Talk:Superhero/Archive 1

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This is an archive of discussion on the Talk:Superhero page that began before 2005

The list of obvious superhero predecessors failed to include Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo, the obvious inspiration for Batman and many other superheroes.

The word "superhero" itself is a trademark held jointly by DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

This is common wisdom, but I'm not sure if it's correct. The US Patent and Trademark Office doesn't appear to recognize it. Search for Superhero. (If the previous link doesn't work, try starting a a nwe search here

Searching the Marvel (example Google search) and DC Comics (example Google search) web sites doesn't turn up any such claims. DC Comics copyright and trademark page doesn't have anything about the superhero trademark.

In the absence of actual evidence, I've removed the sentence. If there is evidence it should be provided and the sentence updated to clairify in which countries the trademark is valid. Listing registration numbers would be useful as well.

- User:Alan De Smet 2004-01-29

From http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm
Word Mark SUPER HEROES
Goods and Services IC 016. US 002 005 022 023 029 037 038 050. G & S: PUBLICATIONS, PARTICULARLY COMIC BOOKS AND MAGAZINES AND STORIES IN ILLUSTRATED FORM [(( ; CARDBOARD STAND-UP FIGURES; PLAYING CARDS; PAPER IRON-ON TRANSFER; ERASERS; PENCIL SHARPENERS; PENCILS; GLUE FOR OFFICE AND HOME USE, SUCH AS IS SOLD AS STATIONERY SUPPLY;] NOTEBOOKS AND STAMP ALBUMS )). FIRST USE: 19661000. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19661000
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 73222079
Filing Date July 3, 1979
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Published for Opposition June 9, 1981
Registration Number 1179067
Registration Date November 24, 1981
Owner (REGISTRANT) Cadence Industries Corporation a.k.a. Marvel Comics Group
and DC Comics Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 575 Madison Ave. New York NEW YORK
10022 (LAST LISTED OWNER) DC COMICS PARTNERSHIP BY ASSIGNMENT NEW YORK 1700
BROADWAY NEW YORK NEW YORK 10019
(LAST LISTED OWNER) MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. CORPORATION BY ASSIGNMENT DELAWARE 10474 SANTA MONICA BOULEVARD SUITE 206 LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA 90025
Assignment Recorded ASSIGNMENT RECORDED
Attorney of Record JONATHAN D. REICHMAN
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Affidavit Text SECT 15. SECT 8 (6-YR). SECTION 8(10-YR) 20020819.
Renewal 1ST RENEWAL 20020819
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
(Hope this helps...) -- Yekrats 20:46, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Two thing I am wondering, The first is... why would it still list Cadence Industries Corporation as the copyright owner? Cadence hasn't owned Marvel in over 20 years in fact I think they have been out of existence for quite a while. The second thing the USPTO lists Marvel Characters, Inc. with a Santa Monica, California address. Marvel's headquarters was originally at 387 Park Avenue South in New York City but they moved to 10 East 40th Street also in New York City after Isaac Perlmutter took over the company after Ron Perleman crashed and and burned it into bankruptcy. I could be wrong but I don't think Marvel has had any West Coast offices since it shut down it's animation studio Marvel Productions Ltd. in the late 1990's Misterrick 03:03, 17 October 2004 (UTC).

(Please don't confuse copyright with trademark; they're two different things.) The USPTO database is just an electronic copy of the original registrations as they were filed back in the day, with some info about the current status of the registrations tacked on. They don't track who subsequently buys the company or the trademark rights. It's like if you get a copy of your birth certificate it identifies the city where your parents lived at the time, not their current address or the city where you live now. As for why it lists a California address for "Marvel Characters Inc": that's what was on the registration paperwork. If they used to have an animation studio in California, why wouldn't they have had a licencing office near Hollywood? Tverbeek 14:39, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry that was a typo on my part. I meant to say Trademark. Misterrick 23:30, 17 October 2004 (UTC).

The Seinfeld quotation is cute and mildly amusing, but completely irrelevent. Removed.

- User:Alan De Smet 2004-01-29

The "Other Media" section could use some reference to more successful TV comic book adaptations, such as Batman: The Animated Series, X-men: Evolution, Lois and Clark... If nobody else does, perhaps I will edit them in (or at least the animated ones) in the near future, but it's 3:37 AM right now. :P

Contents

Harper's article

There is a really good article (ostensibly a book review, but more of an essay) on this topic in the August 2004 issue of Harper's, uner the title "Flying up and flying down". It would be very worth mining. This topic is way outside my field, but someone working on this article should have a look at it. -- Jmabel 05:08, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

Dune

Would a mention of Dune be appropriate here? One of its major themes is the actions and consequences of superheroes. (Its protagonists throughout the 6-book series do meet the definition given here: they're fictional, and they have superhuman abilities.)

(The Dune page links the word "superhero" to the "Hero" page, but I'm not sure that's correct.)

Also, the discussion of "other media" seems to be only TV and movies. Here's a novel. (Even if you don't include Dune, could some other novel or other non-TV/movie medum be found?)

The Wild Cards series, for one. Several video games, most recently City of Heroes. -Sean Curtin 01:28, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

Is Spider-Man a divergent example or the norm?

I question whether it is appropriate for Spider-Man to be considered of a superhero diverging from the norm.

What I mean is that that character has likely become one of the most influential models for superhero characters since his creation. Since his creation there have been numerable superheroes with troubled psyches, personal and personal lives.

In short, far from diverging from the norm of this kind of character, he seems part of it.

User:Kchishol1970

I think the section about examples of divergent character works well as a clarify-er for the list of common characteristics, which, if taken as a whole, describes the "classic" superhero formula of the 1940s. Because Spider-Man is a clear deviation from that mold, I think it fits that he is listed under divergent character examples. If we ditch him simply because he his type has become quite common, then we should probably ditch Wolverine and the anti-hero blurb as well.
Maybe a sentence pointing out that Spider-Man/everyman-superhero mold has become common and a few examples is needed. In fact, I would be in favor of rewriting the entire Spider-Man blurb as "makes mistakes on a regular basis" seems too vague.
However, if you feel strongly about ditching Spider-Man in this section, I could accept it.
User:Rorschach567 - 9.12
How about we create a new section? In addition to a character types on the basis of their abilities, we could have an additional section on personality types.
What do you think? If you like the idea, any ideas of how to elaborate on it?
User:Kchishol1970
Hmmm… not necessarily a bad idea. I could see a few problems however:
1) There are some personality characteristics covered under the list of common characteristics (moral code, willingness to risk life without reward) that seem basic to the classic superhero character and a section on personality subtypes could confuse that.
2) While some personality traits are basic to the classic superhero or basic to larger subtypes like the anti-hero, it seems like, for personality subtypes, there could be as many as there are superheroes. I couldn’t see a definitive list of personality types as I could a list of ability types. Anti-heroes like Wolverine and Green Arrow are somewhat easy to pick out as are “bad girl” types like Witchblade and Psylocke but most other categories, such as everyman superheroes like Spider-Man or The Thing or scientists like Iron Man and Bruce Banner or boy scouts like Superman and Captain America that would seem too subjective, overlapping in the case of too many superheroes and might describe a character under some writers and not others.
3) This article already is pretty long.
If you would like to attempt a section like that, give me some more details on just what subtypes you would include and how you would deem who goes where and I’ll give you some more feedback.
User:Rorschach567
Branching those two sections out into a separate article on superhero archetypes would actually be quite helpful. It would be nice to have the current archetype section revised so that it wasn't quite so directly based on the Champions "character classes". -Sean Curtin 00:42, Sep 18, 2004 (UTC)
I actually like the Champions motif. It lets people know that we are not just making these up as we go along.
- User:Rorschach567
Yes, but those particular selections and names are only directly relevant to Champions. Giving the Champs themes such an exclusively prominent position in the article is pretty arbitrary. -Sean Curtin 06:04, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

What a superb entry. This is what Wikipedia's all about.

--Smallbone10 23:01, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Changes by User:Rorschach567

I already fixed this, but it bears stating: the trademark owned by DC and Marvel is "Super Heroes" (not "Super Hero"), as documented earlier on this very page. Please don't "correct" information like this without researching it first.

I disagree with the changes to the section about the renaissance of superhero movies a few years ago, making it all about Marvel. Unbreakable was very much a superhero movie, and did at least as much as Blade to cleanse the audience's palate of the gooey badness of Batman & Robin, and pave the way for the success of X-Men. Granted, it wasn't marketed as a superhero movie (more of a suspense thriller), but neither was Blade (a monster/action movie).

Likewise, Wild Cards is an important non-Marvel/DC example of prose superhero fiction, which should be mentioned. And DC didn't merely "attempt" to novelise the death of Superman and "No Man's Land"; they actually did it [1] [2]. What were you thinking with that edit? Tverbeek 20:13, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Forgive the superheroes to superhero change and the "attempted" verb. It’s a long article and it took a lot of editing so it’s not surprising to me that every bit did not come out perfect.

As far as Unbreakable and Wild Cards

  • Unbreakable was neither a superhero movie nor a terribly successful nor a movie to which I can see a direct link to X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk ect. In a larger article about superhero-related films, I can see why it would have a place, but in an article simply about the concept of superheroes (especially one as large and unwieldy as this), I don’t think it deserves mention. As a horror movie, Blade could also be cut but it fits more both because it was the first of the new wave of Marvel movies and because Blade could conceivably be considered a superhero.
  • Because prose fiction makes up much a small part of the superhero genre, I thought it best to keep this section as small as possible (again keeping the size of the article in mind).
Wikipedia is a shared medium and if you feel strongly about either Unbreakable or Wild Cards, I certainly won’t make a fuss about seeing them added back in. Just keep in mind the size of the article.
- Rorschach
I'm at a complete loss to understand why you'd assert (without any justification) that Unbreakable is not a superhero movie. The protagonist matches the definition and typical characteristics in this article, point by point. (All he arguably lacks is a flamboyant costume.) And it's not as if the match were coincidental; the movie was a deliberate reconstruction of the superhero archetype... not just about a superhero, but also about superheroes. What could be a more appropriate example to mention? Although it wasn't a blockbuster, it got good reviews, established the writer/director as more than a one-hit wonder, and was a step up commercially from Steel or Spawn. The fact that it doesn't have a direct link to the Marvel hits was precisely my point: the Marvel-centric thesis around which you rewrote that paragraph is incorrect.
I understand your concern about the unwieldy size of the article, but I think an article that's trying (as you say) to cover the concept of superheroes - not just the half dozen most popular ones, each of whom has a huge article of their own - should cite other examples wherever possible.
Tverbeek 00:25, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I would say that for lack of a colorfully named and dressed protagonist who battles crime (in any traditional sense of the word), Unbreakable is not a superhero movie, although it is one that certainly has much to do with the concept of superheroes.
So I guess carrying a concealed weapon, murder, rape, kidnapping, and causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent people aren't considered "crimes"? Or that going out at night to find a crime in progress to stop (with the clear implication that he's going to keep doing that) isn't "battling"? Or he's not "traditional" enough? Whatever... rationalise it however you want. He doesn't fit your definition, but he fits the article's (even better than many other examples you left in). So it's a superhero movie.
But, more importantly, because it did not, to the best of my knowledge, influence studios' decision to go forth with the stream of superhero movies that followed it and did not influence those films artistically, it is not important to the trend the paragraphs in question describe.
While I admire the idea of describing someone other than Batman, Superman, Spider-Man ect. whenever possible, I just don't think someone needs to know about Unbreakable to understand the remergence of superhero films in the early 2000s.
Perhaps not, but it's an interesting example of superheroes' "treatment in other media" (the actual topic of that section), and it makes most sense to put it in its chronological position and write the article to accommodate it, rather than throw it out because it doesn't fit the argument you want to make there. Tverbeek 12:59, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well it's not really an argument. This movie, in fact, didn't have much to do with the others that followed it, had little influence on the genre of superhero films or subsequent cinema in general, and is not often lumped together with superhero films. An author would be inserting a POV or making an "argument" by including an unimportant movie simply because he finds it "interesting," espeacially one that would require speacial attention to "accommodate" it.
But, as I said earlier, I really don't care that much and accept that subsequent writers/editors will change things. I've made my point and I appriciate that you were willing to hear me out. That is I want to say. Add it back if you really feel it is needed. - R
I would dispute that Unbreakable was unimportant. It's a consciously metafictional approach, if nothing else. What could be more important to a "superhero" article than a movie that explores the mythology of superheroes? As for influence... Daredevil, at least, appears to have been influenced by it, in my opinion. I can see the debate, though.
But Wild Cards? That's a very significant series. It's probably the most widely-known superhero work in book form. Excluding it in favor of mentioning zines and fanfic seems like a disservice. Is there any reason to exclude it aside from article length? Shimeru 23:44, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)