I'm still finishing up a post on the obscure and convoluted history of the intellectual property behind the eagerly anticipated Coyote vs. Acme (really hoping that this one knocks it out of the park). A story that no one outside of a couple of particularly obscure fan sites has noticed.
In the meantime, I thought I'd set the stage by revisiting one of my favorite cases of cartoon, or in this case comic book, characters being, not to put too fine a point on it, stolen and repackaged to considerably greater success.
The first post is from our long-dormant sister site Mippyville. The next two from the blog a few years ago.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Ghost Rider -- the character Stan Lee stole twice
Stan Lee's claims in the Sixties that he didn't read other comic books
were a lot like Milton Berle's claims that he didn't listen to other
comics' material. Lee had spent two decades in a closely-knit industry
jumping on trends and borrowing ideas, starting with DC and EC derived
books and ending with an unacknowledged appropriation of Julius
Schwartz' successful formula for rebooting Golden Age heroes with
science fiction origins and streamlined looks.
It's safe to assume that in 1967, few of those teen aged fans had any idea that Marvel's new Western themed hero, Ghost Rider, had a strong resemblance to another company's hero, a resemblance that included having the same name, costume, concept, atmospheric look, and artist. The retread only ran for seven issues but that was enough for Marvel to claim ownership of the name and, a few years later, launch another Ghost Rider.
The
difference between Berle and Lee was that a large part of Lee's audience
didn't get the joke. Many of them had gotten serious about comics in
the mid-Sixties when Marvel had hit its stride and really was putting
out the best and most innovative comics. For them, Lee's comically
over-the-top claims seemed entirely reasonable.
It's safe to assume that in 1967, few of those teen aged fans had any idea that Marvel's new Western themed hero, Ghost Rider, had a strong resemblance to another company's hero, a resemblance that included having the same name, costume, concept, atmospheric look, and artist. The retread only ran for seven issues but that was enough for Marvel to claim ownership of the name and, a few years later, launch another Ghost Rider.
If
you had to lift a character you could certainly do worse. Ghost Rider
was one of the last great superheroes of the Golden Age, sharply written
by Ray Krank (with guidance from Vince Sullivan) and beautifully drawn
by Dick Ayers with an occasional assist by Frank Frazetta. Don Markstein
described him as "perhaps the most visually striking comic book hero of
the decade," but you can judge for yourself.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Intellectual property and Marvel
(I told you I'd connect Stan Lee to this)
For about the past fifty years the company which is now Marvel entertainment, has made a spectacular amount of money and has done it in virtually every medium from comics to television to film to video games to novels to even, Heaven help us, the stage.
This is all the more remarkable when you consider that shortly before its period of dominance the company was a third rate imprint that was, by some accounts, on its last legs.
The rise was a remarkable achievement both in American publishing and pop culture. In economic terms alone, it shows how a small company with almost no resources or structural advantages can come to dominate an industry and generate billions of dollars.
One aspect of that story which is particularly relevant given our recent posts on the subject is the way Stan Lee used public domain (and in some cases, not-quite-public domain) intellectual properties as an important part of his business model.
First a quick and hopefully painless bit of comic book history.
Superheroes were the first big original content hit of the medium. Starting with Superman in 1938, they dominated that side of the industry for almost a decade. Licensed titles (like Dell's Disney line) were, by some sources, bigger sellers but if you were creating characters specifically for comics in the early Forties, superheroes were where the money was. By the end of the decade, though, the boom was largely over and other fads such as crime, horror, Western, funny animals, funny teenagers and (with a very unlikely origin) romance took turns as the next big thing.
Of course, comic book publishers kept trying to bring back the genre that had started it all. Lots of companies tried to introduce new superheroes or dust off old ones but without real success. Among others, the company that would become Marvel was particularly badly burned by a superhero push in the mid-Fifties). The big exception here is Magazine Enterprise's Ghost Rider in 1949 but as Don Markstein pointed out, that character blended the faded superhero genre with the up-and-coming genres western and horror.
It was not until 1956 that a team working under DC editor Julius Schwartz came up with a workable formula: take a dormant mid-tier character from the Forties; completely rework the character (sometimes keeping only the name) with a science fiction origin, streamlined jump-suit inspired costumes and a heavy emphasis on space age themes.
In rapid succession and generally with great success, Schwartz applied this rebooting approach to a number of properties and soon other companies were trying their hand. As early as 1959, Archie Comics (which had been known for a relatively successful and very violent collection of superhero titles in the Forties) had hired Joe Simon and Jack Kirby to rework their character the Shield. As the Sixties got going almost everyone was in on the act.
In 1961, Marvel Comics joined in. Marvel was a small part of Martin Goodman's middling publishing company but it did have a couple of significant assets: a few well-remembered Golden Age characters (the Human Torch, Namor and Captain America) and comics auteur Jack Kirby. Given the market conditions of the time, Kirby's brand was extremely valuable. There was a tremendous demand for all things associated with the previous era of superheroes and Kirby had been a major player with an exceptional level of prominence. In an era when most stories went unsigned, his name was a big enough selling point to be featured prominently on the covers.
Much myth has accumulated around the creation of the Fantastic Four, partially because of the impact the title would go on to have and partially because none of the people involved (Goodman, Lee, Kirby) can be considered reliable narrators, but if you simply look at the book itself and what had been going on in the industry at the time, FF #1 is about what you would expect, combining Schwartz's formula with the group dynamics of Kirby's team comics and elements of the monster comics Marvel had been producing (the two most unusual aspects, the lack of costumes and secret identity were completely dropped when Marvel introduced Spider-man less than a year later).
I don't mean any disrespect for Marvel here. This is usually how companies really work. You find an existing business model, modify it slightly, then use it to establish a revenue stream and a loyal customer base. That's what Lee did. That's what Sam Walton did with Ben Franklin stores. The big ideas and innovation tend to come only after you have a successful stable operation (which was certainly the case with Marvel). That leads to a much bigger point.
We have seen over the past few years a tendency to grant intellectual property protection to ideas that would previously have been considered general parts of a business plan (for example, offering free wi-fi to customers). What if the ability to borrow and recombine elements of business plans in kind of a de facto genetic algorithm is an important part of a creative economy? What if being derivative is the first step for coming up with something original?
There are also some interesting IP questions involving the creation of Spider-man (Wikipedia has a good summary), but that's a discussion for another time. The part of the story that's most relevant comes a couple of years later.
As mentioned previously, from approximately 1956 to 1966, the big thing in comics was to modernize and reboot Golden age characters. This left Marvel with a problem: With the exception of Captain America, the Human Torch and Namor, the company had a very thin bench. You very soon got down to really obscure characters. The whole purpose of the reboot model is to cash in on name recognition so rebooting the virtually forgotten is of limited value. (You have to wonder how many readers in the Sixties had ever heard of the Thirties Tarzan knock-off Ka-Zar.)
Lee's solution was to launch characters using at least the names of three of the biggest sellers of the Golden Age: Daredevil; Ghost Rider; and Captain Marvel, none of which actually belonged to Marvel, but were instead arguably in the public domain. It is the third one that required considerable nerve.
Captain Marvel had been, by some standards, the most successful character to come out of the Golden Age, outselling even Superman (nuisance suits from DC were a big factor in the decision to eventually cancel the series in 1953). What's more, the publisher, Fawcett was big and, though out of the comics business, still very active, publishing title including Family Circle, Woman's Day, Mechanix Illustrated and Gold Medal paperbacks.
Lee was betting (correctly as it turns out) that Fawcett either wouldn't notice or wouldn't bother to sue an obvious copyright infringement. It was a bold but not a reckless move. Attitudes toward copyrights have changed greatly and many of those changes involve the earlier emphasis on active properties and going concerns. Up until recently, the primary reason you acquired and held copyrights was because you wanted to do something with those properties. As a result, if someone went out of the comics business and no one had an immediate interest in their properties, the copyrights were often allowed to lapse or (in the case of Fawcett) go unenforced.
There's a lesson here about creative destruction. Companies, particularly those in the creation business, often start out by borrowing business plans and skirting copyright and patent laws. You can certainly argue that this lowers the value of the intellectual property they are making use of, but I think you can also argue, as or more persuasively, that the returns on tolerating this behavior from small, young companies far outweigh the cost.
For more on the IP beat, click here, here, and here.
For about the past fifty years the company which is now Marvel entertainment, has made a spectacular amount of money and has done it in virtually every medium from comics to television to film to video games to novels to even, Heaven help us, the stage.
This is all the more remarkable when you consider that shortly before its period of dominance the company was a third rate imprint that was, by some accounts, on its last legs.
The rise was a remarkable achievement both in American publishing and pop culture. In economic terms alone, it shows how a small company with almost no resources or structural advantages can come to dominate an industry and generate billions of dollars.
One aspect of that story which is particularly relevant given our recent posts on the subject is the way Stan Lee used public domain (and in some cases, not-quite-public domain) intellectual properties as an important part of his business model.
First a quick and hopefully painless bit of comic book history.
Superheroes were the first big original content hit of the medium. Starting with Superman in 1938, they dominated that side of the industry for almost a decade. Licensed titles (like Dell's Disney line) were, by some sources, bigger sellers but if you were creating characters specifically for comics in the early Forties, superheroes were where the money was. By the end of the decade, though, the boom was largely over and other fads such as crime, horror, Western, funny animals, funny teenagers and (with a very unlikely origin) romance took turns as the next big thing.
Of course, comic book publishers kept trying to bring back the genre that had started it all. Lots of companies tried to introduce new superheroes or dust off old ones but without real success. Among others, the company that would become Marvel was particularly badly burned by a superhero push in the mid-Fifties). The big exception here is Magazine Enterprise's Ghost Rider in 1949 but as Don Markstein pointed out, that character blended the faded superhero genre with the up-and-coming genres western and horror.
It was not until 1956 that a team working under DC editor Julius Schwartz came up with a workable formula: take a dormant mid-tier character from the Forties; completely rework the character (sometimes keeping only the name) with a science fiction origin, streamlined jump-suit inspired costumes and a heavy emphasis on space age themes.
In rapid succession and generally with great success, Schwartz applied this rebooting approach to a number of properties and soon other companies were trying their hand. As early as 1959, Archie Comics (which had been known for a relatively successful and very violent collection of superhero titles in the Forties) had hired Joe Simon and Jack Kirby to rework their character the Shield. As the Sixties got going almost everyone was in on the act.
In 1961, Marvel Comics joined in. Marvel was a small part of Martin Goodman's middling publishing company but it did have a couple of significant assets: a few well-remembered Golden Age characters (the Human Torch, Namor and Captain America) and comics auteur Jack Kirby. Given the market conditions of the time, Kirby's brand was extremely valuable. There was a tremendous demand for all things associated with the previous era of superheroes and Kirby had been a major player with an exceptional level of prominence. In an era when most stories went unsigned, his name was a big enough selling point to be featured prominently on the covers.
Much myth has accumulated around the creation of the Fantastic Four, partially because of the impact the title would go on to have and partially because none of the people involved (Goodman, Lee, Kirby) can be considered reliable narrators, but if you simply look at the book itself and what had been going on in the industry at the time, FF #1 is about what you would expect, combining Schwartz's formula with the group dynamics of Kirby's team comics and elements of the monster comics Marvel had been producing (the two most unusual aspects, the lack of costumes and secret identity were completely dropped when Marvel introduced Spider-man less than a year later).
I don't mean any disrespect for Marvel here. This is usually how companies really work. You find an existing business model, modify it slightly, then use it to establish a revenue stream and a loyal customer base. That's what Lee did. That's what Sam Walton did with Ben Franklin stores. The big ideas and innovation tend to come only after you have a successful stable operation (which was certainly the case with Marvel). That leads to a much bigger point.
We have seen over the past few years a tendency to grant intellectual property protection to ideas that would previously have been considered general parts of a business plan (for example, offering free wi-fi to customers). What if the ability to borrow and recombine elements of business plans in kind of a de facto genetic algorithm is an important part of a creative economy? What if being derivative is the first step for coming up with something original?
There are also some interesting IP questions involving the creation of Spider-man (Wikipedia has a good summary), but that's a discussion for another time. The part of the story that's most relevant comes a couple of years later.
As mentioned previously, from approximately 1956 to 1966, the big thing in comics was to modernize and reboot Golden age characters. This left Marvel with a problem: With the exception of Captain America, the Human Torch and Namor, the company had a very thin bench. You very soon got down to really obscure characters. The whole purpose of the reboot model is to cash in on name recognition so rebooting the virtually forgotten is of limited value. (You have to wonder how many readers in the Sixties had ever heard of the Thirties Tarzan knock-off Ka-Zar.)
Lee's solution was to launch characters using at least the names of three of the biggest sellers of the Golden Age: Daredevil; Ghost Rider; and Captain Marvel, none of which actually belonged to Marvel, but were instead arguably in the public domain. It is the third one that required considerable nerve.
Captain Marvel had been, by some standards, the most successful character to come out of the Golden Age, outselling even Superman (nuisance suits from DC were a big factor in the decision to eventually cancel the series in 1953). What's more, the publisher, Fawcett was big and, though out of the comics business, still very active, publishing title including Family Circle, Woman's Day, Mechanix Illustrated and Gold Medal paperbacks.
Lee was betting (correctly as it turns out) that Fawcett either wouldn't notice or wouldn't bother to sue an obvious copyright infringement. It was a bold but not a reckless move. Attitudes toward copyrights have changed greatly and many of those changes involve the earlier emphasis on active properties and going concerns. Up until recently, the primary reason you acquired and held copyrights was because you wanted to do something with those properties. As a result, if someone went out of the comics business and no one had an immediate interest in their properties, the copyrights were often allowed to lapse or (in the case of Fawcett) go unenforced.
There's a lesson here about creative destruction. Companies, particularly those in the creation business, often start out by borrowing business plans and skirting copyright and patent laws. You can certainly argue that this lowers the value of the intellectual property they are making use of, but I think you can also argue, as or more persuasively, that the returns on tolerating this behavior from small, young companies far outweigh the cost.
For more on the IP beat, click here, here, and here.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
More adventures in intellectual property --- Ghost Rider rides again
Not long ago, Marvel managed to get a couple of unlikely hit movies out
of a fairly obscure motor-cycle riding character called. Ghost Rider.
That unexpected success has led to some lawsuits over who owns the character.
It turns out that the 1972 character was something of a reboot of a Western-themed Ghost Rider Marvel launched in 1967 (again with the involvement of Gary Friedrich) and that's where the intellectual property question gets amusing because that incarnation was perhaps the most blatant example of plagiarism in what has always been a plagiarism-fueled medium.
(Yes, that is a Frazetta cover)
And here's the Marvel version:
Of course, the idea to introduce a character by this name in 1949 may have had something to do with a hit song introduced in 1948 (and covered a billion times since).
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A comic book writer who claims he created the flaming-skulled character called Ghost Rider got another chance to press his claim on Tuesday when a U.S. appeals court revived his lawsuit against Marvel Comics.Sorta.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2011 district court ruling that found the rights to the character belonged to Marvel Comics, owned by The Walt Disney Co. It returned the case to the lower court for trial.
Former Marvel freelancer Gary Friedrich, who claims he created the character, will pursue the case "aggressively and vigorously," his lawyer Charles Kramer said.
Ghost Rider, a motorcycle-riding vigilante whose head is a flaming skull, first appeared as a vigilante superhero in 1972.
It turns out that the 1972 character was something of a reboot of a Western-themed Ghost Rider Marvel launched in 1967 (again with the involvement of Gary Friedrich) and that's where the intellectual property question gets amusing because that incarnation was perhaps the most blatant example of plagiarism in what has always been a plagiarism-fueled medium.
Stan Lee's claims in the Sixties that he didn't read other comic books were a lot like Milton Berle's claims that he didn't listen to other comics' material. Lee had spent two decades in a closely-knit industry jumping on trends and borrowing ideas, starting with DC and EC derived books and ending with an unacknowledged appropriation of Julius Schwartz' successful formula for rebooting Golden Age heroes with science fiction origins and streamlined looks.
The difference between Berle and Lee was that a large part of Lee's audience didn't get the joke. Many of them had gotten serious about comics in the mid-Sixties when Marvel had hit its stride and really was putting out the best and most innovative comics. For them, Lee's comically over-the-top claims seemed entirely reasonable.
It's safe to assume that in 1967, few of those teen aged fans had any idea that Marvel's new Western themed hero, Ghost Rider, had a strong resemblance to another company's hero, a resemblance that included having the same name, costume, concept, atmospheric look, and artist. The retread only ran for seven issues but that was enough for Marvel to claim ownership of the name and, a few years later, launch another Ghost Rider.
(Yes, that is a Frazetta cover)
And here's the Marvel version:
Of course, the idea to introduce a character by this name in 1949 may have had something to do with a hit song introduced in 1948 (and covered a billion times since).
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