[Roygbiv666]

"HAMMER AND ANVIL" KICKSTARTER MAY 1ST !!!

Oh, man! I'm getting excited now that I've set a date for the "Hammer and Anvil" Kickstarter [KS]: May 1st!!

Don't get me wrong, it's still nerve-wracking to launch a crowdfunding campaign, but getting a second issue out is long overdue. Guest-starring PD heroes WonderMan, Lady Fairplay, Wraith, Black Orchid, Grim Reaper!!

Hope I can count on you to share my updates and back the campaign. If not, no worries.

Right now, the KS is sitting in draft, waiting to launch. I'd love it if you'd check it out and let me know if anything is unclear, or you have an idea to improve it.

HERE'S a LINK to the campaign:

standard-comics.com/hammerandanvil

The Sentinels #268 "Hammer and Anvil" is the follow up to "Forced Labor". The script is complete, the art (pencils/inks/color/letters) is done except for about 5 pages. Those 5 pages are held for the Kickstarter where people can have their villain featured getting their butts handed to them by the Sentinels.

This series (The Sentinels) is my homage to the Bronze-Age of superhero team comics, with a sense of fun, lots of contrasting characters in one book, with great art, done-in-one epic and personal stories, where heroes are heroes, villains are villains, and most of all, you enjoy reading them. And these aren't a series of pin-ups masquerading as stories, there are words to read, too.

Stay tuned, Standard Bearer and I hope you check out the campaign.

Thanks for reading,

Roy

[The Australian Panther]

Good luck to you.  But are you sure  WonderMan,  Black Orchid, and Grim Reaper are PD? Black Orchid is a DC trademark and Wonderman is a Marvel Trademarked character. You may be thinking of uii8ng the original character but if so, you will need to change the names. Dynamite did this with some of the characters they revived and that's why. They couldn't use Daredevil for instance, so they used the original costume ( for a while) and changed the name.

Cheers.     

[Roygbiv666]

Thanks for the advice, hope you check it out!

[positronic1]

Good luck to you.  But are you sure  WonderMan,  Black Orchid, and Grim Reaper are PD? Black Orchid is a DC trademark and Wonderman is a Marvel Trademarked character. You may be thinking of uii8ng the original character but if so, you will need to change the names. Dynamite did this with some of the characters they revived and that's why. They couldn't use Daredevil for instance, so they used the original costume ( for a while) and changed the name.

Not strictly true. Erik Larson has used the original Daredevil as a character in SAVAGE DRAGON many, many times. That does not violate Marvel's trademark on the word DAREDEVIL as a comic book. What Erik Larson can't do is publish a comic book about Daredevil with the word "Daredevil" in the title. The same applied back in the 1970s when Marvel held the trademark to CAPTAIN MARVEL (and still does) -- DC could publish a comic book called SHAZAM featuring "the original Captain Marvel" and even display those words on the cover (as long as they were not too large) but not in the comic book's title. They could still call him "Captain Marvel" in the story. They only reason they changed the character's name back in 2012 was to build a franchise brand that they could trademark themselves.

The same goes for Dynamite's version of The Black Terror -- other people can still publish their own Black Terror stories, as long as they don't use any of the unique story elements created specifically by Dynamite for their version of the character. The reason that Dynamite changed the name of their version of Daredevil to "the Death-Defying Devil" was so that they could publish a comic book about that character with his name in the title of the comic, and trademark it for themselves. In the case of Black Terror, the trademark was not being used, so that allowed Dynamite to register the trademark to the name of "Black Terror" as a comic book.

Trademarks have nothing whatsoever to do with protecting intellectual property rights (that's what we have copyright law for), but everything to do with establishing what is or is not legal in commerce -- words and/or symbols used to identify or distinguish between products by the consumer. Trademarks have to be registered, and have to be used in commerce or they become invalid.

In Roygbiv66's case, the product that he is selling is "Hammer and Anvil", regardless of what public domain characters may appear in the comic book. There no chance that a consumer will confuse his product with a Marvel comic featuring Wonder Man, or a DC comic featuring Black Orchid. Another valid question might be -- When was the last time Marvel or DC produced a product that was prominently identified by using the words "Wonder Man" or "Black Orchid"? It seems to me that it's been quite some time since Marvel or DC sold a product using those trademarks, so they may no longer be valid... but then again, I'm not aware of every single product (which doesn't necessarily have to be a comic book using those words in the title) that they produce. Maybe there was a licensed action figure or something.