[Captain Audio]

While reading "Thrills of Tomorrow" 017, a Harvey comic, i found the story "the Screaming City" and was suprised to find a character in this story named "Dr Strange".
Unlike the debonair cape wearing Dr Stange we are so familar with this fellow was a past middle age professor type, but he was also a student of the occult and used his arcane knowledge to defeat a powerful evil spirit.

I'm wondering if this character inspired the later Dr Stange character.
probably not directly, but authors often find that the ideas they believe to be their own original creation are the result of buried memories of stories they have read many years earlier and long forgotten.

Can you think of other similar characters and situations?

[JonTheScanner]

Using the name "Strange" for someone engaged in the study of the occult is hardly surprising (or strange if you will).  Using the title "Dr." for someone studying something is also hardly surprising.  I see no reason to presume that Ditko or Lee knew of the earlier use of the name.

[JVJ]

While reading "Thrills of Tomorrow" 017, a Harvey comic, i found the story "the Screaming City" and was suprised to find a character in this story named "Dr Strange".
Unlike the debonair cape wearing Dr Stange we are so familar with this fellow was a past middle age professor type, but he was also a student of the occult and used his arcane knowledge to defeat a powerful evil spirit.

I'm wondering if this character inspired the later Dr Stange character.
probably not directly, but authors often find that the ideas they believe to be their own original creation are the result of buried memories of stories they have read many years earlier and long forgotten.

Can you think of other similar characters and situations?

Go back to Thrilling Comics #1 (April 1940) for the earliest comics incarnation of a Doctor Strange (later to become just Doc Strange). You can be fairly certain that Stan Lee was aware of the character. In the 1940s, Stan and Martin Goodman were students of the medium and were keeping track of everything that anyone else was doing. Doc Strange lasted well into the late '40s.

I'm not certain that the character was mystical in nature. Download some of the Thrilling Comics on site and see for yourself.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Yoc]

Standard's Doc Strange was nothing like the Marvel character.  I think it's just a case of a common enough name that it easily comes to mind for an occult character.

-Yoc

[JVJ]

I sorta knew that, I guess, Yoc,
I was just mentioning that the NAME went a long way back, and that Stan was certainly familiar with that aspect of the Marvel Doc Strange character. By the way, I also think that the Thrills of Tomorrow issue was a reprint from Harvey's Witches Tales #7.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[phabox]

Stan Lee himself with the help of writer Robert Burnstein and artist Jack Kirby pitted Iron Man against an EVIL 'Doctor Stange' in Tales of Suspense_041 May 1963 a couple of months before the real 'Master of the Mystic Arts' made his debut so the name itself had already been on his radar.

-Nigel

[John C]

Back to the Harvey book, I'd say there's no relation, but only because the character seems extremely minor.  He's the "hero," but doesn't seem to be significant to the story.

However, he does have a lot of the trappings I'd associate with the Marvel character, with his office packed with artifacts and casting spells.  If he makes other appearances, then it would seem more likely that there's a connection.

Y'know, in the same sense that we have to assume that Thor is related to Fox's near-identical Thor.

[Captain Audio]

I'd noticed some time back that the Holographic doctor on Star Trek Voyager was a program based on his creator who was named Doctor Zimmermann. That stuck in my mind because my own Doctor when I was a child was named Doctor Zimmermann. Recently one of the Cahacters of the TV Series "Sanctuary" is also named Doctor Zimmermann.
I also found a page on characters for a role playing game, and one of those characters was an Android named Doctor Zimmermann.
Zimmermann can't be that common a name, but its a name that sort of sticks in the mind because its not that common. Couple that unusual name with "Doctor" and the name can easily end up in the back of the mind and come forth unbidden when someone is working on creating an original character.

Same probably would apply to Dr Strange. The name has a ring to it, and would stick in the subconscious.


Thor on the otherhand is a specific character from Mythology. In creating a Thor storyline use of the name Thor is a given.

PS
The reason this came to mind is that with avoiding copyright infringement becoming more of an issue with recent changes in international copyright laws I'd like to explore the limitations on use of similar characters.
Practically every form of art is derivative to some extent, every artist and author's work is affected by the art and literature he himself has been exposed to over the years.
Names themselves aren't that important, but a character with the same name plus a number of simularities in their lifestyle, methods, and powers, could be seen as a copyright infringement.

[John C]

Thor on the otherhand is a specific character from Mythology. In creating a Thor storyline use of the name Thor is a given.

I'll grant you that the name is obvious, but not a troubled human being granted the ability, by a Norse god, to become a blonde, long-haired Thor who throws his mighty hammer Mjolnir that returns to his hand and controls the weather.  That's not to say that the idea was stolen or sufficiently similar to sue, but it's too similar to be a complete coincidence.

That's why I wondered if Harvey's Dr. Strange was ongoing.  A single appearance by a student of the occult MIGHT stick in the back of the brain, but a regular character using ancient artifacts and entreaties of higher powers to fight evil would be a much stronger argument for direct inspiration.

[Captain Audio]

Probably at the time they weren't that concerned with keeping a character under control once it had played out its usefulness.
Could be one writer would ask another if it was okay if he took the defunct character and spruced it up for another try, the originator might say go for it, and nothing more need be said.

[JVJ]

The "character" appeared in one (of four or five very different) stories in a typical Harvey Horror Comic. The Harvey horror books didn't have continuing characters. Dr. Strange was simply a name pulled (probably) from memory of the Standard super hero because (again, probably) it fit the needs of the the writer. It's possible that Stan Lee did read the Harvey books in the early '50s, but the name Dr. Strange is, as JohnC says, an apt one for a character dabbling in the mystic arts, and that, I believe, is what Ditko wanted to draw and what Stan Lee concocted for him. Read the Steve Ditko book - Strange and Stranger, The Art of Steve Ditko - if you want to know more.
(|:{>

[Captain Audio]

Well I checked out Standard's dr Strange and he's nothing at all like either of the other two. their strange has nothing mystical about himself and his powers are from the cliche psuedo-scientific wonder drug. I could used a bit of that canned sunshine about now myself.

The Fox Thor on the otherhand is very much like the Marvel Thor, main difference seems to be that the original Thor is still around as a separate enity.

I wonder if there ever were any copyright infringement suits brought by comic book publishers back then. I get the impression an average judge would refuse to hear the case.
Newspapers on the otherhand could be very litigious.

I can remember when the creator of the Terminator series of films let it slip that a outer limits episode was an inspiration for his storyline, he was immediately sued by Harlan Ellison.
At the same time I'd already noticed that there were a great many eliments of the Terminator that were very nearly identical to an old SCI FI film called Cyborg 2087. Nothing was ever said about that.

[JonTheScanner]

I wonder if there ever were any copyright infringement suits brought by comic book publishers back then. I get the impression an average judge would refuse to hear the case.
Newspapers on the otherhand could be very litigious.

Of course.  DC successfully sued Fox Comics over Wonderman back in 1939 or 1940.  DC also sued Fawcett.  That was eventually settled out of court with Fawcett giving up Captain Marvel.

[darkmark]

It's easy enough to check out Doc Strange, even without our uploads.  Just look for "Tom Strange" in ABC's TOM STRONG or TERRA OBSCURA.  So much for that.

[John C]

Of course.  DC successfully sued Fox Comics over Wonderman back in 1939 or 1940.  DC also sued Fawcett.  That was eventually settled out of court with Fawcett giving up Captain Marvel.

For clarity, I should mention that DC got an injunction against Fox's continuing Wonder Man.  As I recall, they didn't go through a full copyright infringement suit with damages.  There may have also been an injunction against Fawcett for Master Man.

Likewise, the Fawcett story (which was an infringement battle) is much more complex.  Fawcett originally won the suit, claiming that DC had abandoned the copyright when licensing it for the newspaper strip that didn't usually carry a copyright statement.  In other words, they argued that DC shouldn't have standing because they didn't require their contractor to protect the property.

On appeal, that decision was thrown out, because (as we've said a lot, here) there ain't no such thing as abandoning a copyright.  So Fawcett lost the case, but the two companies agreed to settle the payment amount out of court, rather than paying lawyers to review every panel each character ever appeared in.  (I point that out, because "settled out of court" gives the impression that the case was left undecided, whereas DC definitely won on the appeal.)

The general claim is that they (Fawcett) stopped publishing comics more because the profits weren't there anymore, rather than because it was part of the settlement.  I don't know if that's ever been investigated from reviewing the contracts, though.

But regardless, the upshot is that, yes, comic companies sued one another on occasion.  However, the key is probably that you need to know about the infringement, care, and have the money to pursue it.  Would anybody at Harvey be reading Marvel books and remembering an obscure character from fifteen years ago?  Would they have the money in the budget to sue?  Those are the main factors, usually.

[Captain Audio]

Fawcett originally won the suit, claiming that DC had abandoned the copyright when licensing it for the newspaper strip that didn't usually carry a copyright statement.  In other words, they argued that DC shouldn't have standing because they didn't require their contractor to protect the property.

I've seen something similar argued in situations involving short stories written by famous authors that they had sold to now long defunct magazines. The heirs couldn't get a copyright extension on those stories because the author nor the publication he'd sold to had made any attempt to renew, if indeed they'd made any attempt to protect the property to begin with.

I've found several instances, such as obscure short stories by Jack London and Ambrose Bierce, though I suspect Bierce's storys are far too old for that to matter now anyway.
Lord Dunsany's Widow is said to have blocked publication of many of his stories while she lived, and she lived near a century. Probably why so few of his stories are around these days, at least not commonly used as basis for films.

    Would they have the money in the budget to sue?  Those are the main factors, usually.

I'd figured that legal fees would be an issue, news papers had much deeper pockets and more reputation to protect.

The incident involving the Terminator franchise shows a point, just don't admit to having been inspired by the work of a living author. Though fact is I'd have tossed this case out , theirs really next to nothing similar about the basics of Ellison's scripts and the Terminator storyline. Might as well have said he was inspired by HG Wells Time Machine for that matter.