From: khale@camilla.Eng.Sun.COM (Abhijit Khale)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Re: Jack "King" Kirby: ripped off by Marvel
Date: 24 Dec 1992 04:16:46 GMT
Organization: Sun
NNTP-Posting-Host: camilla-50

In article <1992Dec23.151219.1@uwovax.uwo.ca> 4224_5201@uwovax.uwo.ca (John LaRocque) writes:

>That's the whole idea. If you say something loudly enough, people will
>believe it. Just think about Captain Marvel - forever to be considered
>a "clone" of Superman because DC brayed loud enough about "copyright
>infringement" that someone believed them.

In many ways, Captain Marvel is a Superman clone. Look at the similarities
between the Golden Age versions of their character. Cap's powers are
almost identical to those of Superman (one exception being that he didnt
have heat vision.) Look at their alter-ego's : both work in newspapers
(although Billy Watson is much younger than Clark Kent). Heck, even Sivana
bears a resemblance to certain DC villains. 

Are you telling me it was just coincidence that Fawcett came out with
a character so remarkably like Superman shortly after Superman's debut ? 
The whole story is still fairly controversial and clouded, but it
seems fairly clear that Fawcett specifically asked Beck, Costanza and co.
to create a character similar to Superman. [ BTW, I think CBG (or some other
comics mag) has a discussion of the lawsuit  in a recent issue.]

Let me put it another way : suppose Jerry and Joe had still owned Superman.
And suppose Fawcett or even those evil godless scum DC/National had come out
with a character like Captain Marvel. Would you say that it was copyright
infringement ? Or is copyright infringement justified when DC is the victim ?

>Captain Marvel OUTSOLD Supes. They just COULDN'T STAND COMPETITION.

Plastic man outsold Supes as well (or came darn close). I dont think
DC (or National) tried to shut Police down. Their objection to Cap was that
he  was closely derived from Superman. I think they certainly had a very stro-
ng case in that. It's a tribute to Otto Binder and C.C. Beck that they were
able to create such dynamic and fun stories from that, but its an open quest-
ion whether the character would have been as popular without the similarity
in powers to Superman. None of the other characters created by Beck and co.
(Ibis, Bulletman) ever attained such popularity. 

Yes, there were other Superman (and Batman) clones. But Cap was the most popu-
lar. Of course, if you go after would-be-copiers, you go after the most
popular : common business practice. Read about the lawsuits between Intel and
AMD some day.

>So they shut them down and bought the fragging character so he could
>never compete with Supes again. 

Oh, really ? Cap had been out of print (more or less) for decades before DC
bought him. A whole new generation of heroes and readers had  appeared.
The idea that DC was worried about competition from Cap. at the time they bo-
ught him is just bizarre. 

If DC is to be blamed for anything, its for their half-hearted commitment to 
the big red cheese after they bought him. They cant seem to make up their
mind what to do with him : they keep bringing him back and putting him back in
limbo. They make him grim'n'gritty, then they make him the old Cap. 

>Wonderful people. And they would have
>done it to Marvel as well - with the distribution system of the era,
>its a wonder that Marvel's superhero lines survived at all (if you
>discount SUPERIOR storytelling and art).

Do you have any concrete evidence that DC was actually trying to put marvel
out of business other than through normal competition or through legitimate
business tactics ( which every company should be trying to do to a a compet-
itor anyway) ? 

In fact, if memory serves me correctly, it was marvel (or rather Stan Lee) who
pulled a sleazy stunt or so, overprinting and the like to try and drive one
or two independents out of business. 

> BTW Captain Marvel kicks
>Superman's butt when it comes to great comics from the period.

No argument there. So does most old Bob Kane Batman. Or most Jack Cole Plastic
man. 

>CC Beck and Eando Binder created a hero - only to be screwed by the
>corporate monster known as DC-National-Time-Warner.

Aw, come on. Warner (let alone Time) didnt acquire DC till the 70s. Why are
you blaming them for something that happened in the 40s and 50s ? 

Also, Beck didnt own Cap. Fawcett did.  

Besides, I dont know for sure, but Beck apparently didnt seem to bear any
strong ill-will towards DC. He came back to drawing Shazam in the 1970s
for DC. [ Yes, he left after that, but I gathered it was more because
he thought the stories were bad than for any other reason]. 

One final point : I frankly think that in most instances what happened 40-50
years ago is irrelevant. No company should bear the sins of what happened
that long ago. Its equally unfair to judge companies of that time by the sta-
ndards of today. 

Look at the early records of some of the oil companies. Look at some of the
violent unionbusting that several US companies did in the 20's and 30's.
Check out the safety record of the old Dow Chemical. Read about Upton Sincl-
air's comments on the meat packing industry. Read about the blatant insider
trading that Wall Street Firms indulged in prior to the crash of 1929. Read
about the combine which dominated the film industry. 

By the 1940s or so, most other companies had cleared up their acts a lot. But
there were still several actions taken by companies in the years since 1940
which are completely unacceptable by todays standards : price-fixing, control
of foreign governments (Big Oil's record in this case is particularly enlight-
ening), union-busting, environmental abuse etc. Compared to this, anything
Time or Warner or DC has done is tame. 

My point in this long (non-comics) litany is not to criticize other companies
: its simply to point out that norms of behavior 40 years back were complete-
ly different from today. 

I dont have any connection with DC or Time or Warner except as a (mostly) uns-
atisfied reader or viewer. But I think its important to distinguish between
legitimate business actions and others. Buying a character is perfectly 
legitimate. Copying one is not, and that was certainly Fawcett's intention : 
never mind that the genius of Beck and Binder made the copy surpass the origi-
nal. 

Abhijit