(This post can be found in the opinion columns of JIVE under the same title.)
Perhaps it is too early for Marvel to accept their place in literary history.
As more people than usual know, comic book giant Marvel is planning to sue NCSoft and Cryptic Studios, makers of the phenomenally successful City of Heroes. Why? Well, let’s listen to what the lawyers have to say.
“Considering that defendants own no comic characters themselves, it stands to reason that the comic books to which they refer are those that depict the characters of Marvel and others,” wrote Marvel’s attorneys in the complaint. “Defendants’ Creation Engine facilitates and, indeed, encourages players to create and utilize heroes that are nearly identical in name, appearance and characteristics to characters belonging to Marvel.”
Stands to reason. Man, but I do get the creeps from presumptive legalese. Not only is the language incredibly patronizing, but the assumption that Marvel is the only reservoir of heroic imagination is beyond hyperbole. It is manifest corporate ego and it is ugly. Furthermore, it is unnecessary.
So let’s flip through the complaint. Can you really make a hero that is nearly identical in name to a copyrighted character on the Marvel roster? No. You cannot. The terms of service presented to every player of City of Heroes expressly forbids the use of copyrighted characters. To support this practice, they have established an extensive list of verboten names that will kick back any nomenclature that matches. However, the capacity of the human imagination is difficult to presume, so when someone encounters a nominal roadblock for a particular disallowed name, they will modify their designation to get around it. “The Hulk” didn’t work, but you still have “Teh Hu1k” or “Da Hulx0r” or any other permutation that looks ridiculous but still symbolizes the intended idea. It’s unoriginal, it’s stupid and it makes the particular player look like a 10-year old with a debillitating imagination deficiency. More than that, since the developers of City of Heroes don’t have a script to randomly generate the mish-mosh of l33t-speak and outright ignorance that make up this dyslexicon of clone-naming, there is no practical way to stop these bastard versions of popular heroes from entering the game environment. Even if you and me and all of our fellow heroes are vigilant and report every single clone we see, we can rest assured that someone will come up with an even more idiotic way to re-spell their favorite superperson. If only someone could develop an anti-asshat-ery filter.
That’s names. Now what about appearance? Can you make your own green-skinned gamma-irradiated rage-oholic? Yes. Mostly. Sort of. One of the strongest selling points of City of Heroes is the incredibly flexible character creator. Heroes can be customized through several individual details with a wide range of options for each. Add colors that can be designated to each of those options and you end up with a design system that is just as fun as the game itself. With this breadth of possibility, someone could make a massive hero with green skin (just one shade out of three or four), then give him purple knee-length pants and deny him footwear. At 30 paces, virtual or actual, you could say that such an avatar resembles The Incredible Hulk, but only just so. Honestly, to say that The Incredible Hulk could be manufactured from a finite set of parameters would be an insult to the memory of Jack “The King” Kirby. See, Jack and Stan “The Man” Lee created The Incredible Hulk in September of 1964, resulting in a world-recognized phenomenon published in comic books, novels, television series, children’s shows, cartoons and a recent blockbuster movie. To say that a legend with this kind of longevity can be stamped, pressed and produced by a pattern-based character generator is just foolish. And we’ve already said that a green guy with a thyroid condition cannot take the name of Hulk. Or The Hulk. And if we name him “Das Holken!” — well, we’ll just be tagged as a jerk and sooner or later, someone will report us and the name will have to change.
Lastly, let’s talk characteristics. We can make a science-based hero. Fine. One of the more telling point of City of Heroes character generation is the designation of archetypes and origins. And what is told is that all heroes of any sort seem to all come from one of five particular paradigms of origin: science, magic, mutation, technology or natural. If anything, comic book creators should be slightly embarrassed that Cryptic has managed to effectively categorize almost every single hero possibility under one of these five. You could say that one is missing: alien. But you’re wrong, because even an alien with in-born powers beyond our comprehension is still just a naturally-spawned being among its own kind. Pretty smart, I think. So to return to the question at hand, you can say that your green machine is scientific in origin. You could then select “Tanker” — a brutish hero who takes punishment and pummels things — and give him super strength and invulnerability. Now he is scientifically green, he’s strong and he takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ … but is he The Hulk? No. Because The Hulk is more than muscles and fists, isn’t he? He gets stronger as he gets madder, right? Not in City of Heroes. And what about turning back into his unassuming alter-ego, Bruce Banner? Nope. The City doesn’t even have alter-egos. And what about the tragic backstory involving Betsy Ross, the love of his life, and her father, General “Thunderbolt” Ross? A rogues gallery with the likes of The Leader and Doc Samson? Nah. The backstory is entirely up to you. Some heroes don’t even have one. So that hero is just a shell and is only as interesting as you, the player, make it.
No name. Vague appearance. General characteristics. No Hulk. Therefore, no Cyclops, no Human Torch, no Wolverine and no Spider-Man. Just approximations. Or rather … homages.
And that’s the point, isn’t it? City of Heroes has become one of the fastest growing MMOs of 2004 just because we were all brought up on heroes. We watched our Saturday Morning Cartoons and wore our Spidey pajamas and made towels into capes and ran around the yard with our arms outstretched. So naturally, even the adults we’ve all become cannot resist the opportunity to relive those childhood fantasies with people that grew up just like we did. So we stretch out our arms and rest our fingers on a keyboard and a mouse and we fly. We fight. We defeat evil and we grin widely. Because Marvel (and DC, Image, Dark Horse, etc.) gave us the raw material of legend. Our imaginations just had to pick up the threads offered to weave together tales of our own devising.
And that’s what Marvel is just unable to recognize. Maybe it is just too soon. Like it or not, comic books have contributed to our culture in a way not unlike fantasies from days gone by. The Ring-ing stories of JRR Tolkien, familiar to most of the planet, were derived from medieval tales of daring-do and a double-handful of folklore and English mysticism. You could probably stretch a taut thread from Tolkien back to Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur then on to the primordial roots of Arthurian legend itself. John Milton first encountered Hell through Dante. Shakespeare was inspired by Ovid. And what about the gods of Norse Mythology? Surely Marvel hasn’t forgotten the origins of their own mighty Thor? For just a moment, consider the fictions and fantasies that will arise in two hundred years. Four hundred years. Would any of us be surprised to see the development of a branch of literature that recalls the lives of brightly costumed folk battling evil with an array of clever devices or something not unlike super-speed or an inate ability to scale walls with little more than finger-tips?
Perhaps this is just the corporate face of mighty Marvel, one that sees only the bottom line and the dollar sign. If you read the complaint carefully, you see that their concern is not with loss of comic book sales or movie ticket income, but rather with their in-development plan to produce an MMO of their very own. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that Marvel decided to go the MMO route in 2002 — a year or so after Cryptic announced the initial development of City of Heroes. So naturally, somebody at Marvel is saying to themselves, “Why the heck would anyone want to pay for our also-ran MMO when they can already live out their own Saturday Morning Cartoon fantasies with City of Heroes? We better get “our share” of the money some other way.”
Marvel? Are you paying attention? Please consider the citizens of the City you’ve — in part — inspired. And keep in mind that every single player piloting every single hero can personally thank your own creators (as well as the talent at so many other drawing boards and countless typewriters) for offering some manner of inspiration that they then applied directly to their lives. Thousands upon thousands of seeded stories, just building upon legends born from “funny books” once thought worthy of nothing more than a scrap bin. All of us are profiteering from your creations not monetarilly — but in something far more precious:
Imagination.
