(From "Fantastic Comics" number 15, 1941.)
The Nerdmudgeon Podcast
Three middle-aged nerds (including yours truly!) review all of the MCU movies in chronological order. Short, funny, and full of good vibes, check it out and let us know what you think!
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It’s a door now.
Ah, good old Samson. Always wrecking buildings.
Wait, who’s that young blonde-haired kid with him? Is that his sidekick from earlier panels who’s now wearing furry short-shorts like Samson?
No public pool is closed for Samson and his young sidekick billy!
Literally every Samson story has him a) knocking holes in walls (and sometimes floors or ceilings) to get into a building instead of the door, and b) throwing a building into a river. I don’t know what this says about the creative team working on the title, but it’s certainly entertaining.
The half-naked boy wearing nothing but furry underwear and a rope is indeed his trusty sidekick, David, who we saw in one of the last few panels.
ah Samsom: one of the great interesting golden age characters… also in the public domain 🙂
You know that the original Captain Marvel is public domain?
If so, Frevoli, I’m confused. I thought DC has to call the Big Red Cheese ‘Shazam’ because Marvel has the rights to the name ‘Captain Marvel.’ It seems like one company can use the name but not the character and the other can use the character but not the name. Can’t say i’ve researched this at all. But it does seem like it’s in the domain of a very small public, and that if you or i tried to publish our own Captain Marvel, we might hear from attorneys. Or do I misunderstand?
No, you understand.
The name Captain Marvel is owned by marvel, so DC can only call him that on the inside of the comic and on the outside use either Shazam or Billy Batson (both of which they have copywrighted)
Yes the cheese is currently DC owned/copywrighted, so if you were to feature him based from his dc appearence then laywers would be called.
However, as with several golden age characters, the original copywright was invalid. Therefore if you were to use Captain Marvel a la his public domain golden age adventures, that’d be fine
Another example: also in the public domain is Kid Eternity, now owned by DC. For those unaware of Kid Eternity, he can summon any historical / fictional character by saying Eternity. So for the original Kid Eternity, that’s all it is. But DC did a rewrite where Eternity is an agent of choas, and his summons are all demons who look like the people. They also made him the brother of Captain Marvel Jr.
So while the original material isn’t, DC’s rewrghts aren’t… so you can use Eternity, but not as an agent of chaos.
This also applies to – Plastic Man, Mary Marvel, Captain Atom, and Blue Beetle (although with him, only the character of Dan Garret is free, Dan Garrett isn’t)
oh, and Bullet Man