The world’s new superhero: Captain China!

reply to post by iwan2ski


All I could make out was "we all live in America" and I think something about Santa Claus

Cool song I like Rammstein

reply to post by Tazkven


I get your point but...

You can't trademark a national identity. There is bound to be Chinese equivalents of Western Comic heros', in the same manner as there are British, Russian, Indian one etc.

Its only natural. People all around the world are as proud of their countries as anyone else is.

reply to post by neformore


Well, Marvel did sue NCsoft and cryptic studios over the game City of Heroes for creating characters "too similar to Marvel's superheroes" and "that City of Heroes affected their future business plans." seeking unspecified damages and an injunction".

According to wikipedia ...

trademark law is structured such that, if Marvel believes their marks are being infringed upon, they have little choice but to file a lawsuit, regardless of its outcome, to preserve the strength of the marks.

Wiki

If Marvel did sue I don't think it would be about Captain China's "national identity" but about being " too similar to Marvel's superheroes". In the end its whether or not Marvel Comics believes Captain China infringes on their mark. The creator of Captain China and its studio is in Florida, so they are reachable by US courts.

Then again maybe Excel Comics has struck a deal with Marvel Comics ...


ED: For the record I have nothing against superheroes regardless of where they come from.

reply to post by FlyersFan


I was thinking the exact thing. Does "Captain China" protect the interest of the communist Government or the people? Is his gun made of cheap plastic. Does it cease to function after a couple of uses? Is Captain China puting lifts in his shoes to appear taller? These are questions that will boggle my mind for a while.

DC and Marvel (and others) have liberally made thinly veiled copies of each others characters constantly over the years, they've even occasionally had very different characters with the same names appear, as it's hard to not cross that threshold on occasion when each has made thousands and thousands of characters over time.

For similarity check out Cat Woman vs. Black Cat, for instance, and both are major characters for each company (Cat Woman was first), or Green Arrow vs. Hawkeye. Back in the Silver Age they were especially keen on keeping up with each others ideas.

On top of that, this character seems pretty well protected as it is clearly in the realm of parody, and parody gives one some pretty broad leeway to do what they want. A lot of parodies come a lot closer to their various characters and Superman, especially, has been parodied thousands of times, like Saturday Night Live's old "Uberman" skit, where Kal-El lands in Nazi Germany as a baby, instead of the U.S. Midwest and is raised to follow Nazi values instead of following the tenets of "Truth, justice and the American Way."


Not for nothing, but this reminds me of when I was playing the online MMO "City of Heroes," a game where you can make superhero characters, develop their powers and fight crime and evil. My friend and I started a supergroup in the game called "The Surplus Soviet Superheroes," and we were all communist-based superheroes. My character was Apparatchick, and she came from another dimension where the communists won the Cold War and where here to do the same for our world. She looked kind of like a Communist-themed Supergirl, but with an eye-patch. My friend was The Soviet Atom, basically a big, clunky Iron Man rip-off hold-over from the Stalinist era (he was brain damaged, so thought Papa Joe was still his glorious leader). One of our supergroup members was from China and was called Great Leap, and had great jumping abilities which I thought was pretty clever. There were others, but I don't remember most of them.

Despite my feelings of the Chinese, I'm a fan of any super hero that uses a C96 broom handle Mauser.