Marvel has really got to sort out the legal problems with their acclaimed 1970s series, “Master of Kung Fu”. It’s at the top of everyone’s want list, we the fans will gladly pay whatever extra it takes to clear the Fu Manchu character with the Sax Rohmer Estate. It’s not like we are seeing any Fu Manchu novels in the bookstores, the character is dormant, and the most sought after Marvel series of the 1970s remains in reprint limbo. Absurd.
apophenia wrote:
^I read somewhere that any Shang-Chi reprints are tied up due to rights issues involving Fu Manchu (at least the earlier issues)…any truth to that?
Based on everything I’ve read on these boards over the years, that is exactly correct. And, these licensing issues may involve more than just the Fu Manchu character. I believe that Marvel would have probably reprinted MOKF already (due to overwhelming fan demand) if not for these rights/licensing issues. Also, note that I have just a rough, rudimentary understanding about this – though, this issue has been discussed on these boards at length and in greater detail in the past (usually on threads dedicated to MOKF).
As I’ve said before on earlier threads, I would be more than happy to pay up to $50 more than the usual cost for a MOKF Omnibus, if that higher cost were necessary to justify these reprints (due to the rights). However, now that Omnibuses seem to be going up in price due to increased content anyway (in some cases), that may not be an issue.
The copyright for Fu Manchu is expired but the owners have registered it as a trademark. This copyright isn’t expired in Europe, which is why Alan Moore didn’t use the name in LOEG. The Fah Lo Suee copyright isn’t expired.
However, Marvel doesn’t have to use it as trademark. So what we have is TM owners trying to extend the copyright by registering the character’s name as a TM. This is a legal limbo because nobody knows how would courts react if someone used Fu Manchu as a character. In 2006 MOKF, Moench didn’t use the Fu Manchu name. Marvel may not be willing to pay for the use of a name to which the TM owners have no right as a copyright.
(A trademark is what you put on a product to identify it. The problem is in determining what is the product. If the product is the printed comic book, you can have a comic where you have Fu Manchu as a character as long as the name isn’t on the cover. But if you consider that characters are also products–and that’s what big companies do, they register characters, not just titles–then having a comic with a Fu Manchu character is a liability.
IMO I think the risk is negligible.
Ironically, there is less risk in plagiarising the first Fu Manchu stories (and chaging the names) than in using Fu Manchu in entirely new stories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AqMgDneets
from http://www.blackgate.com/2010/07/23/fu-manchu-in-comics/
The longest-running comic adaptation of Rohmer’s venerable character was Marvel’s Master of Kung-Fu (1972-1983). Marvel licensed Sax Rohmer’s characters from the author’s widow and used them as supporting players from which to build a series capitalizing on the martial arts craze of the early seventies, the popularity of the five Christopher Lee Fu Manchu films of the mid-sixties, and the successful Pyramid paperback reprints of Rohmer’s series in the sixties and early seventies.
The series’ unconventional hero, Shang-Chi resembled both Bruce Lee and David Carradine in Paul Gulacy’s highly-stylized artwork. Mrs. Rohmer and longtime Fu Manchu fans were outraged with the violence and dishonorable actions of the Devil Doctor in Doug Moench’s scripts at the time.
In hindsight, Moench had done his homework well apart from some early errors in characterization in the first few issues. His take on the material was intelligent, engaging, and, most importantly, respectful to Chinese culture.
Mrs. Rohmer died in 1979 and while her husband’s longtime assistant Cay Van Ash and I were later to benefit from the Literary Estate’s willingness to see the book series continue, Marvel Comics has been less successful in extending a license for the characters in comic form.
This has meant that their periodic revivals of the Shang-Chi character are prevented from including Rohmer’s characters, but has the larger impact of preventing Marvel from reprinting the series despite a great deal of popular demand from comics fans.
Given the quality of Moench’s scripts and Gulacy’s art and the ongoing need to combat the harm done by yellowface film portrayals and offensive caricatures in earlier comic appearances, seeing Master of Kung-Fu reprinted or adapted to the silver screen (like so many other Marvel properties) would only help increase public awareness and rehabilitate the perception of Rohmer’s work.
Hopefully, Marvel and the Rohmer Estate can reconcile their differences to everyone’s mutual benefit in the near future.
A gorgeous cover by premier artist Paul Gulacy.
from http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2009/08/07/fridays-beach-reading/
Whenever comics geeks discuss Marvel’s best books of the 1970s, MoKF is inevitably mentioned and deservedly so. Created by Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin, what could have been a heartless, mindless attempt to cash in on two hot cultural trends of the early ‘70s—martial arts and pulp character revivals—was from the beginning a thoughtful, even poetic, exploration of the search for spirituality and honor in a violent world that respects and values neither, without forgetting that it was also a colorful action series pitting pajama-clad pacifist and kung fu whiz kid Shang-Chi against his father, the immortal and malevolent Dr. Fu Manchu and other nasty would-be worldbeaters. A series noted for its complex plots, subtle characterization and spectacular fight scenes, it features the career-best work of longtime writer Doug Moench and artists Paul Gulacy, Mike Zeck and Gene Day. I’m loving every minute of it.