Why Marvel Was ‘Forced’ to Change It Weirdest Take on Superman For Fear of a DC Lawsuit

Welcome to the 937th installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. In the third legend of an all-Superman edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed, find out why Marvel was “forced” to change its weirdest take on Superman for fear that DC would sue over it.

Something that is important to note is that, while even now, there is a fairly close relationship between the various comic book professionals that make up what we call the “comic book industry,” back in the old days, that relationship was EXTREMELY close. As an example that I’ve given before, few things made it more clear just how interwoven the lives of these companies were than the fact that Maurice Coyne, one of the three men who got together to form MLJ Comics (based on the first initial of each of their names: Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit, and John L. Goldwater) continued to do the books for Martin Goodman on Goodman’s comic book line even after Coyne was one of the owners of a rival comic book company. That’s just how these guys rolled back then. It’s similar to how National Comics (now DC) allowed Marvel to distribute their comics through DC’s distribution system in the late 1950s after Marvel’s distributor went out of business.

In his capacity at MLJ, Coyne threatened Goodman with a lawsuit over the fact that Captain America‘s original triangular shield looked too similar to MLJ’s Shield character, so Marvel changed it to a round shield very quickly.

That’s the thing, though, these “lawsuits” threats were often EXTREMELY informal, and sometimes, it didn’t even have to EXIST, as there would be cases where people like Stan Lee would make changes because they EXPECTED a lawsuit threat (this would happen with the Comics Code, as well, people would make changes based on what they THOUGHT the Comics Code Authority would request). That sort of thing is what led to Marvel being “forced” to change its take on Wundarr, a Steve Gerber creation was considered to be just a bit too close to Superman.

Who was Wundarr, and how was he like Superman?

In Fear #17, Steve Gerber (with artists Val Mayerik and Sal Trapani), had Man-Thing discover a rocket that had crashlanded in the Florida Everglades decades earlier. Man-Thing smashes it open, and a mysterious alien being emerges!

Note how even his color scheme is red and blue, like Superman.

We then see the origins of this new character, and, obviousy, it’s an outright redo of Superman’s origin, with a man like Jor-El building a planet to escape a seemingly doomed planet. The scientist and his wife are killed, but they have their son escape in the rocket. He crash lands, and an elderly couple consider seeing what’s up, but they don’t want to get involved, in another amusing riff on Supermans’ origin (and how the Kents DID investigate, and then adopt the baby Kal-El)…

The being (he’s called Wundarr on the cover, but now that I think about it, I don’t know if he is actually named in this issue) then grew up living just inside the rocket ship, which he thought was his whole world…

He now thinks Man-Thing is his mother, and when that doesn’t work out, Wundarr goes kind of nuts with his superpowers.

Eventually, Man-Thing’s touch drives Wundarr away (as his fear causes him to burn)…

Okay, so this then leads to the issue over whether Gerber was TOO close to Superman!

How was Wundarr forced to change due to concerns over DC suing?

In TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Creator #6, Roy Thomas, the editor on the issue, noted:

We got in some trouble over one of his [i.e., Gerber’s] “Man-Thing” stories, with the Wundarr character, where he made the origin too close to Superman. And that was my responsibility. I didn’t watch him closely enough. Basically, I felt that writers and artists understood how far they could go, and sometimes Steve would try to push the envelope a little bit. Sometimes his judgment was to push as far as he could and not worry so much about whether he was going to get the company into hot water. And by the time we would see a story — Stan and I — it had already been drawn and we’d try to make some changes it [sic], but they weren’t quite enough. And DC ended up complaining about it, perhaps justly so, and Stan was really angry about it, at me and especially at Steve…

Gerber was shocked that DC appeared to care about his parody, explaining in TwoMorrows’ Back Issue #31:

What I had intended as parody, DC saw as plagiarism. From what I was told, there were angry words exchanged, but it never got anywhere near a courtroom. Marvel agreed to do another Wundarr story that would set him drastically apart from Superman — which is what I had always intended — and that was that. (Wundarr’s home planet never exploded. His father was the alarmist the Krypton elders supposed Jor-El to be.) I’m sure Roy must have conveyed to me Stan’s displeasure with the incident. Under the circumstances, of course, Stan had every right to be displeased. I’m still amazed, though, that DC took it so seriously.

Now, did DC ACTUALLY threaten to sue, or did Stan Lee just get mad because he THOUGHT DC would sue? I don’t know the answer. I tend to believe that someone DID tell Stan Lee that they were pissed, but whatever the case may be, the end result was Gerber having to quickly make changes to Wundarr, including a new costume that was very much NOT red and blue in Marvel Two-In-One #3…

Wundarr went through some other changes after this that I’ll write about in the future.

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That’s it for Comic Book Legends Revealed #937! Check back soon for the next installment! Be sure to check out my Entertainment Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film and TV. Plus, Pop Culture References also has some brand-new Entertainment and Sports Legends Revealeds!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com.