Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

The other day, my pal Brian Foss suggested that I do a feature on how Marvel used Fu Manchu in their comic books after they lost the rights to the character. So I did that feature, which you can read right here. That piece, though, seemed to cause almost as many questions as it did answers! A number of readers wrote in about stuff that they didn't quite understand about the particulars of the situation, so I figured I'd lay it all out here.

As noted earlier, the British author Sax Rohmer debuted the Asian supervillain, Fu Manchu, in the novel The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, which was serialized from 1912 until 1913, at which point it was collected as a novel...

A number of readers wrote in to make it clear that the famous Fu Manchu facial hair did not originate in the novels, as Fu Manchu was clean shaven in them. It was not until the movies started coming out featuring the character that the facial hair came about and even there, it wasn't even right away, as there were a whole lot of movies made starring the notorious villain in those years...

In any event, the character stopped appearing in novels after a while and after Rohmer's death, his estate was mostly looking to license the character for TV and films, and so they were not all that concerned about comic book licensing, so the deal that they cut with Marvel Comics in the mid-1970s was almost more of an afterthought. In any event, Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin used the Fu Manchu license as part of their comic book series starring Shang-Chi, a new character that was the son of Fu Manchu and who turned against his father and served the side of good against his father's evil...

He graduated into his own series and soon, Doug Moench took over as the writer on the series and then three notable artists - Paul Gulacy, Mike Zeck and Gene Day - all had impressive runs on the book with Moench. Moench left Marvel in the early 1980s and Master of Kung Fu was canceled soon after that. Naturally, the licensing deal with Marvel and the Rohmer estate lapsed, as Marvel was not going to pay to keep the rights to a character that they were no longer using.

That caused a problem, however, when Marvel wanted to use the characters again, as the company no longer had the rights to one of the major characters from the series. That led to the previous article, where I wrote about how Marvel got around it by using different versions of the character and just making a point to not call him Fu Manchu.

This raises a number of questions, like "Wait, you can just use characters that you licensed without the license so long as you don't use their name?" and "Is Fu Manchu even copyrighted any more?" and, of course, "Wait, didn't they eventually collect Master of Kung Fu?"

Let's get into all three of them!

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How can Marvel use Fu Manchu if the licensing deal is expired, even if they don't name him?

As you well know, the copyrights on characters have an expiration date and the original Fu Manchu novels have been in the public domain for a number of years. That means that anyone can use those stories without issue. So Marvel can use Fu Manchu as a character in their stories.

Wait, but if the stories are public domain, then why the name changes?

While the stories themselves have entered the public domain a long time ago, the Sax Rohmer estate has received a TRADEMARK on the name "Fu Manchu." Thus, Marvel would not be able to use the name on covers or any kind of advertising and, to be frank, such limitations are more trouble than they are worth. For instance, DC has been able to call their hero "Captain Marvel" within the comics for years while Marvel held the trademark on "Captain Marvel," but eventually DC got sick of that and just decided to re-name the character Shazam. It's a similar deal here - if you plan on using a character in stories, you want to be able to promote the character or use their names on book covers, ya know?

So why can't they collect the stories and just not use Fu Manchu's name on the cover?

This is likely more a situation of the particulars of the original licensing deal than anything else. If you have a licensing deal with someone, it typically includes provisions as to how the work can be reprinted later on. This is why IDW and Dark Horse were able to reprint G.I. Joe and Star Wars comics that Marvel originally produced after those two companies licensed the rights to G.I. Joe and Star Wars, respectively.

However, Marvel managed to cut a deal with the Rohmer estate and they approved a four-omnibi collection of the entire Master of Kung Fun series a couple of years ago...

I imagine that the Rohmer estate is reasonable enough. They know there isn't exactly some huge demand for comic book adaptations of Fu Manchu, so they worked out a deal to get some money rather than no money.

Okay, folks, thanks for the many questions on this topic! I hope that I answered them all! If you still have questions or if you want to ask a different question about comic books, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!