I review a very strange comic about Midnight, who was literally created as an intentional knockoff of Will Eisner's The Spirit. Then we go into various knockoff characters and what that means including some real doozies by Rob Liefeld.
Same. I call it "The dollman effect" say if dc decided to sue marvel because they believed that character Ant-man is a RIP off of the atom. DC could simply bring out that the atom is a copy of the character "doll man"
Marvel pulled yet another d*ck move when they told Alan Moore not to use the name "Marvel Man" for his revival (Marvel Man being the Golden Age British knock off of Captain Marvel).
rob liefeld has a weird habit, wherein he makes something generic and forgettable then hands it off to other writers who make it unique and interesting, that's kind of weird
Rob Leifeld is actually a good artist... when he can be made to put in the time and effort. I've seen what he can do when he's producing his best. But he rarely does, because he's a slow artist, and takes great pride in delivering work on time and reliably (which he does). He's also a very pleasant fellow, very easy to work with, which is why he keeps getting work.
Daniel Way's Deadpool might have made the character mainstream popular but he's not the writer who made him interesting, that was Joe Kelly's run in the late 90s, which introduced deadpool's more parody aspects and 4th wall breaking.
Thank you for the heart-felt sign off at the very end, about the death of Jack Cole, his being a victim of suicide. Mental health issues are a major concern of mine, I'm studying in therapy and social work areas, and I really appreciated your kind way of addressing that at the end.
Yes and no. Swamp Thing was more successful as a solo property. But Man-Thing had more and greater IP's spun out of it over time. Man-Things more anthology like nature had it acting as a premier/experimental ground for new characters.
@@wk3820 Yep indeed, It can be argue that yes both man-thing and Swampthing were ripoffs of the Heap. Even Alan Moore commented that in an interview in which very out of character for him casually acuses Len Wein fo stealing the heap.
@@wk3820 That's what stopped the lawsuit. Carmine said "If you sue us over Swamp Thing being a rip off of Man-Thing, we'll sue you over Man-Thing being a rip off of The Heap".
Yes, originally Starlin took, er, inspiration from Metron--and even gave Thanos a chair like him!--but apparently Roy Thomas insisted Starlin “Beef him up! If you’re going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really good one!” See www.cbr.com/comic-book-legends-revealed-266/ for the scoop.
Fighting American was created because Simon and Kirby had new ideas for Captain America in the 50s but since superhero comics weren't popular at the time Atlas Aka Marvel at the time said no and they went and did Fighting American since Cap wasn't usable at the time
It was also a semi spoof as Kirby and Simon felt that readers of the time might be too cynical for a sincere patriotic hero but might accept a "tongue in cheek" take on it.
DC didn't win the court case against fawcet. They actually lost because of a few facts: many of the things they were citing as similar were in captain marvel first, and the other features had appeared first in Popeye cartoons which the Fawcet team showed in court. It was obvious to the court that the real motivation was that captain marvel was a vastly more popular character at the time than superman - hence all the Shazam rip-offs in Superman - and DC was attempting to use the court to suppress the competition which they were losing to. However, DC was a far richer company and kept appealing and appealing forcing underdog Fawcet to spend more and more money on lawyers until the company was bankrupted. At which point DC bought the company and has been suppressing Shazam ever since. Quite where the idea came from that DC won the case I have no idea, as in the DC published Shazam vol#1 it goes over the history and freely admits the bad behaviour of DC in the introduction.
@@thomasmuandersontheneousul4184 No, he says (and I already quoted from) "At which point DC bought the company and has been suppressing Shazam ever since." Suppressing the character to the point of putting him in a major budget film. Not to mention the fact that DC licenced Captain Marvel in 1972 and the live-action Shazam tv show ran from '74 to '77 while the cartoon ran '81-'82. Hardly "suppressing" the character.
@@aaronleverton4221 Yes but how many people outside of hardcore DC fans know this. Adam West is PRIMARILY known for playing Batman in the 60s But yes HE DID appear as Bats again in a few other places - who remembers those scattered TV appearances?
I know I am watching this a year and a half later but as someone who deals with depression, thank u for ur little psa at the end. It can be scary but there is hope
The New Gods were a response by Jack Kirby, to leaving Marvel, in part because they wouldn't let him write and draw Thor the way he wanted to. So The New Gods starts off with Ragnarok, the death of the Norse gods.
Kirby wanted to do his New Gods concept at Marvel, but they said no. So he went to DC, and they agreed to let him do whatever he wanted with it...and then changed their minds and wouldn't let him finish the story
In the DC horror comic lines of the 60's & 70's, each of the major books had a "host"-- House of Mystery had Cain, House of Secrets had Abel, and Secrets of Sinister House had Eve. There were several others, but these (particularly Eve) were heavily based on the old EC hosts, Vault Keeper, Crypt Keeper (not the TV version) and The Old Witch. As the limitations of the Comics Code gradually loosened in the '70's, DC continued with a plethora of other "hosts" to introduce and narrate their horror titles-- some of which were extended knock-offs, and other which were much more original. For example, Witching Hour had the three witches, which were loosely based on the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. However, DC was certainly not alone in this practice-- Charlton did the very same thing with many of their horror titles during this period. Another good episode-- BTW I'm pretty sure that Tiki Punch is definitely a knock-off... but it's closer to Tahitian Treat than it is Hawaiian Punch due to the carbonation.
@johnmburt1960 That's true, The Old Witch from EC Comic's The Haunt of Fear was actually inspired by a 1930's radio show called 'The Witch's Cauldron'.
Another great episode. The tragedy of Jack Cole and suicide was nicely handled. So important to remind people of supports whenever the subject enters. Well done!
Will Eisner's the Spirit is unequivocally one of the top ten comic series of all time. It's a classic on every level, especially post-1946, when Eisner came back from WW 2 and the comic became more dark.
Thank you for that last note and for putting it out there that there are always people who care about you and who want to help you if you’re feeling down suicide is never worth it
Another great, informative and entertaining episode. Steven Gerber's creation of Destroyer Duck and his use of Howard the Duck in a Savage Dragon team up is a unique example of a spin off or knock off character.
@@danieljackowitz2343 Partners of Peril by Theodore Tinsley (under the corporate pen name Maxwell Grant). But forget the art, the story itself is a beat by beat adaptation of said pulp.
@@thomasmuandersontheneousul4184 The very first Batman comic is literally a beat by beat ripoff of a Shadow pulp, the whole story wholesale and even some of the illustrations were swiped. Bill Finger himself admitted it in the 1970s. So no. People don't get it wrong. Batman began as a ripoff of The Shadow.
as always a great vid keep up the awesome work i love your channel and all of your content your one of my favorite youtubers and deserve way more subscribers. every time i see your videos pop up i get all giddy and its always one of my favorite parts of that week. cant wait for your next video your great also could you do something about the one more day story line like you did with civil war 2 that'd be a funny video
It's definitely something I've considered covering. It will require more time than a typical video if I break it down. I'll think about it. Thanks for watching.
The funny thing about the Shi'ar Gladiator is that it is the same name of the Pulp book Gladiator, that was the inspiration for Superman. Philip Wylie had wrote Gladiator in 1930 , this is not a correction, all art borrows ideas from others, I think it comes down to the work put in and a lot of hard working people have made the Superman Mythology very original and legendary.
At some point I probably will discuss that again but I actually do cover the history of the 90s speculator boom and crash in episode 39: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZxLZtj2Vit4.html
I owned a store at the time and was shut down by 'black April', the Return of Superman etc. Like lots of other owners I was taken by surprise at the popularity of Superman's death story, and bought way too much stock for the follow-up which nobody bought. This coupled with the fact that there was a slew of new #1s from Marvel, DC, Valiant and Image that month meant spending way more than I should have on inventory I couldn't sell. Bigger stores weathered the storm, but I saw the writing on the wall, with prices skyrocketing and sales dropping off, so I shut my doors. Even today I lament the fact that brick-and-mortar comic book stores pretty much no longer exist (or basically only sell models). When I was a kid they were a great place to hang out and discuss the comics while hunting for the issues missing from my collection.
@@WalterLiddy I can confirm that - I went to quite a few cons in the late 90s and early 2000s I ALWAYS found people selling Superman cheaply even with the fancy covers. I also found stores that had discounted books usually had Death of Superman. They musta really overcompensated. The upside is fans can catch up on the saga fairly cheaply
@@WalterLiddy The market I think actually did good from what I understand in the 2000s up to 2015 I still find some comic book stores but not as many. I'd say it depends on how savvy the owners are as well as size. Sorry for your loss. If some stores survived for a few more years they might've made a profit for a decade at least.
I see some of the influence there but Moon Knight has always struck me as a pretty different person than Bruce Wayne no matter what interpretation or creative team is working on him. I feel like even Daredevil is closer to Batman in terms of being a street-level vigilante. But maybe that's just me.
The Justice League and JLU cartoons had to replace Black Manta with Devil Ray. I think DC wouldn't let them use Black Manta because of a CW Aquaman TV show that never made it past the pilot stage. The 60s Batman show had to use The Puzzler (an obscure Superman villain) for a script originally written for The Riddler.
I think a nice tidbit you missed here is that Jack Cole himself ghost drew The Spirit, and was a good friend of Eisner. I don’t get why you just read the whole comic on Midnight in Hell. I do love how you mentioned Cole’s other creations. Fun Fact: both Elongated Man and Mr. Fantastic were directly inspired by Plastic Man. Flash editor Julius Schwartz didn’t realize the character was bought by DC, and so EM was created for a Flash story, and Stan Lee liked Plas stories enough to base Mr. Fantastic’s powers on Plas’. I also want to thank you for talking about Jack Cole at the end, I am a big fan of his work, and it’s good to talk about mental health issues.
@@ComicTropes I think that's more of a ? - comic book artists are pretty opportunistic. As long as Rob isn't trying to deceive people that "he" invented the pose or panel design I see no issue. I heard a talk where he DIRECTLY references a famous Thor cover Walt did with Beta slamming his hammer. I doubt many people are fooled and no all too well where a certain look or cover or image comes from.
Gabby the Talking Monkey actually has a pretty grim origin story. That's the interesting thing about Midnight, a lot of times his stories are way out there and wacky and lighthearted, just like Doc Wackey is both, and other times it can be pretty grim.
Midnight is very briefly in All Star Squadron around the #30s or so. I had already read the Spirit in Jules Feiffer's book The Great Comic Book Heroes before that- but I was like "That's Spirit !"
for my own part, i've developed a habit of inventing comics characters (though i guess alot of them could fit for almost any medium, but they're mostly intended for comics) as "shown within a show"-type characters for an allohistory project that i've been working on in an attempt to make the setting seem more real and in part because, realistically, i probably wouldn't be able to get the rights to use the names of real-world fictional characters even with fair-use laws in mind, and alot of them are actually based on public-domain characters because of this. one of the ones that i'm most proud of is based on Johnny Canuck, for example, a Canadian comics character, though i ended up taking alot of inspiration and his name from Beowulf instead. it was originally just fluff, but now i'm developing them as their own thing to possibly be published some day because it's just so much fun! :D
some of the best stories are knock offs honestly. invincible is a story all about knock offs, the main character is basically the son of superman, and there are plenty of direct analogs to characters from both dc and marvel, which serve only to enhance the story as opposed to hinder it because, while the inspiration is obvious, the characters are still their own, and every one of them, even minor characters, are given tons of personality to themselves
DC has several ripoffs of Marvel characters: Earths 7 and 8 are full of superheroes based on Marvel Universe characters: Crusader (Captain America), Golem (Hulk or the Thing), Doc Future (Mr. Fantastic), Bug (Spider-Man), Behemoth (the Hulk), Future Family (Fantastic Four), G-Men (X-Men), and many more. P.S. Thank you for that ending discussion about suicide and depression.
Joe Casey created the character of Miss America Chavez for Marvel and was supposed to do a knock off called All American Comix for Image but I don't know if it's come out yet...
Very interesting segment. On Wikipedia it says Jack Cole owed Hugh Hefner money, although i can assume they were good friends. Maybe he was stressed out by financial or other life problems
I haven't watched all your episodes yet, but have you done one on sidekicks? There's a long history of heroes enlisting young buddies to traipse into danger to take punches or provide comic relief.
X-Men comics' Shi'ar Imperial Guard was a deliberate parody of Legion of Superheroes - courtesy of the guy who worked on both - Dave Cockrum. Both Marvel and DC had sexy female villainesses named White Rabbit, complete with bunny ears. DC transferred the identity of Wildcat from a male to a female who bore a striking resemblance to Marvel's Hellcat. William Tucci's Shi, a sexy martial art oriented character had an outfit that bore quite a resemblance to an earlier sexy martial art oriented character, Neal Adams' Samuree.
The thing about Scarecrow is that nobody really cared about DC's Scarecrow until the 80's. As a Matter of fact I don't recall any Scarecrow stories from 50's up until the early 80's.
To be fair, Black Cat is a knock off of Catwoman in theory, but Catwoman is more of a knock off of Black Cat in practice. As the Batman/Catwoman romance was only introduced after the Black Cat/Spider-Man romance storylines proved to be a success.
I'm surprised publishers didn't make more intentional copies of their characters with so much of their talent going overseas and possibly not coming back. If Eisner had taken a bullet to the head then there went the Spirit cause he owned the rights which was pretty progressive given the times. On a weird side note: The Spirit has appeared in the Marvel Universe meeting Spider-man but Midnight is (or was depending on which reboot one considers) part of the DC Universe.
In a way, Silver Age Superman was basically a knockoff of Fawcett's Captain Marvel. Superman had been a lone figure until Fawcett called it quits on superheroes comics. DC then took in former Fawcett creators such as Otto Binder, and Superman expanded into a Superman Family just like Fawcett had with the Marvel Family: Supergirl, Superboy, the Superpets (Krypto the dog, that horse and a monkey IIRC?), the main supporting cast (Lois, Jimmy and the Chief) gaining temporary powers, the Legion, etc.
Nightwatch! I love me some Nightwatch! NOT a knock off of Spawn. Its a utilization of the tech originally meant for the Spidey black suit, a suit that healed itself. An idea that was rejected for the symbiote explanation. Also, they tried to make a sucky show of this called 'the cape', i think.
Garth Ennis wrote a one-shot comic called THE PRO, wherein he spoofed MARVEL's The Watcher character ['The Viewer' a.k.a. 'The Voyeur'] and DC's Justice League roster of heroes. Probably the funniest comic book I've ever read! A single mother (who's also a hooker) is granted superpowers just to see if she'll step up and be the hero her new powers can allow her to be -- with that already existing team of superheroes on hand to show her the ropes. It has to be seen to be believed.
I think The devil had a wife in the bible Lilith, the first woman of Adan...she is also important in Vampire lore as Lilith the mother of Vampires. But thats as far as i know
12:17 - "It might seem strange now that these two characters were considered similar..." Pictured: Two nearly identical men in brightly colored tights with capes and chest insignias, punching each other.
@@TheOtakuKat Technically, copyright applies to distinct works such as individual narratives, illustrations, etc, but not to ideas or concepts. You can't _really_ copyright characters in the first place. So, yeah. Anyway, I wasn't even referring to that: I was highlighting the irony of what Chris said when juxtaposed with that illustration - irony that I assume he was aware of and did intentional. Basically, it was a joke. Besides, legality isn't _really_ the main issue when people start accusing creators of "ripping off" other creators. It's more generally considered bad form, as originality is held to be extremely important these days. (Probably _because_ of this sort of overzealous use of copyright and trademark law by corporations to battle one another.) I consider it all to be kinda misguided, personally, but that's the world we live in.
A lot of the Image books were knock offs of the books the creator was on when they left the company they worked for. WildCATS was pretty much X-men. Spawn looked similar to Spider-man and Venom (with a cape). Liefeld took from everywhere. Youngblood was a mix of X-men and Avengers. Cyberforce was X-men.
Alan Moore wrote some issues where they went to the homeworld of Maul's alien side (because he, Warblade, and Voodoo were alien/human hybrids, while Zealot and Marlow were just aliens.) and it was just something the species had - purple skin, the ability to grow huge, and horns on their backs. The Alan Moore WildCATS was actually pretty good, except where a lot of his planned story got truncated because of a crossover event. He clearly wanted to make a superhero book, fun again.
Green Arrow, Johnny Quick, and Aquaman of DC comics were all knock-offs created by Mort Weisinger, who would go on to define Superman (for the worse) for decades. Green Arrow was a themed version of Batman, with an Arrowcave, Arrowplane (which was a car), and a teenage sidekick. The designs for Arrow and Speedy were lifted from another source--the popular Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood. Aquaman was a much, much tamer and lamer version of Namor. Johnny Quick ripped off of the very popular Flash. The stories for these three, so long as Weisinger was writing them, tend to be slipshod, even for 1940s comics. Case in point, Aquaman is called King of Atlantis...because Atlantis was an ancient ruin that he found.
