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[ericinwisconsin]

A recent post about Marvel's Blonde Phantom made me think of something... DC, unlike Marvel, had a tendency to buy up competitors' characters when the other company went out of business. But I've heard (although never seen) that DC had a tendency to publish Golden Age characters from other companies even if they didn't have the rights to them.

Can anyone verify this? Can you give me some examples? Nothing wrong with DC doing that, I guess, but wouldn't someone else be able to do so as well?

[boox909]

A recent post about Marvel's Blonde Phantom made me think of something... DC, unlike Marvel, had a tendency to buy up competitors' characters when the other company went out of business. But I've heard (although never seen) that DC had a tendency to publish Golden Age characters from other companies even if they didn't have the rights to them.

Can anyone verify this? Can you give me some examples? Nothing wrong with DC doing that, I guess, but wouldn't someone else be able to do so as well?

I have not seen evidence of nor heard about DC engaging in such a practice, and I doubt that such would even be true -- but even I can be surprised.

B.

[rez]

I suppose your word 'had' might carry significant weight in investigating a situation such as this.

Things were done differently in the past, particularly far past, regarding copyright infringement and the like, especially in comparison to today's modern policies and legal definitions.

Would be an interesting thing to know.

A recent post about Marvel's Blonde Phantom made me think of something... DC, unlike Marvel, had a tendency to buy up competitors' characters when the other company went out of business. But I've heard (although never seen) that DC had a tendency to publish Golden Age characters from other companies even if they didn't have the rights to them.

Can anyone verify this? Can you give me some examples? Nothing wrong with DC doing that, I guess, but wouldn't someone else be able to do so as well?

[John C]

I don't think it has ever specifically been the case, but it may look like it in some cases, because many companies bought content on a contract basis.  So, for example, if you look closely, you'll notice that the early Doctor Occult stories (Siegel and Shuster) have a big gaping hole in the middle.  Where do you read what happened?  In the "Doctor Mystic" strip in the Centaur books, available on this site--DC's check didn't clear (or something), so Siegel sold those episodes elsewhere.  I'm sure there are other instances of this happening, though I don't know of any personally.

But remember, the STORY carries a copyright, not the character, except to the extent that the character is part of the story.  So, as long as you buy the story from whoever owns the copyright and your "competition" doesn't hold a trademark, you can publish whatever you like, starring whatever characters you want.  There's nothing wrong with or illegal about that.  You just can't derive from Intellectual Property owned by someone else (well, you can, but you run the risk of a lawsuit, of course).

Of course, you might also be referring to the fact that, in books like All-Star Squadron, Roy Thomas created several characters that were heavily based on obscure Golden Agers from other companies (the Phantom of the Fair being the most obvious example), but he also did that later for the Invaders series, as I recall--the latter book having a team with the Human Meteor, Spider Queen, and so forth.  That's no different than what the Superpowers series is doing, and I'm sure is its inspiration.

Or maybe neither of those cases is what you mean.

[phabox]

 I would say that Marvel Comics more or less highjacked ME's western Ghost Rider in 1966, their 'excuse' at the time was that 'Creator' Dick Ayers had 'brought him over' to Marvel but Ayers was only the artist of the strip which was originally written by Ray Krack so any ownership of the character on his part would be very doubtful IMO.

True the Marvel GR had a change of ID and new back story but other that that was a 'deadringer' for the earlier 'Haunted Horseman'.

The Western GR has long since rode off into the sunset but Marvel have still gotten plenty of mileage out of the name over the last four decades !

-Nigel