You didn’t read the part where he perfected his Time-Travel Gun…
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(The article is ©2021, it’s the web site that’s ©2023; which is pretty weird, but apropos for a Sci-Fi site)
Oh noes, I missed him and he sounds great. I went searching through comicbookplus for mentions of rays and nobody put that into their descriptions of Starman. Thanks, I’ll go back and shoehorn him in. I knew I was missing lots of characters, but I hoped that none of them were that obvious.
Pretty snazzy for a sitebuilder that didn’t have a spellchecker until a couple of years ago. (If you think people here are snide about Discourse, Wix’s comments board makes us look like a League of Woman Voters meeting. (Or at least the zoom board meetings my wife is on, which I find to be models of politeness.))
Just to be safe: Skyman, not Starman.
I see, so it’s a 2020’s-style “Time Ray”
'xcept for the ability to always get his shirt ruined. He was a “superman” in the classic sense.
Plus, also, like Batman, access to near unlimited resources and technology that in many cases stepped into SF. But unlike Batman not claiming to “work alone” when he has a full time support team.
Excuse me. I’m going to step outside and scream. I’ll be right back.
I think there are multiple confusions in this sentence. Trademark registration is neither copyright nor legislation.
Regardless, I think that the trademark on “superhero” is probably on pretty shaky ground, and would be likely to be overturned if ever seriously challenged. For one, it’s generically descriptive: It’s just an adjective and a noun, a superhero being a hero who is super. For another, it was used by others than the trademark owners before the trademark was registered. It’s also extensively used generically, and joint ownership of a trademark by two competing companies is iffy to begin with.
…shark repellent ray gun, boxing glove ray gun…
… from Batman’s Utility Gun Belt.
The claim in that article is that whenever people think “superhero”, they automatically think of a Marvel or DC product. But I would contend that that’s false. If I asked someone “What’s your favorite superhero movie?”, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they answered “The Incredibles” or “Big Hero Six”, and surprised only for a different reason if they said “Kick Ass”, or “Hancock”. They’re most likely to think of a Marvel or DC property, but only in proportion to those two companies’ share of the market. The fact that two companies together, between them, constitute the majority of superhero content, in no way suggests that they should be eligible for a jointly-owned trademark. Even one company owning the majority of a market wouldn’t be enough for that.
And what would the generic term be? We have Kleenex brand facial tissues and Xerox brand photocopiers and Google brand search engine… What is “superhero” a brand of?
I’d say a costumed action hero.
For years I’ve wondered about having a comic book about a regular human who ends up on an alien world, where the residents are weaker, slower, have poorer senses (perhaps no sense of smell at all), and are very fragile. By comparison, he’d have amazing powers, and could put on a costume and be a superhero. Even Superman is just a regular Kryptonian who is only made exceptional by his morality, selflessness, and the fact that there aren’t many other Kryptonians around.
This is pretty much the premise of the John Carter of Mars books.
To an extent, yeah. Though the Martians also could do things he couldn’t. He wasn’t so much universally superior as “different in a useful way”. But your point is valid; a human in an alien world is seen as being uniquely gifted, despite being fairly unremarkable on Earth. That’s pretty close to my premise.
I was more thinking of the average person being the equivalent of Superman. It probably sounds better in my head than it would look in a comic book.
Alan Dean Foster wrote a trilogy, where humans encounter aliens and find out that Earth is actually way out on the extreme end of “life bearing planets,” and as a consequence, humans are extraordinarily fast, strong, and vicious, compared to other technological species. But nobody plays super hero, we’re just extremely effective space mercenaries.
Nah, it’s a solid idea. I’d read that book.
This makes me think of a science fiction novel in which aliens come to conquer Earth and are discomfited to find out that humans are better idea generators than the aliens. The aliens aren’t stupid by any means, have a fair number of geniuses, a huge population and advanced technology, but humans just come up with new ideas a bit more quickly than the aliens, and are good at selling their ideas (which probably just means humans are quicker at rationalizing their ideas). So in short order, pyramid schemes, cults of personalities, and fads created by humans are spreading through the aliens’ cultures (fortunately, the aliens have a few tricks up their sleeves too).
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a comic book where Jimmy Olsen is somehow transported to a world like that, where he has Superman-equivalent powers.
Inspector Gadget, though; is he a superhero? He seems a little deficient in the mental department, unless that is “Obfuscating Stupidity”
The issue is that the law doesn’t work the way you or I think it should work. The author of that article makes it clear that the trademark has a solid basis in law, and I cited it because his conclusions correspond to the many other articles I’ve read on the issue.
IP law is a morass that only experts should transverse. Everyday logic doesn’t apply.
He certainly has superpowers, due to extensive cybernetic modification. However, how heroic he is, that’s the question. His success seems to come from a combination of dumb luck and his niece and dog constantly helping him.
Pandora’s Planet by Christopher Anvil.
Hey, this isn’t the “ID the SF story” thread.