The "failure" of New 52 Superman: What happened?

[Chris24601]

Doesn't the very name "Superman" fall under the AC #1 copyright?

Superman is actually a trademark and its always been held by DC. Technically Clark Kent and Lois Lane are trademarks held by DC as well. Technically you can use a trademarked term as much as you'd like in a product, you just can't use the term in your promotional material (i.e. you could have characters in a story talking about Superman for the entire length of the story and no violate the trademark if you never mention "Superman" as part of promoting the story).

Where it gets messy is the copyrighted concepts also make use of those terms. In this case, if DC lost access to the AC1 copyright, they could still technically use the Superman, Clark Kent and Lois Lane trademarks, but they would not be able to use them in the combinations that were used for Action Comics #1. So you could have a Superman, but he couldn't be Clark Kent and Clark Kent couldn't be a reporter or in a relationship with Lois Lane who also could not be a reporter.

What you COULD do though is introduce Superman who is actually time-refugee Clark Smith (for purposes of copyright and trademark these things can get ridiculously specific) and married to fellow time-refugee Lois Smith who is an author.

Then, because trademarks are "use them or lose them" in nature you just need to find ways to periodically maintain the Clark Kent and Lois Lane trademarks. Not maintaining the trademark is how Marvel has "Captain Marvel" but the original Captain Marvel has to be called "Shazam." DC lost it through lack of use and Marvel snatched it up. This would be particularly important if they lost access to AC1 (or it finally entered the public domain) so they could prevent a series called something like "a.k.a. Clark Kent" or "The Adventures of Lois Lane" to be published.

One way they might do that is to create a new Clark Kent character to use the name... say a completely human reporter whom people once mistook for Superman. Similarly, you might keep the Lois Lane name in play by making it a pseudonym that the author Lois Smith employs for her novels.

Are they going to get rid of his SI in the movies also? What about Lois? Does the copyright law only apply to the comics? What about Supergirl? Do they just stop referencing to her cousin as Clark? Or Krypton? Remember, that's also part of the first issue.

The thing about movies and, to a lesser extent, television is that they are much more fixed points in time. You only have to be worried about the state of the copyright at the time you produce the product. You don't have to destroy the film just because the copyright later lapses. So they can make use of the copyrighted material until they can't without as many problems.

You could technically do the same thing with the comics as well, but due to the extensive continuity the audience prefers, having to completely retool stories that might be presently relying heavily on the copyrighted elements would be a much bigger pain than simply pulling a reboot on a the movie franchise.

Supergirl is owned entirely by DC so she's not a problem at all. Her being Superman's cousin would not need to be affected by any changes to Superman himself. Heck, there's a strong likelihood that the reason they decided on a Supergirl TV series over adding a new Superman series to the Flarrowverse was because they DO own her lock, stock and barrel while a successful Superman series would be another invitation for another lawsuit as some lawyer decides the heirs aren't getting enough of a cut (ex. a young Superman at the start of his career finally going public now that all these metahumans have started popping up would have worked without needing to have the series be in a separate universe).

IF something were to ever happen to the AC1 copyrights they could just keep the story focused on Supergirl and maybe make some reference to Superman and Lois having to abandon their lives as Clark Kent and Lois Lane because Lex Luthor learned Superman's true identity and them sticking around put the people around them at too much risk (if they wanted a comic reference they could let Kara know that they're now going by Mr. and Mrs. Smith).

As to Krypton; Krypton and the name Kal-El are actually fully owned by DC because neither appeared in Action Comics #1 (which is the ONLY part of Superman in dispute). The dying planet was unnamed and the character was only called Clark Kent and Superman... never Kal-L (or Kal-El). All they'd need to do to keep Krypton in play is make sure that its death was not due to "old age" (the copyrighted element) and make it say, due to Brainiac's tampering with the planet's core, and downplay the part where Superman was rocketed away from it as an infant.

Jonathan and Martha Kent weren't part of AC1 either, so they can be referenced without issue. The same for Perry, Jimmy, Lex Luthor, Kryptonite and the Daily Planet.

Plus it works on a weird level; superheroes can't have mid-life crises, but a mid-life origin? That plays well with the industry's obsession with origin stories.

It really does. Heck, I think Superlad93 or someone even created the opening blurb for a Flarrowverse show based on the concept at some point and it was much more straightforward than you'd think based on all the problems the people who need the timelines merged keep expressing. It even had the notion of "I lived a normal life but then X happened and I had to take action" built right into it.

The sheer pop-culture inertia of Superman actually really works to DC's favor if they wanted to stop referencing AC1 as part of a new production. The basic origin story is so well known that re-telling it straight is practically a waste of time in terms of a narrative (which is why every time its retold these days there's usually some major twist or another to it... "we're putting the McGuffin into his cells to keep it away from Zod" or "His cousin was actually sent along with him but got knocked off course").

But with the "time refugees" you could start the story at the point where Superman and Lois are losing their world and escape to a new one. Heck, you could even get very meta with the whole thing if you wanted to put it into a new medium by actually aping the traditional Superman origin by at first making it look like its Jor-El and Lara about to send their infant son away... only instead its Clark and Lois with their infant son at the Fortress and they're preparing to open a portal to escape because their universe is collapsing.

Heck, make it the Tesseract version of the Fortress they were visiting and the universe has already collapsed (i.e. Superman isn't leaving anyone behind) and they only have a short time before the Fortress collapses too (maybe they were at the Fortress because they wanted tech and robots familiar with Kryptonian physiology present for the birth of their son).

The point being, you can make the whole concept extremely familiar (fleeing a dying world using Kryptonian technology) but turn it to a completely fresh story where Superman and Lois have to start their lives over in a new world (echoing the stories of refugees who have to flee their homes as adults and try to rebuild elsewhere).

[superduperman]

Thank you for all this information. It's actually been very helpful! One way they could introduce Superman into the Flarrow-verse is to say Superman existed at one time but disappeared one day. Surprise! He's living happily in Smallville with his wife Lois "Smith" and hiding out with his son Jon. He retired and decided to start a normal life. He faked his own death and that of his unnamed secret identity.

[adrikito]

All this is very confusing.. I hope that Batman can never suffer any similar problem in the future..

[manofsteel1979]

All this is very confusing.. I hope that Batman can never suffer any similar problem in the future..

You don't have to worry.The Superman stuff is because of a bad deal made with the creators that screwed them over and left an opening that the heirs and ( more importantly,their lawyers) have exploited to try and keep getting more money as Warners endlessly trying to keep dodging it.

Bob Kane on the other hand,was savvy enough to strike a better deal that while he lost all hard copywrite claim to Batman,he made sure he would be forever credited as the creator and in fact the Batman comics still credited the stories as" By Bob Kane " well into the 50's even if Bill Finger,Jerry Robinson, Dick Sprang and others were doing a lions share of the work by then. Even after they took the " by" credit off the Batman stories by the end of the 50s, they still kept the created by Bob Kane credit on and still maintained a relationship with DC Comics and later Warner Bros and payed him well. His widow apparently has a good relationship with Warner's/DC to this day. She even did cameos in the Schumacher Batman movies as the background character"Gossip Gertie". In recent years DC has begun crediting Bill Finger alongside Kane for co-creating Batman ( and giving a co-creating credit to Jerry Robinson for the Joker),but it has never been questioned that Bob Kane co Created Batman,and as far as I know,still pay out to Kane's heirs.

Contrast that with the Siegel family and DC/National who took the creators credit off Superman in the late 40s because Siegel and Shuster attempted to get a better deal,fired them from the comics and for about 30 years they weren't acknowledged as creators of Superman,until in the late 70s Warner Bros,who had recently purchased DC a few years prior,were shamed into restoring Siegel and Shuster's creator credit by the media on the build up to the release of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE. A deal was reached and the Siegels and Shuster were payed an annual stipend in perpetuity.

In 1996-ish,because of some copyright law changes ,Warner's renegotiated a deal with the heirs (as by then both Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had passed away) that would increase their stipend. Initially all parties agreed but a lawyer convinced the Siegel family to fight for a better deal and starting around 1999 and lasting until 2012 ish. As I understand though,i remember hearing that the heirs were still attempting some sort of appeal last year but I don't know the details or how true that is.

A very different history for Bob Kane to be sure. So I doubt there will ever be issues there.

[Chris24601]

All this is very confusing.. I hope that Batman can never suffer any similar problem in the future..

Batman never had the same IP problems as Superman. That's probably why they have have been able to keep so much of his past stories in continuity despite multiple hard and soft reboots of the DCU. Batman's biggest problem until very recently has actually been the opposite of Superman. Until we got Johns in charge of all DC-related media, the higher-ups at WB with their desire for corporate synergy were very stingy about letting anything that falls under the Batman IP be used outside of whatever the highest tier (movies > television > animated) was being produced. That's why no Batman villains ever showed up in the Justice League animated series. Corporate wouldn't let them use them.

[manofsteel1979]

Batman never had the same IP problems as Superman. That's probably why they have have been able to keep so much of his past stories in continuity despite multiple hard and soft reboots of the DCU. Batman's biggest problem until very recently has actually been the opposite of Superman. Until we got Johns in charge of all DC-related media, the higher-ups at WB with their desire for corporate synergy were very stingy about letting anything that falls under the Batman IP be used outside of whatever the highest tier (movies > television > animated) was being produced. That's why no Batman villains ever showed up in the Justice League animated series. Corporate wouldn't let them use them.

Wasn't the Joker in a few episodes?

[adrikito]

After listen these last post about superman world and.. With the previous problems with Finger, I believed that the things could change negatively someday... for batman or another hero..

Wasn't the Joker in a few episodes?

In 2 occasions:




The chapter with joker and lex luthor legion is called INJUSTICE FOR ALL..

[Ascended]

I think Superlad93 or someone even created the opening blurb for a Flarrowverse show based on the concept at some point and it was much more straightforward than you'd think based on all the problems the people who need the timelines merged keep expressing. It even had the notion of "I lived a normal life but then X happened and I had to take action" built right into it.

That was me, actually.

Superlad has so many good ideas here, I gotta hold onto the very few I stumble out with.

[Lokimaru]

The Lines on the Supersuit was our fault, I believe had people made a big enough stink about it on Social Media they would have nixed them before the first issue came out like how WW lost the pants.