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In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, find out whether Marvel really tried to sue DC over the debut of Power Girl, due to its pre-existing Power Man character.
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and twenty-fourth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment’s legends. Click here for the second part of this installment’s legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
Marvel tried to sue DC after the introduction of Power Girl
STATUS:
I’m Going With False
In 1964’s Avengers #9 by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Dick Ayers, they introduced a new character named Wonder Man…
After the Masters of Evil gave him his superpowers (he has to get another treatment every day or else he dies), they then had him join the Avengers so that he could lead them into a trap. He did so, but then he felt bad about it and sacrificed himself to save the Avengers…
Stan Lee noted to a fanzine (Crusader #1) soon after the issue came out (transcription courtesy of Barry Pearl) that he initially intended on bringing Wonder Man back soon after, but that National Comics (DC) had complained to him about it…
“We were intending to bring him back, but we found out that DC had a story about a year ago, concerning a robot named Wonder Man. I myself never saw him or heard him. The head of National Comics wrote to us and informed us of the fact that he had already used the name Wonder Man. We did not want to use anyone else’s name, so only for that reason, we are not bringing Wonder Man back. And besides, we can’t, because we don’t copy anyone.”
Here’s the Wonder Man from the Superman issue…
Over the years, though, the story became twisted (likely Lee forgot himself) so that it was Wonder WOMAN that DC was mad about, and this led to an interesting situation in 1975, when DC introduced Power Girl, the Earth-2 version of Supergirl, in All-Star Comics #58…
Jim Shooter, at the time, was under the impression that the Wonder Woman story was legit, recalling years later:
The story I heard at the time from Stan and others was that, in the early sixties, DC had objected to Wonder Man because of Wonder Woman, and had threatened legal action if Marvel didn’t cease and desist using the word “Wonder” in character names. Wonder Woman is, and was, one of DC’s top several licensing properties (though the book never sold very well), and it makes sense that DC would fight to defend the “Wonder” franchise
So when DC introduced a “Power Girl” so soon after Marvel had re-named Luke Cage “Power Man”…
Shooter then brought Wonder Man back to life…
However, there is a legend that Marvel threatened to sue over Power Girl’s introduction. Stan Lee was quoted in Comics Journal #42 as saying, “I’m pretty annoyed about that. …I’ve got to ask the Marvel lawyer – she’s supposed to be starting a lawsuit about that and I haven’t heard anything. I don’t like the idea. … You know, years ago we brought out Wonder Man, and [DC Comics] sued us because they had Wonder Woman, and … I said okay, I’ll discontinue Wonder Man. And all of a sudden they’ve got Power Girl. Oh, boy. How unfair.”
A. First off, as I noted earlier, Lee’s contemporary statement suggested that it was NOT Wonder Woman that was the issue, B. DC did not sue Marvel and C. As Lee’s comments were made in 1978, two years after Power Girl debuted, obviously Marvel was not going to be suing two years after the alleged “breach,” so Lee, who was speaking at a convention when he made those comments, was just doing a little bit of puffery at the time. There was no lawsuit.
CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed – Did Gene Roddenberry keep try to get a Star Trek move made that involved time traveling to the Kennedy Assassination?
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that’s it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don’t even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it’s fair enough to still thank him, I think.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that’s fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don’t mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
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