Initial claims included that ‘Captain Marvel’s’ main powers, and his characteristics were drawn from ‘Superman’ including super-strength, superspeed, invulnerability, a skin-tight costume with a cape, and an alter-ego of a news reporter. In the first issue both characters were seen to be throwing the same car.
National Comics Publications, Inc. v. Fawcett Publications, Inc. Aarav Rajput
From 1938 to 1956, comics were at their peak in terms of consumption. This period of time was known as the ‘Golden Age of Comic Books’. Two of the most well-known comic characters were ‘Superman’ and ‘Captain Marvel’. Both were the leading characters of different comics. Between these two characters was the most famous law case on comics of all time. The character of ‘Superman’ was created in 1938. After an instant hit, the rights to ‘Superman’ were sold to the sister company of Detective Comics (DC), which was renamed to Superman- for $130 at the time. DC wanted to keep ‘Superman’ at the top and threatened the comic characters of ‘Master Man’ and ‘Wonder Man’. ‘Master man’ was a Fawcett Publication. However, these two characters were stopped when DC warned Marvel saying it would take legal action. ‘Captain Marvel’ was another Fawcett Publication which was much more successful than ‘Master Man’. It was created in 1939 and had more sales than ‘Superman’ during its production. Superman and DC wrote to Fawcett Publications, but was ignored, as Captain Marvel was very successful, and was making a lot of money. In 1941 Superman and DC sued Fawcett for a copyright infringement of the character, ‘Superman’. DC and Superman were trying to cease the publication of the comic strip and withhold release of the upcoming movie by Republic Pictures. However, the movie was released in 1941 and the comic strip continued. There was a lawsuit for 7 years before a trial took place. By 1948, Superman and DC had joined to make National Comics. The case was now National Comics Publications, Inc. v. Fawcett Publications, Inc. and lasted for another 6 years.
However, Fawcett argued that there was no proper copyright claim on ‘Superman’. Even though ‘Captain Marvel’ was a clone of ‘Superman’, no damages were owed. This is because there was a newspaper comic strip. This newspaper comic strip wasn’t copyrighted and used almost identical parts of the comic book, in some strips. It was ruled that the copyright of Superman was forfeited. Fawcett didn’t have to pay any damage, yet Captain Marvel was a copy of Superman. National comics appealed to this decision and it was decided that ‘Superman’ had a copyright, but to receive payment for damages, they would have to provide evidence for the parts in the ‘Superman’ comics which had been published at a later stage in the ‘Captain Marvel’ comics. This process took two years, and eventually, Fawcett had to cease production of the comics and paid National Comics $400,000 (which is equivalent to $4,000,000 today) for damages. Many people believe that the reason Fawcett didn’t appeal for the result, is because the Golden Age of comics was ending, and there was very little money to be made from the sale of comics. Without ‘Captain Marvel’, ‘Superman’ would be very different. He wouldn’t have the ability to fly and his enemies may be very different. Whilst ‘Captain Marvel’ is a copy of ‘Superman’, National comics took ideas from the ‘Captain Marvel’ comic strip. In 1968, Marvel, another comic strip company, bought the trademark of ‘Captain Marvel’ and created a completely new character. This meant that in 1972, when National Comics bought all characters from Fawcett publications, they had to change the name of the original ‘Captain Marvel’, to ‘Shazam’, the word said for Billy Batson (‘Captain Marvel’s’ alter ego) to become a superhero.
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