so he was essentially responding to himself!
Wonder Man ended up becoming a popular Marvel character and even had his own title for a few years in the 1990s. Power Girl, though, has also been a popular DC character, and it was recently announced that she too would be getting her own ongoing title.
AS MENTIONED (on pages 127-28), Marvel has been very protective of its trademarks over the years, and that includes being on constant lookout for names that might be used that are similar to notable Marvel characters. This was the case when Marvel raced to come up with a Spider-Woman character so as to register a trademark of the name before another company used it.
The cartoon studio Filmation Associates had a cartoon show starring Tarzan in the mid-1970s. It found that the show was even more popular when it was combined with Batman the next season to form The Batman / Tarzan Adventure Hour. Seeing that this arrangement was working, Filmation’s next move was to expand the show to include five other superhero characters, this time all-new characters (so Filmation would not have to pay licensing fees, like they had to for Batman). Well, one of those new characters was to be called Spider-Woman.
When news of this came down the grapevine, Marvel knew it had to respond quickly, for fear that Filmation would have something published first. So writer Archie Goodwin had to come up with a Spider-Woman character and concept for Marvel in a very short period of time. With the help of artists Sal Buscema and Jim Mooney, Marvel rushed production of Marvel Spotlight #32, starring Spider-Woman.
The filing for trademark protection was almost instantaneous. The comic was released in very late 1976, and Marvel was awarded trademark protection in early 1977. Hanna-Barbera Filmation ended up changing its character’s name to Webwoman.
In his rush to get a product out there, Archie Goodwin actually ended up using Len Wein’s initial origin story for Wolverine (as noted on pages 151-52). In her first appearance, Spider-Woman is an actual spider evolved by the High Evolutionary into a Spider-Woman, just like Len Wein had planned for Wolverine. In fact, note that the last time the X-Men comics mentions the origin is in 1976, right before the creation of Spider-Woman! It is more likely that Chris Claremont just chose to use a different origin of his own volition, but it is not outside the realm of possibility that he was told that the mutated-wolverine origin was off-limits after it was used for Spider-Woman.
Afterward, when Marvel had time to think the character out, Marv Wolfman was assigned to write Spider-Woman’s ongoing series, and the first thing he did? Get rid of the mutated-spider origin.
SPEAKING OF PICKING up good names, in 1964 Stan Lee grabbed a great name that had gone unprotected while a rival company was out of business, when he launched Daredevil #1, using the same name of the popular Lev Gleason Publishing hero of the 1940s. Daredevil was an interesting character for Marvel, and his origins had an even more interesting source.
Daredevil followed in Stan Lee’s formula of heroes with problems. The titular hero was Matt Murdock, a successful lawyer who was blinded as a child when he pushed an old man out of the way of a truck carrying radioactive waste. The waste hit Matt in the face, blinding him but also secretly giving him a sort of radar sense that allows him to “see” people, in some way, better than other people can because all of his other senses were enhanced.
Stan Lee has spoken on the topic of the origin of Daredevil, and he claims that the idea was his. Still, there are situations in the life of artist and cocreator Bill Everett that seem to suggest that Lee may be mistaken. Bill Everett’s daughter, Wendy, is legally blind, and she recalls that she and her father discussed the idea of a blind super-hero, partially based on the fact that her other senses were more highly attuned due to the loss of her sight, which would seem to translate well to a superpower.
So while Lee feels that he came up with the idea on his own, when the other cocreator of a blind superhero has a blind daughter, whether she remembers her father creating the character or not (which, in this instance, she does), it seems to suggest that the odds are that Everett had more to do with the blind part of Daredevil than Lee believes.
STAN LEE OCCASIONALLY finds himself in a position where his often unreliable memory gets him into a bit of trouble, which was the case when he tried to out a comic character from the 1960s.
Lee was being interviewed in 2002 by a conservative group, the Traditional Values Coalition, discussing a recent Marvel comic miniseries that starred a Marvel Western character from the 1950s and ’60s, Rawhide Kid, in which it was revealed that said character was gay. The issue caused a bit of an uproar, and while being interviewed, Lee attempted to downplay the significance of the character being gay. In fact, said Lee, it is not even that surprising, as Lee had written gay characters into some of his comics in the past. The claim seemed a bit dubious, so the interviewer asked him to name one, and Lee decided to name Percival “Percy” Pinkerton, a member of Sgt. Fury’s Howling Commandos.
Pinkerton’s first appearance from Sgt. Fury #8, with art by Dick Ayers.
This decision came as a surprise to readers of that series, as Lee had always written the character, who was based on the British actor David Niven, as a bit of a playboy—very much interested in women. Another voice of dissent was artist Dick Ayers, who worked on the series with Lee after Jack Kirby left. He said that this current view of Percy Pinkerton bore no resemblance to how Lee wrote the character at the time—and Ayers should know, since he worked with Lee on the character.
It appears that Lee was basing his sudden choice on the facts that he had written the British character to be a bit of a fop and that his name has the word pink in it. Not much to go on, but it had been forty years since Lee had written for the character. Ultimately, Lee admitted that, yes, he was just confused and had misremembered the character.
WHILE BOTH DC and Marvel had their share of popular successes with licensed comics, when Marvel first began considering them in 1970, it was extremely wary. In fact, Stan Lee originally turned down the chance to produce Conan the Barbarian comic books!
Roy Thomas was a huge fan of the classic Robert E. Howard pulp series about the mighty barbarian, Conan, who is a Cimmerian warrior who slowly worked his way up from his life as a thief until he was eventually king. Howard’s stories were widely influential in the world of fantasy, and Thomas was not the only one at Marvel who was pushing for a Conan series—artist Gil Kane had wanted to do one for years.
However, Stan Lee did not think that publisher Martin Goodman would go for paying the licensing fee. Thomas wrote a detailed memo explaining to Goodman why it made sense to not just do a sword-and-sorcery book but to specifically license one of the famous sword-and-sorcery characters, because that was what the fans were writing in for and specifically asking about. They weren’t saying, “Give us fantasy comics,” but “Give us Conan comics!”
Ultimately, Thomas’s memo was so persuasive that Goodman opened up a small licensing budget and left it to Lee to determine which book they would go after licensing. Lee decided not to pursue Conan; instead he authorized Thomas to try to license author Lin Carter’s barbarian hero Thongor, only because Lee thought Thongor sounded like a more interesting name than Conan. Thomas contacted Carter, but there wa
s an impasse: Carter was looking for more than the $150 licensing fee Thomas was authorized to spend. When Carter stalled, Thomas made an executive decision and decided to contact the representatives for Conan.
When Thomas sealed the deal, he had a problem getting an artist, because the two artists who would most love doing a Conan comic, Gil Kane and John Buscema, were too expensive for the extremely small budget Goodman gave the new title. Since he was on a budget, Thomas had to use a cheap artist, but lucky for him that cheap artist was Barry Windsor-Smith, a young penciller who would soon become a major comic book star due to his detailed and striking action work on Conan the Barbarian.
The book started slow, saleswise, but sales soon kicked in, and before too long, Marvel was publishing multiple Conan comic books, as well as a black-and-white magazine starring Conan. Suddenly, John Buscema and Gil Kane were affordable for the comic.
YOU WOULD NOT think that lightning would strike twice, but in a way that is what happened later in the decade when Stan Lee turned down the opportunity to do a Star Wars comic book!
In 1976 Roy Thomas received a visit at his apartment from Charley Lippincott, who was in charge of merchandising and publicity for Star Wars, and he told Thomas that George Lucas wanted Marvel to adapt Star Wars into a comic book form to be released before the movie to drum up interest in the film. He admired Thomas’s work as an adapter for the Howard comic titles (which, by this time, numbered quite a few comics), and specifically asked for him to do the adaptation.
Thomas, of course, appreciated the flattery, but told him that he had not been editor in chief of Marvel in a few years, so he had better talk to Stan Lee. Lippincott then told him that he had, that and Lee had turned him down flat. Now, Thomas was wondering what they expected from him—and they had their answer. They asked to show him a series of paintings detailing the story of Star Wars, and he acquiesced. By the middle of the presentation, Thomas was hooked. He was willing to talk Lee into doing the adaptation, which was simpler than Thomas thought, perhaps mostly because adapting a film before it is released is basically doing advertisement for the film—so it does not cost much in terms of licensing fees.
The adaptation turned out to be helpful for the film but hugely beneficial for Marvel (although Thomas left fairly early on, because the Star Wars people were a bit too hands-on with their comments).
In the years since, Jim Shooter, Marvel editor in chief at the time, has said that Marvel was in rough shape in the late 1970s, and the massive sales success of Star Wars helped save the company. So it seems that all’s well that ends well—just so long as you don’t take your first no from Stan Lee as the final answer.
SINCE HE STARTED inking Conan with issue #26 in 1973, artist Ernesto “Ernie” Chan has inked more pages of Conan artwork than any other artist in comic book history. However, shockingly, for years the popular artist had to go under a different name—all because of a typographical error!
Born in the Philippines in 1940, Chan worked in the Philippines comic industry, along such great Filipino artists as Alfredo Alcala, Tony DeZuniga, Nestor Redondo, Danny Bulandi, and Romeo Tanghal. DeZuniga was one of the first Filipino artists to hit it big in America, so Chan came to the United States to apprentice with him in the very early 1970s. Eventually Chan got work at DC Comics and then at Marvel, where he began his long tenure as inker for Conan.
While working on covers at DC, though, Chan had an interesting credit—his work was signed Ernie Chua. The problem was that there was a typographical error on Chan’s birth certificate, so when he immigrated to the United States, that is the name that was on his immigration papers, and therefore on his other legal documents, including all his tax papers. When he became a U.S. citizen, he was able to go back to his actual name and began being credited correctly.
Years later, Chan was asked why the immigration officials weren’t willing to fix the simple error, and he gave a rather scary answer. The official told him the erroneous name would be better for him, because “there are too many Chans in the United States.”
ANOTHER INTERESTING TIE-IN with another medium took place in the late 1970s, when Casablanca Records contacted Marvel about a new comic book idea. Casablanca Records was founded by Neil Bogart, and it was at the forefront of the disco revolution, with, among others, its biggest star, Donna Summer. While Casablanca was mostly known for its disco records, it was also the record company of the rock band Kiss.
In any event, in the late 1970s, Casablanca approached Marvel about doing a comic book series about a singer. Marvel would create the series about the singer, and then Casablanca would provide a singer who matched that description, and it would be a back-and-forth joint publicity effort. The comics would promote her records, and the records would promote the comic book, and there was also going to be a film tie-in. It was a fine idea, but it all fell apart after the initial development because Casablanca just couldn’t determine what it wanted exactly from writer Tom DeFalco, besides something along the lines of a character named the Disco Queen. The project ultimately ended up in developmental limbo.
It stayed in limbo until almost two years later, when the project resurfaced, this time as a film starring Bo Derek (the record tie-in might have still been in play, but I do not believe so), which would be called Dazzler. So the features of the character (which were originally those of an African American woman) were changed to be like Bo Derek, and the character made her debut in an issue of Uncanny X-Men.
The film never came to be, but Dazzler has been a mainstay in the Marvel Universe ever since.
WHILE BO DEREK might have enjoyed seeing being immortalized in a comic book, one performer who had a major problem with it was singer Amy Grant.
In 1986 Amy Grant released The Collection, a greatest-hits package of her work to that point, which became an extremely popular album (going platinum at least once).
In early 1990, Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #15 came out. It was the second part of a five-part story that involved Marie Laveau, based on a real-life American woman who practiced voodoo in New Orleans in the nineteenth century. On the cover, artist Jackson Guice depicted the character named Morgana Blessing with a look familiar to Amy Grant fans—the image of Grant as it appeared on the cover of The Collection.
Soon after the issue came to their attention, Amy Grant’s management team, Mike Blanton and Dan Harrell, quickly filed a complaint against Marvel Comics. Here is where it gets tricky. They were not, as many folks think, suing over copyright infringement. First off, the copyright for the photo belonged to photographer Mark Tucker (an accomplished Nashville commercial photographer, whose work has graced a number of records), so that wouldn’t work.
No, the complaint, filed by Blanton and Harrell in federal court in Tennessee, was related more to the fear that it would appear that Grant was authorizing the use of her likeness and was therefore condoning the comic book, which would affect her standing in the Christian music community. Reading from the complaint: “Many fans of Christian music consider interest in witchcraft and the occult to be antithetical to their Christian beliefs and to the message of Christian music in general. Therefore, an association of Amy Grant or her likeness [with Doctor Strange] . . . is likely to cause irreparable injury to Grant’s reputation and good will.”
A U.S. district court sealed an out-of-court settlement between Grant and Marvel in early 1991, with a consent decree that Marvel did not admit to any liability or wrongdoing.
The issue may or may not have been asked to be pulled from stores, but since it was a monthly book, such an order really doesn’t have much of an effect. An order to remove is not that effective when the item is a periodical, since the issue is usually sold out by the time it is ordered to be removed, and in fact sometimes the next issue has already come out!
GHOST RIDER, WHICH was made into a film recently starring Nicolas Cage, is the tale of a motorcycle stunt rider named Johnny Blaze who sold his soul to Satan to save someone he loves, which resulted in Blaze becom
ing bonded to a demon named Zarathos. When using his powers, Blaze’s flesh is consumed by hellfire, causing him to have a flaming skull. He also rides a motorcycle made out of flames. With all this talk of demons, you might think that there might be some religious controversy surrounding Ghost Rider, and if so, you would be correct.
When the creator of Ghost Rider, Gary Friedrich, left the book, writer Tony Isabella took over the title.
Soon into his run, Isabella decided to have the book break away from Friedrich’s style (presumably thinking, “He did it so well, let’s try something different”), and Isabella made Ghost Rider into a bit more of a superhero. At the same time, he also attempted to examine some themes of redemption with the character.
One of the first things Isabella did (using a suggestion by writer Steve Gerber, to whom Isabella had told his plans for the book) was to introduce, as a supporting character, none other than Jesus Christ. The idea being that since Ghost Rider had a deal with Satan, wouldn’t God want to get involved? Thus we saw the introduction of the Friend, a sage traveler with long hair and a beard who would assist Ghost Rider in redeeming himself.
The story line continued for two years. However, when it came down to the conclusion, the book’s editor, Jim Shooter, took issue with the story line, as he disagreed with the idea of having Jesus in the book.
Therefore, for Ghost Rider #19, Shooter rewrote the issue and had some of the art partially redrawn. The new story revealed that the Friend was actually a demonic illusion meant to trick Ghost Rider. Shooter felt this was less offensive than Jesus Christ actually appearing in a comic book. Isabella, expectedly, disagreed and quit the book.
Brian Cronin Page 15