A Comic Team Using Public Domain and Original Heroes

[TheCosmicMoth]

I've been thinking about creating my own superhero team book using a combination of Public Domain heroes and some of my own original characters for a while now. Here's a sample I drew over three years ago to give you an idea of what I want to do. As you can see, in the sample, I've used Spark's Atoman, Centaur's Airman, Holyoke's Miss Victory, Fox's Blue Beetle, and I did an updated female version of Lev Gleason's Daredevil.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b371/Jekylhyde14/_IMG0001_zpsemppy7mj.jpg

The team would also include my original character: Moth. You can check him out in this image. I drew this, maybe, five or six years ago and I haven't gone over it with my comic editor, but you'll get some idea of him.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b371/Jekylhyde14/MothPrologue.jpg

I also have a few other original heroes I'd like to use. The concept for the book would sort of be like Geoff John's JSA. The older generation of heroes steps in to guide and influence the younger. I won't use all the characters in the first sample image, but I'd love to use Blue Beetle and Miss Victory. I know that I'm not the best artist, but, I hope, you can see that I've gotten better over the years. I really just want to create something for the genre instead of just soaking it all in.

Does anyone here have any suggestions or advice? What characters do you think I should use from the PD? Which should I avoid? Things like that.

[SuperScrounge]

You might want want to change some names that other companies have trademarked. I believe DC has the trademark on the Blue Beetle name and Marvel has one on the Daredevil name. Not sure about any of the others you mentioned.

Others have gone the changed name route, Project Superpowers uses Daredevil, but calls him the Death Defying 'Devil, I remember being stunned when I realized that the character they call Scarab was essentially the Ted Kord version of Blue Beetle. An online friend has a webcomic called Wonder Team which uses old Golden Age characters like Wonder Man (she calls her version Wonderson) & Centaur Comics Black Panther (renamed Koi Lusa) among others.

[TheCosmicMoth]

You might want want to change some names that other companies have trademarked. I believe DC has the trademark on the Blue Beetle name and Marvel has one on the Daredevil name. Not sure about any of the others you mentioned.

Others have gone the changed name route, Project Superpowers uses Daredevil, but calls him the Death Defying 'Devil, I remember being stunned when I realized that the character they call Scarab was essentially the Ted Kord version of Blue Beetle. An online friend has a webcomic called Wonder Team which uses old Golden Age characters like Wonder Man (she calls her version Wonderson) & Centaur Comics Black Panther (renamed Koi Lusa) among others.

Thanks! I was thinking about changing the names of Blue Beetle and Daredevil if I use them. I mean, we'd all know who they really are, anyway.

[narfstar]

From my understanding, as long as you did not use the name on the cover or ads to the book they would be OK on the inside. DC can not use Captain Marvel on their covers but can call  him that on the inside.

[TheCosmicMoth]

From my understanding, as long as you did not use the name on the cover or ads to the book they would be OK on the inside. DC can not use Captain Marvel on their covers but can call  him that on the inside.

I would love to just call Blue Beetle the Blue Beetle. I certainly wouldn't use his name on the cover. Maybe this is a do it until you get a cease and desist letter sort of thing? I doubt my little comic would attract that much attention, anyway.

I've decided to specifically focus on the Holyoke characters and set my stories in an undated, reconfigured Holyoke universe. I thought this would be best since Blue Beetle and Miss Victory were both published by Holyoke, and it would give me focus rather than having too many elements and characters to deal with right away.

The magic number is seven, right, so the updated line-up in my plan is: Miss Victory, Blue Beetle, Kitten, Moth, and three more original characters to be introduced along the way.

Here's an updated version of Moth that I finished a few nights ago:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b371/Jekylhyde14/IMG_0070_zpstwmuztrr.jpg

[narfstar]

AC Comics has trademarked Miss Victory so you would not want to use her on your covers either

[TheCosmicMoth]

AC Comics has trademarked Miss Victory so you would not want to use her on your covers either

Dammit, Bill Black!

[narfstar]

It probably would not hold up legally because trademark can not be revived and it had lapsed. I have been a big supported of Femforce since its insception. Since Miss Victory is a mainstay of Femforce I would respect his use. He also got the rights to all the Fiction House characters including Sheena. This again may not matter since they had already lapsed.

[John C]

Don't forget, there are two kinds of trademark.  Federal trademarks need to be filed and maintained, yes, but common law trademarks are just a matter of the company being associated with the term.

A good example might be (I don't care enough to look up if it's registered...) a name like Peter Parker.  It's never the title of a book.  It's probably not distinct enough to register.  But publishing The Secret Life of Peter Parker would give Marvel/Disney a solid argument that the publisher is trading on their brand, and that a horrible product would unfairly reflect poorly on them.

That said, I doubt companies like AC or Dynamite would have much of a leg to stand on in common law terms.  It would be really hard to make the argument that a small press using old characters that come from other companies would have any kind of exclusive claim on the names without a history of actively building the brand.  A Mage or Grendel, maybe, but not a name with the almost complete lack of recognition of Miss Victory.

[TheCosmicMoth]

A sketch of the first three characters I want to focus on: Beetle, Patch, and Moth.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b371/Jekylhyde14/SquadGoals1_zps5qdfpdwm.jpg