A pair of comic-book artists may have found a secret weakness in superhero-factory Marvel’s legal armor.
A Manhattan federal judge OK’d part of Ben and Ray Lai’s copyright lawsuit accusing Disney and Marvel of ripping off their company, Horizon Comics, when it revived “Iron Man” for the big screen.
Manhattan federal Judge Paul Oetken tossed the bulk of the lawsuit, which claimed that the Iron Man character — as revived for film in 2008 — was a copycat of the Lai brothers’ “Radix” comics, which also features futuristic fighters wearing full-body armor.
But the judge allowed a smaller claim by the Lai brothers to move forward involving a 2013 “Iron Man 3” movie poster featuring a kneeling Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, the industrialist-turned-armor-plated superhero.
That poster, and one of a kneeling Radix character in a similar pose, shared a “similarity of expression” sufficient to survive the powerful Hollywood studios’ motion to dismiss, the judge said.
The Lai brothers said they created the Radix series in 2001 at a time when Iron Man, who first appeared in comic books in 1963, was still “wearing simple spandex-like attire and minimal armor.”
“It was not until after the Lai brother’s submitted their work in Radix … that Marvel began depicting Iron Man wearing the suits,” their lawsuit claimed.
Judge Oetken agreed that Iron Man’s armor had similarities to the armor worn by Radix characters, but said that there were too many differences to let that part of the copyright claim move forward.
The Radix series takes place in a futuristic society where the inhabitants’ “only memory is of the past three years,” according to comicvine.gamespot.com. The series “four would-be heroes” attempt to solve the riddle and save the human race, the comic web site said.
“My brother Ben and I are thrilled that the judge, despite Marvel’s and Disney’s efforts to have the case thrown out, has recognized that we have a legitimate claim,” Ray Lai said in a statement provided by their lawyer, Jeffrey Wiesner.
A lawyer for the defendants, which also include Paramount Pictures, declined to comment.
The brothers claimed Marvel had to have known of their Radix series because it’s what got them hired as freelance artists for a predecessor company in 2002 and 2003.
Back in 2002, Radix won some publicity after MIT apologized for using one of Radix’s images to win a $50-million research grant for what became the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology, the lawsuit said. That publicity paved the way for them to work on comic book series including Marvel’s “X-Men” and “Thor” and Hasbro’s “G.I. Joe,” they said.