Thursday, February 05, 2004

Of mice and Marvelman: SBC columnist Regie Rigby uses the recent brouhaha over the "superhero" trademark as a chance to look back at the Marvelman-Miracle Man showdown in the '80s, and the more recent problem of a serial killer wearing Mickey Mouse ears:

"But I suppose I can see all of the arguments when we’re dealing with actual characters. I remember that back in the exciting days when Sandmen was mid run, Gaiman wanted a character called 'Disneyland', a serial child killer who preyed on theme parks. He wanted the character to wear Mickey Mouse ears. Fairly unsurprisingly the lawyers had a coronary and the character ended up as 'Funland' and sported a pair of wolf ears. I remember reading interviews at the time where Gaiman bemoaned the situation suggesting that the word 'Disneyland' must surely have entered the public domain and thinking that he was being just a shade disingenuous. I could understand why Disney might object to a character who bore their name and murdered children."