“Our Lawyers Advise You Not to Print This”: Marvel’s Wonder Woman Is the Perfect Revenge for DC’s Legal Threats

DC has few heroes more iconic than Wonder Woman, and yet thanks to a decades-old squabble, a hero of that name also technically exists within the Marvel Universe. Hardcore comic fans know that many famous superheroes have major lawsuits in their past (few more than DC’s Captain Marvel/Shazam), but Marvel’s attitude to Wonder Woman is definitely the funniest example.

In 1964, Simon Williams’ Wonder Man hit shelves, debuting in Stan Lee and Don Heck’s The Avengers #9. However, while the character would later be pivotal to Marvel lore, he was soon killed off and forgotten. While fans at the time might have seen Wonder Man’s death as a poignant ending to his story, the truth is that Marvel was getting pressure from DC Comics, which wasn’t happy that its main competitor was using a hero with ‘Wonder’ in their name.

DC had actually debuted its own Wonder Man years earlier – a one-time rival of Superman – but (according to Lee) also had concerns about protecting Wonder Woman’s brand. Lee agreed to drop Simon Williams, and so he was particularly irritated when – a decade later – DC began publishing the adventures of Power Girl. Lee believed that this character posed the same problem to Marvel’s Power Man (aka Luke Cage) as Wonder Man had to Wonder Woman. In a speech at James Madison University transcribed by The Comics Journal, Lee said:

You know, years ago we brought out Wonder Man, and they sued us because they had Wonder Woman, and me, being a gentleman [Laughter], I said okay, I’ll discontinue Wonder Man. And all of a sudden they’ve got Power Girl. Oh boy. How unfair.

Stan Lee Resented DC’s Power Girl

Marvel Even Brought Back Wonder Man to Spite DC

Lee’s comments were no idle threat – within the same year of Power Girl’s debut, Wonder Man returned in the pages of Avengers #151 (from Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter, Steve Englehart and George Perez.) Seeking to clarify Lee’s motivations in bringing back Simon Williams, CBR managed to get in contact with editor Jim Shooter and inquire whether Marvel was intentionally firing back at DC:

I asked Jim Shooter (editor and co-writer of the issue in question) if the return of Wonder Man was because of the introduction of Power Girl, and he said, “Yes.”

The Joke Version of Wonder Man Got Genius Revenge on DC

However, Marvel’s fun didn’t stop there. In 1982’s What If? #34, Mark Gruenwald and Brett Breeding published a series of single-panel comics posing jokey hypothetical questions. One such comic asks “What if Wonder Man were a woman — and Power Man were a girl?” Without technically using the names ‘Wonder Woman’ or ‘Power Girl,’ this allowed Marvel to debut its own heroes using DC’s legally protected names, with each being a gender-swapped version of its own heroes. The panel even includes a letter from Marvel’s “Distinguished Competitor” threatening legal action.

Lee’s Bad Blood with DC Didn’t Stop Later Collaboration

Lee seems to have eventually been satisfied by the outcome, especially since he later introduced his own version of Wonder Woman for DC alongside Jim Lee – part of his Just Imagine… series which reimagined popular Justice League characters. Stories of comic lawsuits tend to be disheartening, full of comic creators who don’t get the money or credit they were entitled to. However, Marvel and DC’s back-and-forth shots over Power Man and Wonder Womanare entertaining thanks to being a mostly editorial tussle – one that ended up giving fans some great characters, and the knowledge that somewhere out there in the vast Marvel Multiverse, Marvel’s Wonder Woman is fighting the good fight – even if the publisher can never actually identify her by name.

Source: Brian Cronin, CBR; Jim Dawson, The Comics Journal