There just aren't enough hours in the day to talk about all the times DC, Marvel and other companies have pursued outrageous claims like the Robin vs. Robyn case. Not long ago, DC filed a complaint about soccer organization Valencia for using a Bat-logo it found too similar to Batman's, even though Valencia has been using bat-logos since 1919, twenty years before Batman's creation. Then there was the time in the 1990s when Archie Comics almost (accidentally) bullied a little girl named Veronica out of the domain name Veronica.org. Every once in a while, though, a big comics publisher finds itself on the receiving end. Such was the curious case of DC Comics, publishers of Batman, being sued by the city of Batman, in the Batman Province near the Batman River, in Turkey. The mayor of Batman, Huseyin Kalkan, said quite plainly that "There is only one Batman in the world," ignoring the Batman city in Iran. He also blamed the psychological stress caused by association with the Dark Knight films for his society's high rate of female suicide... sorry, that should be tendency to shame young girls into suicide. Nothing more was heard about this lawsuit after it was announced, so Kalkan may have realized he was walking into a no-win situation, PR-wise. Frankly, just reading that previous paragraph is enough to make someone want to visualize Batman swinging over there to punch a few people in the face. There are plenty more ludicrous lawsuits percolating through the comics world. Know one we missed? Nominate it in the comments!
T Campbell has written quite a few online comics series and selected work for Marvel, Archie and Tokyopop. His longest-running works are Fans, Penny and Aggie-- and his current project with co-writer Phil Kahn, Guilded Age.
