Marvel VS DC - Super Hero and Super-villain VS Super-hero and Super Villain

There was an interesting update on Tom Brevoort's blog over at Marvel.com earlier this month. I know it's not the freshest news, but it was new to me, so now it's new to you, too. The topic of the post from Tom was concerning things he'd learned in his roughly 20 years at Marvel and there were a few interesting tidbits I wasn't even aware of.

The biggest "revelation" was the nature of the joint copyrights Marvel and DC have on the words 'super hero' and 'super villain'. I always knew they had the copyrights for those words, but I never knew how random it was until I read this post from Tom. Here's a quote of the breakdown.

4) SUPER HERO IS TWO WORDS; SUPER-VILLAIN IS TWO WORDS WITH A DASH. This all goes back to the joint trademark that Marvel and DC have on the terms super hero and super-villain—in their case, it's super-hero and super villain. (The one exception is Marvel Super-Heroes, which was trademarked as a title with the dash still in place.) Why? Because that's the way the trademark applications were filled out way back in the '70s. And as a conclusion to the Mark Gruenwald mantra by which I learned all this, superhuman is one word.

More after the jump.

Isn't that completely random? It just happened I had finished reading one of DC's books before hitting up that post and they even used 'super-villain', with the dash mind you, to describe some of the villains. Here's the rest of Tom's learnings. The Reed and Stan Doesn't Like Green ones are a pretty funny as well.

1) REED DOESN'T STRETCH HIS NECK. This one's been largely abandoned over the last ten years, but it was a guiding principle for Mister Fantastic for decades. As a more serious, intellectually-minded individual than other stretchy heroes such as Plastic Man or the Elongated Man, it was felt that having Reed stretch his neck (or his eyeballs, or his ears, etc.) would look too undignified.

2) THE STRIPE DIRECTLY BELOW THE CENTER STAR ON CAPTAIN AMEICA'S COSTUME IS RED. This was the way Cap's costume was approached for the longest time--though, again, certain artists in recent years have done it differently. Similarly, Captain America was the one Marvel character who possessed a cleft chin.

3) THE SPIDER EMBLEM ON SPIDER-MAN'S CHEST HAS FOUR LEGS UP AND FOUR LEGS DOWN. This one changed over time. When first designed by Steve Ditko, Spidey's symbol had all eight legs on either side of the torso, and that's the way it was drawn for years. However, at some point in the early '80s, somebody—probably John Romita—realized that actual spiders are situated a bit differently, and changed Spidey's chest symbol to the four-up-four-down design we still use today. I can remember getting bitched out my first month or so on the job for sending a licensor Spidey shots out of the pick-up art file that had the uncorrected old Spidey symbol on them.

4) SUPER HERO IS TWO WORDS; SUPER-VILLAIN IS TWO WORDS WITH A DASH. This all goes back to the joint trademark that Marvel and DC have on the terms super hero and super-villain—in their case, it's super-hero and super villain. (The one exception is Marvel Super-Heroes, which was trademarked as a title with the dash still in place.) Why? Because that's the way the trademark applications were filled out way back in the '70s. And as a conclusion to the Mark Gruenwald mantra by which I learned all this, superhuman is one word.

5) STAN DOESN'T LIKE GREEN COVERS. This was one of those notions that became fact over time, propagated mainly by longtime Marvel cover colorist George Roussos. Apparently, at some point in the past, George had done up a color scheme for a cover with a green background, and Stan hadn't liked it. And based on whatever conversation he and Stan had over it, George walked away with the unshakable belief that Stan had made using a green background verboten. In fact, what Stan wanted was a cover color scheme that worked for that particular cover—but all the way through to the middle of the '90s it was always a fight to use green on a cover.

6) THE FACE OF THE LOGO SHOULD BE A COMPLEMENTARY COLOR TO THE BACKGROUND; THE DROPSHADOW SHOULD BE A SUPPLEMENTARY COLOR. This is a simple formula by which, if you follow it, your logo will always "pop" on the stands and be readable and eye-catching. Also, as a general rule, K-tones (gradations of black) don't work on covers and especially logos, and will always muddy up and get dark when the covers print.

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