Interesting thoughts and legal assertions regarding characters you create in CoH/CoV:
What Cryptic/NC is concerned with are generally:
1) Image of character — if you build it in the character generator. I’m not trying to say “we” own blue half capes, and I’m not trying to say we don’t. If you build a character in the generator, and then have it drawn, if it’s 100% the same character and you are profitting from it, then you might have a problem.
2) Character name & history – technically the character names/history that you create for CoH/CoV are owned by Cryptic/NCsoft. You can use them in fanfiction, etc., but you cannot profit from them.
3) History of Paragon City and all her associated characters (this is the obvious one, of course, and causes least confusion).
Obviously there are many characters with the same names in comic book history. And many that look similar. But if you take a character who exists on one of the servers, and use the same name and same look, and try to use it in a commercial enterprise, you’re entering dangerous waters. I’m not going to say if this is right or wrong — but if you can avoid all potential legal entanglements, why wouldn’t you?
Note: in the case of a character that existed *before* being created in CoH, and this can be proven, then Cryptic/NCsoft is obligated to force you to change the name/look of the character. So Rubberlad’s character, or let’s say I created a character from the old superhero game, Silver Age Sentinels, that I was involved with. In an exceptional case (like the Warren Ellis example I created earlier), Cryptic/NC might be so tickled to have a guest star that they would find a way to allow it. But in most cases the legal mine fields, and lawyer costs, and bad press, etc. is not worth it.
So once again. If you want to write/draw superheroes in a commerical enterprise, make sure they are original and don’t exist in CoH/CoV.
That’s Arctic Sun, one of the board moderators, speaking — well, not ex cathedra, but leaning on one arm of it.
So much for that new Torchielle TV series … though (aspects of) Psi-clone are possibly safe.
Certainly #3 is solid, and #1 could be strongly argued. There might be more questions raised on #2, if it ever went to court, though the legal uncertainty of it all would probably kill any media deal that was in the offing, regardless of the rights of it.