City Of Heroes: Tycho and Penny Arcade on the Marvel Lawsuit

Penny Arcade has long been a well-loved facet of the on-line community, especially the MMORPG neighborhood of that community. The man behind the comic strip is Jerry Parkinson, known rock n' roller and talented web comic artist, who goes by the webnick, Tycho.

Tycho recently put up his illustrated view of the Marvel vs. Cryptic/NCSoft lawsuit HERE.

It's refreshing to see someone take a real stance on the issues. So far, no one had so much as mentioned the Pitt/Aniston break-up. It was high time. Tycho's perspective on the lawsuit was fairly strong as well. It was followed up with an entire column HERE.

That is the end of the news portion of this article. Enter the editorial...

While it may be humorous to poke fun at the "a lawyer I know told me" crowd, rebutting with a blog as your own source of information might be slightly ill-advised. I keep hearing how unique Wolverine's claws are. Did anyone but me read Faust the comic book? It was a more mature title but the guy had metal claws on the back of his hand. The guy even wore a mask remarkably similar to Wolverine's.

This argument could be used for any power. How about beams from the eyes? Superman had them first. In fact, they were red long before Cyclops ever donned a visor. Is it the visor that makes them different? Who came first, Doctor Solar or Cyke? Bony spikes? Marrow or Doomsday. We can get really detailed about poisons and who is resembled more, but the truth is that both had bony protrusions.

What does all this mean to the lay-person? Well, it means nothing. While we all sit around fantasizing about comic book trivia experts battling it out in the wooden room of justice, the lay-person does not have the wherewithall to construct a legal argument or understand how the law works anymore. If they did, it wouldn't take three years of law school and extensive testing to get to play in a courtroom. What the issue boils down to for the lay-person is how it effects them as a person.

The people who play City of Heroes do so out of a love for superheroes. That love was engendered by Marvel and DC. Now one of the big boys is taking a hammer to that love. That's the bottom line. One of the enduring pieces of advice from my dad was to never bite the hand that feeds you. Well, Marvel's taking a chomp out of about 200 thousand pairs of paws with this one.

The flip-side to that coin are the number of clones I see on the servers. I urge the community to report every single one you see. Get them out of the game so we don't give Marvel more bullets to launch our way. "Sticking it to the man" is not as important as keeping our fun rolling along.

So, until I hear "Make Mine Monopoly" from the comic giant, to the City of Heroes I say, "Excelsior!"