New Year - New 4* Captain Marvel!

Dormammu

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Dormammu wrote:

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

STOPTHIS wrote:

Smart money says it's only still going because she's going to have a movie about her and I'd bet that upcoming movie is the only reason people know who she is anyways, because she was (and largely still is) a mildly popular character at best. The only thing she did of note was have Rogue steal her powers. At least until Civil War 2. So now she's also starred in the worst event Marvel has ever done.

No, smart money says they keep her going because if they don't have a Captain Marvel, the rights to the name will be lost to them and DC can then call Shazam by the name of Captain Marvel on their books.

This is simply not true. Marvel trademarked the name 'Captain Marvel' (in the 60s) after Fawcett (the original publisher of the Shazam/Captain Marvel in the 50s) never did. When DC bought the defunct Fawcett characters in the 70s, they couldn't call him Captain Marvel and re-branded him as 'Shazam'. DC has no interest in turning Shazam back into Captain Marvel after 50+ years, and Marvel is under no obligation to publish a Captain Marvel book in order to maintain the rights.

If you do not maintain use of a copyright you own, you're very likely to lose it. Failing that the term can become generic if you don't protect it.

For example, you can make a drink and call it a cola, but you cannot call it Coke, or Coca Cola because those names are protected under copyright law. However, anyone can write a Sherlock Holmes story because the character is in the public domain. If Marvel fails to make a book about a Captain Marvel character for X amount of years (I'm not sure on the time frame, but it's quite lengthy. Something like 25 years, I think) the character name reverts back to the original rights holders. And I imagine if such right holders do not exist, it becomes freely available for anyone.

Shazam has been known as Captain Marvel for some time, but they cannot brand him as such on the title of the books. Instead they called the books Shazam to avoid the legal issues.

You are correct. I can make a character called Captain Marvel and put him/her in a comic book, as long as the title of the book isn't 'Captain Marvel', and my Captain Marvel doesn't share any similarities with the trademark. But you suggested Marvel's motivation for putting Carol Danvers in her own book was to protect their Trademark, which isn't the case. She's a popular character among comic readers and (I'm guessing) Marvel believes it will sell. Simply using Captain Marvel in any form, such as a recurring character in an Avengers book, or starring in a movie, or appearing on a lunchbox, is enough to protect the trademark's deadline.

Whether the users of this forum agree or not, Carol Danvers is a popular character to Marvel fans and it is not a horrible idea to make sure she is well represented in a game that caters to Marvel fans. She's one of my favorite characters and has been since she was introduced as Ms. Marvel; I'm looking forward to a 4* version as I miss using her 2* variant.

STOPTHIS

Pope Belligerent wrote:

I was wrong about the numbers improving. But they're not especially bad sales. If you look at it month to month, Captain Marvel is consistently in the top 25% of comics sold, frequently out-performing a large chunk of the Marvel stable including most of the Spider-Man titles and currently hugely popular characters like Star-Lord (http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2016.html). Her title is being relaunched because a) it's post-Civil War and it's been a year since the last relaunch, so everything's getting relaunched (the whole X-Men line are in the midst of their enormous relaunch too) and b) like I said, they're repositioning Carol to be the moral center of the MU.

While the title may be in the top 25% of all comics, it's in the bottom 50% of Marvel comics. And beating a 3rd tier Spidey title isn't much to brag about when you're being pushed as one of the pillars of the MU. I'll grant you most titles are being relaunched, largely due to Marvel having a short sighted relaunching problem, but her previous book's numbers were getting to about the same level as they did when she was relaunched before.

Pope Belligerent wrote:

I'm not saying she's the moral COMPASS of the MU, she's the moral CENTER. She has been positioned by Marvel to be the one making the tough moral decisions and be the heart of the Avengers side of the MU the way Captain America did before this whole (clearly temporary) HYDRA thing came up. If you look at the relaunch of her series, it's entirely about her coming to grips with the decisions she made and the effects they had on people while being lauded as "Earth's Mightiest Hero" by the public. It's a new moral center, and it's a much, much grayer moral center. In issue 0 of the new book she spends the entire time talking to her Alpha Flight-mandated psychiatrist about her past and how she deals with the tough decisions.

Ah, my bad. I misinterpreted you. Though I still disagree on their intentions. I don't get the impression they're trying to make her a new moral center, to me it's just looking like they're trying to have her fail her way up into popularity, but it's not really working so they just keeping giving her more accolades, but never making her interesting. She becomes Captain Marvel, then leads the Ultimates, then is in charge of Alpha Flight, and now she's the bestest most beloved character ever! I'm half expecting her to beat Steve Rogers to death with Peter Parker's corpse and become a god.

Pope Belligerent wrote:

We may disagree, but we are clearly people of impeccable taste.

Clearly!

Pope Belligerent wrote:

I will also add this: I enjoyed Civil War 2, but I felt like it was a prolonged character assassination of Carol Danvers. You are right: she made the wrong choices the entire time.

As a Iron Man fan, I didn't think it was possible to beat Tony's treatment in the first CW, but Bendis did such a hatchet job on Carol in CW2 he set a new standard. Which is saying something since he didn't do Tony any favors in CW2 either.

Pope Belligerent

I just checked out her character profile in-game.

SHE IS ON TEAM IRON MAN.

Forget every positive thing I've said about this new character.

DFiPL

Pope Belligerent wrote:

I just checked out her character profile in-game.

SHE IS ON TEAM IRON MAN.

Forget every positive thing I've said about this new character.

Boy, somebody wasn't paying attention, huh?

cyineedsn

DFiPL wrote:

Pope Belligerent wrote:

I just checked out her character profile in-game.

SHE IS ON TEAM IRON MAN.

Forget every positive thing I've said about this new character.

Boy, somebody wasn't paying attention, huh?

In the first Civil War she was Team Iron man though...

eidehua

Her yellow passive with sentry countdowns reminds me of old times