You need help...

It should be noted, however, that unless this is a truly new word you've invented, like glatt said, then a trademark application for a book title will almost definitely be rejected. Book titles are just generally considered fair game. It's sometimes possible to trademark a series title, but they're still likely to reject it unless you can show that someone else could make money on their fake book simply by capitalizing on the recognizability of your book--which means you can't just publish the series, it has to be wildly successful in order to trademark it.

So, in your example, both Spider-Man and X-Men could be considered infringeable trademarks because they are made up names. So those theoretically might be trademarked, especially because they are part of a series and are famous.

If they're only copyrighted and not trademarked, then you still could publish your competing comic book, and when they sued you, they'd have to show (and they would be successful, of course, but they'd have to show) that consumer confusion could occur between your comic and theirs based on title alone. Again, they would win because their brand is extremely well known, but if it weren't, they'd be likely to lose.

Consider, for example, these two books, which are both named "The Forever War" and have nothing to do with one another. Neither of them is a national phenomenon like the stuff Marvel owns, but both were bestsellers, and both are definitely copyrighted because they came through traditional publishers who do that sort of thing as a matter of course. The existence of the first one did not stop the publication of the second one, and no publisher would ever bother suing in a situation like this because they'd be sure to lose.

The point is, you don't really have to formally copyright or trademark any part of your graphic novel. If they steal your whole graphic novel from beginning to end, you could still sue them and all you have to show is that you created it first, which you could do through docs on your computer even if you never published it at all. And if they steal only your title, I'm sorry, but there is honestly nothing you can do about it.
 

Best of luck! Are you doing the illustrations as well?

Clodfobble wrote:

Best of luck! Are you doing the illustrations as well?

I'd actually been spending hours and hours of time practicing my illustration techniques, doing studies of value, texture, anatomy, motion; but realized I did not know what I wanted to draw.

Subsequently I became interested in a world-building concept I had been scribbling notes about for several years, but, now, seriously trying to document the details and parameters of this world.

I thought, now, about the concepts and images of the world, but realized it would be sterile without people living in this world with genuine feelings and motivations.

This last part has been difficult, and rewarding. I've reconnected with the authors whose work inspired me as a youth, studied characters from popular culture, and done a great deal of introspection.

Finally, I've begun thinking in complete scenes-- the stories and feelings of people living in a specific world, and, when I sketch out visual ideas now, I have something that I feel is worth drawing.

griff wrote:

Good luck man! This sounds interesting.

It's very interesting to me.. so if I follow my instincts and apply great effort and diligence, I expect to produce something which is an expression of these things which I find interesting.

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.--Joseph Campbell

It's not really a made up word, it's a unique combination of two words. The first part is a new-ish word, first added to the dictionary (Oxford) in 2012; the second part is a common word, which gained new meaning as an obscure internet concept in 2011, then got it's own subreddit about 5 years later, and then about 5 years after that, became a popular trend on YouTube.

Like, if the concept "Dungeons and Dragons" was built out of words like "janky terraforming"

Turns out, notes on my phone, whiteboard, and one massive Word document is what I've been using.

The words, by the way, were--



Currently, it looks like only three people have ever said this.
Once on  6/4/2022 (about Fallout 76), one comment from '6 yr. ago' about the DC cinematic universe, and another post from '1 mo. ago' that appears to have been deleted, about Star Wars.

Last edited by Flint (11/22/2023 4:27 pm)

You get what it is, right? It's an "iceberg" OF those "ret.roactive" + "con.tinuity" things.
The iceberg format dives deeper and deeper into increasingly obscure facts about a subject.

So an iceberg of, those things, is a deep dive into, 'edits to reality' ...
The first layer would be obvious tropes, 'dream within a dream' plot twists..
The second layer would quickly burn through everything from Futurama's summary of simulation theory.
Subsequent layers would construct a labyrinth of misdirection, recursion, and be as confusing as the movie Primer.
Deep down into the Iceberg are truths that lie deep within the author's mind, concealed from the reader and the characters alike. Plot twists that have been fundamentally baked into the worldbuilding.
At the bottom of the iceberg is the answer to the deepest mysteries of life, the universe, and everything. The author doesn't know these things, but he will spend the rest of his life working on this problem.