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Autocannibalism in Comics

Comics creators frequently infuse pre-owned material into their work. Occasionally the desire to parody or pay homage to classics of the form makes such derivation inevitable; other times, lack of imagination or simple laziness drives talents to let someone else do the design work for them.

Another motive sometimes inspires talent to borrow, in the specific circumstance of creators who borrow from their own prior creations. Because the nature of comics publishing, particularly superhero material in a shared-universe editorial model, talent generally has to sign away intellectual property rights to what they make in order to get it published. So, occasionally, where editorial decisions or the simple passage of time divorce a creator from access to his creation, talent sometimes attempts to find a back-door access to the foreclosed concepts.

A character may compel a talent after their separation. In other cases, talent may attempt to try again with a more favorable renumerative arrangement that pays creators rather than publishers.

The tendency predates even the comic book itself, from the era of publishing wars between Pulitzer and Hearst, where one publisher might headhunt talent away from his rival; this situation resulted in the creator of the "Katzenjammer Kids," a piece from the dawn of the 1900s, refurbishing the concept as "The Captain and the Kids" for another publishing concern even while the original strip continued at its original publisher (albeit with aftermarket talent).

The practice endured, episodically, through the 20th century, not confining itself to either major creators nor major creations.

Captain America and Fighting American

The character Fighting American provides an obvious example of self-cannibalizing. Joe Simon, his surviving creator, co-created him with the late Jack Kirby, and admits that they intended to create a character with the same base premise as their earlier creation, Captain America, with one very important difference: Though Marvel Comics owns Captain America, Simon and Kirby would retain the rights to Fighting American.

The patriotic hero in a costume based on the elements of the American flag, given powers by science, and dedicated to fight totalitarian gangsters of his era, unites both characters in a single thread. However, Captain America and the Fighting American appeared in different periods. Americans could widely agree about the character of Hitler and his goons, but remained divided a decade later about the next generation of totalitarian thugs, such as Hitler's contemporary Iosop Stalin.

Many folks, by the fifties, wanted to avoid the subject altogether - we had, after all, allied with Stalin at one time - and political hucksters helped cast anticommunist thought into disrepute so extreme that even obvious positions such as "Gee, should people invade Hungary and butcher everybody?" became controversial notions tinged with the taint of extremism. Some Americans didn't care for anticommunism in general or in specific, and more didn't want to talk about it because the world situation after World War II scared them, and just the wrong environment for an anticommunist comic book existed when Simon and Kirby chose to publish Fighting American.

Simon and Kirby lacked the kind of moral bankruptcy that would have allowed them to become dogmatic at the first sight of doubt (for instance, America's questioning of the validity of anticommunism), but neither did they care for the denial / deceit approach of pretending to have taken a different side in the matter. Instead, they chose to pursue an anticommunism of the absurd, with ridiculous villains and bizarre situations providing Fighting American with a kind of self-conscious surrealism that audiences of a later generation would recognize as "camp."

Simon and Kirby either picked the wrong topic or the wrong times, and Fighting American did not publish very long, but it ultimately became a cult favorite, spawning a reprint edition in the eighties. Finally, the rights to the concept would pass into the hands of Rob Liefeld of Awesome Comics, who purchased these rights to defend against a lawsuit based on Liefeld's use of a similarly derivative character.

Captain Marvel and Fatman

Can we honestly argue that "Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer" owes nothing to Captain Marvel when C. C. Beck played creative roles in the definition of both characters and Fatman a) wears a green version of Captain Marvel's costume and b) changes form when he changes identities?

The eyeball tells us here what argument need not. The supporting evidence makes the case simply and neatly.

It might, however, take more effort to explain exactly what went through Beck's head when he conceived Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer. While the self-cannibalism remains very obvious, the intent does not. Perhaps he simply needed an idea quickly, without having time to come up with something especially original. Or, on the other hand, perhaps Beck played at an ironic kind of self-reference about his most remembered creation, out of print for over a decade and seemingly doomed to oblivion by DC's litigation machine.

We could even speculate that Beck merely claimed salvage rights for the abandoned hulk of a once-foremost superhero.

Mantis and Willow

Different stories exist, recorded in amateur and professional comics histories and in transcribed interviews, about Steve Englehart's character Mantis and that character's role in Englehart's occasional problems with Marvel Comics. However, some elements remain consistent in the various versions of his history. Englehart admits that he brought Mantis, in the form of "Willow," into a Justice League of America story in the seventies, only shortly after ending his tenure on Marvel's superhero team book, Avengers.

A theory survives today that Englehart suffered from (or, indeed, still suffers from) an obsession with his character Mantis, a martial artist with an enormous ego, a peculiar habit of speech, and a destiny to serve as a Cosmic or Celestial Madonna. Those who favor the obsession theory claim that Englehart, while writing Avengers, sought an important and persistent role for the character that met with disapproval with editors, who directed him to dispose of the character by marrying her off to the ghost of the Swordsman. Englehart's displeasure, so we read, inclined him to leave Avengers and Marvel or more friendly territory.

In some ways, the character would become as persistent as herpes, enduring even after dying in Fantastic Four in the late 1980s. She enjoyed a central role in several story arcs centering around (once) the Avengers and (much later) the Silver Surfer. Whatever the reason behind her recurrent appearances and subsequent evictions (generally with her creator) from Marvel titles, Mantis actually could fit well into existing niches in Marvel franchises. For instance, though arrogant and annoying (in general), she nonetheless fails to annoy as much as Moondragon from the Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) franchise; and in some ways, including her pretentions to some kind of celestial divinity, she overlaps with that character enough that Marvel doesn't really have the room for both of them.

In my opinion, Marvel would do well to sign away rights to the character to Englehart while retaining reprint rights for anything she appeared in under their masthead, so they can allow Englehart what he wants (the ability to use the character) without getting what they don't want (the intrusion of the character into expanding roles in Englehart's Marvel output to the point that they may not dare employ him). However, Englehart might have refurbished the character again in other books (I recall the name "Scorpio Rose" but have seen no books containing this character, so I can't verify).

Demon Hunter and Devil Slayer

Even seemingly trivial creations can, for creators, present a conceptual opportunity that inclines talent to try again once the first attempt fails. For instance, the team of Rich Buckler and Tony Craft created a character once for Atlas comics - not the Atlas that became Marvel, but rather the short-lived and not-really-excellent Atlas of the middle 1970s - and, after Atlas didn't become huge, Tony Craft reinvented the character for Marvel.

As Gideon Cross, Demon Hunter followed a career as a mercenary and assassin which led him into connection with a demonic cult, where he acquired mental powers and a magical cloak that allowed him to produce any archaic weapon the occasion demanded, for the purpose of destroying the demonic powers that he once served. His Atlas title endured a single issue.

Craft, however, managed to score a subsequent term as the author of Marvel's title Defenders, and during this time "Devil Slayer" appeared, a hero who had spent his early life as mercenary assassin Eric Payne, until his connection with a satanic cult provided him with mental powers and a magical cloak that allowed him to produce any archaic weapon the occasion demanded. For better or worse, though, Devil Slayer fit in well with the supernaturally-themed heroes of Marvel in the 1970s; he did not clash perceivably with such figures as Son of Satan and Ghost Rider, as they existed during that decade.

If Devil Slayer endured past 1980, I have yet to find a trace of the character, whether in the original form with the enormous disco collar or in some more contemporary redesign. Therefore I may cautiously conclude that he suffered the same fate as his prototype, perhaps for the same reasons; though the character could work in some contexts, he didn't really compel the reader enough to create a demand for him, and the doomed milieu of Marvel's second-stringer team books (like Defenders and Champions) could not give marginal concepts the momentum they would need to survive long in an evolving superhero comics market.

Where It All Comes From

Creators and many fans will tell you that the whole business of signing away rights in order to publish stinks. It does stink. Creators in other media don't have to do it (or at least have other options available in ways that comics talent do not).

However, until a system of comics production and delivery comes about that allows creators to retain their rights and that, at the same time, fails to self-destruct in the short term, creators will continue to endure the selling of their birthrights for bowls of pottage. The independent comics movement of the early eighties attempted to forge a better deal for creators; and, after this mostly faded, the "New Comics" movement once again tried to provide creators an opportunity to own their concepts.

After the latter implosion, the options contracted again, but hope continues to spring, as evidenced by the recent experiment with Gorilla Comics, an imprint distributed by Image. Perhaps their talent, well-liked figures such as Karl Kesel, Tom Grummett, George Perez, Barry Kitson, and Mark Waid, will find in this vehicle a solution to the problem, and creators of the future will no longer feel the need to reinvent their own material in disguises.

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Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

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