As most of you might know you can’t legally make, for example, a Spiderman game or a Batman game without consent from the companies that hold the respective copyrights.
Still there are some public domain superheroes out there that can probably converted into a good theme for a game. I did a Google search but the results were not that satisfactory. There are some lists but they don’t seem to be that authoritative to me.
So, if anyone comes across a good public domain superhero please post it in this thread.
I don’t have a list, but why not just make up your own character? That way you will have complete creative control over the character’s personality and ability limitations, and you could design them like a preexisting superhero like spiderman without actually being spiderman. Just my two cents.
That is a good point. If you trust your own creative abilities, there is no reason one cannot take the approach you suggested.
The only thing I would say is that there are some people who would be more good at that than others ( I don’t consider myself to be all that good at it). If you look at some of the superheroes that seem to be in the public domain, they are mostly ‘orphans’, if I could use the term, of companies that went out of business. So I assume a lot of professional creativity went into the design of those characters.
So if there are already pre-existing superheroes and supervillains with good mythologies around them, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use them.
Some of the old radio-days heroes might be up for grabs. Tarzan, Doc Savage, maybe. However, you will have to do a lot of research into this as there are a myriad ways these concepts can go back into copyright. Green Hornet should be public domain based on it’s age but I bet it’s not, given the recent film.
Caution is the name of the game, many characters are “public domain”, Disney uses a LOT of public domain characters, the trick is avoiding the “updated” and copyrighted ones. You can take a public domain character from historical literature, like Hercules, and make the character your own by changing the story line details. Disney’s Hercules first doesn’t use the original Greek spelling, then emblishes the story to make it Disney’s.
I haven’t looked, but I suspect “modern” super heros will have a wide variety of “public” and private domain. Certain versions of Superman may well be public domain, but can you afford to prove that in court? Those publishers also spin hundreds of “alternative” versions of the superhero, making it more difficult to create a “new story” from the public property (ie. originally superman couldn’t fly… much like one of the main characters in the new TV show about a family with “super powers”)
Just create your own superhero. Right now Hollywood are scrambling for all the public domain ones they can get their hands on, John Carter springs to mind.
Also Alan Moore is well known for finding PD characters then pretending he came up with them (then he got pissy when Hollywood pointed out he didn’t have any say in what the hell they did with them). Everyone is doing it really, so don’t waste your time. By the time you’ve found one and updated it to be interesting these days (the actual original ones are often quite dull, I did this whole thing years ago myself and looked at practically all of them), you could have come up with something far better by yourself, without having to stay within the limits of that character, or rewriting it to the point it’s different anyway.
Besides, when it comes to super heroes, you get accused of being one of three clones. DC, Marvel or Watchmen. Make something about super villians instead, way more fun, and they always have better equipment and evil doomsday toys to play with. The super heroes just have lots of emo, doesn’t translate well to video games.
What’s more important to consider is what “specifically” is public domain. Case in point, someone brought up Tarzan, and while many of the original stories (the actual written work itself) may be public domain, that does not make use of the CHARACTER public domain, as Tarzan the character may be registered as a trademark by an Edgar Rice Burroughs foundation or something. Another example, even if very early Mickey Mouse cartoons fall out of copyright, that doesn’t make Mickey Mouse himself public domain.
My vote, make your own OR just borrow from legends, myths, fables, and folktales…like most big companies seem to do, all that stuff is fair game for anyone to make their own interpretation of.
The Tarzan character is a trademark of the Burroughs estate. The appearances of tarzan(and other characters) owned by the Burroughs estate that were written by Burroughs are copyright the Burroughs estate. In the instance of shared authorship, like a Tarzan film or comic book, I think the copyright on the publication is negotiated by both parties but the character, even in that case, is still trademark of Burroughs estate.
@galent: [quote=“galent, post:5, topic: 438190, username:galent”]
…Disney’s Hercules first doesn’t use the original Greek spelling, then emblishes the story to make it Disney’s.
[/quote]
Incorrect. "Hercules is the Roman name for the Greek demi-god Herakles or Heracles. “Herakles” is the Greek spelling/name. “Hercules” refers to the same demi-god, but the Roman name was actually a alteration on the Etruscan version of a similar demi-god to Herakles that was absorbed and reconstituted into the Roman Hercules.
As of 2011, The character of Superman and the related characters created by Siegel and Schuster are owned by DC/WARNER BROS. There are no public domain versions of Superman. You may be thinking of instances of publication of Superman that are in PD, like the Fleischer cartoons of the 1940’s. The Superman character specifically does not go into public domain until 2033 (95 years after initial publication). There is a particularly vicious legal battle going on between the heirs of Superman creators Siegel and Shuster and Warner/DC over ownership of the character. Currently the Shuster’s heirs will be eligible for copyright reassignment in 2013, according to terms of certain court decisions. Regardless of the legal battles, DC/Warner will be be likely,according to some sources reporting on the legal proceedings, be able to retain ownership(copyright/trademark) on the versions of Superman created after the departure and signing over of the character(s) by S&S. So there will likely be a Superman owned by DC/Warner for good; just not the very original iteration.
@Frank Oz: [quote=Frank Oz, post: 513373]
… Also Alan Moore is well known for finding PD characters then pretending he came up with them (then he got pissy when Hollywood pointed out he didn’t have any say in what the hell they did with them). …
[/quote]
What are these characters that Mr. Moore created and then “pretended to come up with them” exactly? The only instances of Alan Moore using Previously published characters in his creator-owned works are to the best of my knowledge:
The entire cast of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - He and Kevin O’Neill have not expressed ownership of the original versions of any of the famous or obscure literary characters they used in any of the 4 existing chapters. In point of fact they have gone on at great lengths publically about how fun it is to borrow and re-contextualize them in their fiction. In any event, the LOEG stories and art are in fact owned creations of the 2 authors.
Marvelman - Asked by Dez Skinn to revamp the original Mick Anglo character for Warrior magazine; Mr. Skinn had authorization from Anglo to publish the stories, btw. The new Marvelman works were shared copyright between Moore and the various artists involved. Moore passed on all his portion of legal rights to Marvelman to Neil Gaiman. After many years of legal issues(amongst which included a groundless attempt at rights ownership by Todd MacFarlane which was dismissed by the courts), The rights to the original Marvelman were purchase by MARVEL Comics from Anglo.
America’s Best Comics’ Terra Obscura - All public domain characters used by Moore and revamped (as his right or anyone else to do so). His versions were in fact owned by him and the other authors as well as DC/Wildstorm I believe. I would imagine, as in the case with any characters created by him while working for DC, that he has relinquished his legal rights to the other authors- as he did with V for Vendetta, 1963, Marvelman and Watchmen.
Albion - Using the IIPC Media superheroes; a joint venture between Wildstorm/DC and IPC Media. Authors: Plotted by Alan Moore, Written by Leah Moore and John Reppion. No reports of problems of rights associated with this one.
If you are referring to Moore’s complaints about the treatment suffered by his League chapter 1 adaptation into film, then I’m not sure how anyone could see any of his even most vitriolic commentaries to be unfounded considering how they butchered his and O’Neil’s vision. Before one responds with “but they do that to any adaptation…the author sold away his rights…”, I would bring up WATCHMEN or Lord of The Rings as examples of a studio/director having the INTENT to make a faithful adaptation. In the case of LoEG, clearly from the final product, none of the filmmaking parties had intent to be faithful at all.
I see nothing in Mr. moore’s vitriolic statements that refer to pretense of ownership. He does in fact have authorship and ownership legally agreed to by all parties- Moore, with O’ Neil, authored and own their LEOG Books. They authored the versions of the various characters used in their LEOG books. But the estates and companies that hold trademark and copyright own the characters. The film company purchased the right to make an LOEG film. Moore and O’Neill had no idea that they could even negotiate for script approval or final edit approval or even to be on set. So yes “CAVEAT EMPTOR” and all that- they learned by getting burned, yes? Now since that and the V for Vendetta debacle, Moore refuses to ever deal with film adaptations of his comics again. Confusing the sentimental attachment, anger etc. they have and whether they have legal authorship of their book(even if they are new versions of old characters) is faulty reasoning. He is not “being pissy”- he is rightly angered about their book being given inferior treatment on screen. He may be a dilletante, but he is not wrong about being angry.
From a business side, you’ll have IP rights. And it will be easier to do all that legal Copyright stuff. Then you can make sequels and sell T-shirts and mugs with Mr ZombieSnowmanMetalSkeletonIceHeart on it and get rich and then make even more terrible sequels that you farm out to 3rd world developers that are technically compliment but all your die hard fans ultimately loathe whilst receiving 6.2 metacritic scores.
