Marvel Is Getting Sued For Lookalike Costume Designs In ‘Avengers’ Films
Image via Marvel
In a real-life episode that could surface memories of the Avengers: Endgame scene with two Captain Americas, a comic book publisher from Montreal, Canada is suing Disney and Marvel Entertainment over the supposedly repeated appropriations of its costume designs across Iron Man, Avengers, and Ant-man films.
Canadian news outlet CTV News reports that comic book publisher Horizon Comics and its founders, Ben and Raymond Lai, are asking for damages and for Marvel to cease “deliberate and persistent infringement” of their designs from the three-volume Radix series, published between December 2001 and April 2002 by Image Comics—a direct rival of Marvel.
The tension began in 2013, when Horizon Comics filed a suit in the US claiming that Marvel had designed a similar armored costume to its own for Robert Downey Jr.’s appearance in the third Iron Man movie. It was “strikingly similar to the suit worn by a Caliban, one of the characters portrayed in Horizon’s Works Radix 1,” an updated document reads.
Artists Ben Lai and Ray Lai claim #Marvel ripped off their comic "Radix" for the design of #IronMan's movie armor. pic.twitter.com/FsU2qLFbLh
— Flick Bench (@flickbench) June 26, 2015
The 2013 complaint was partially dismissed. The court, nevertheless, agreed that there were some resemblances between the Caliban suit and the film’s poster, and allowed the case to proceed. But it was ultimately decided that there was no infringement made by Marvel.
According to Horizon Comics’ new filing, the independent firm was left with legal bills of over CA$1.5 million (US$1.2 million) after this suit, and did not have the finances to prolong the battle.
On April 22, 2021, attorneys Julie Desrosiers and Patricia Henault detailed in a new document that Marvel’s now-editor-in-chief, Chester Bror Cebulski, had previously approached the Horizon Comics founders to illustrate for Marvel, but they declined. In 2002, the Lai brothers were approached by Marvel again, and this time, they consented to working on the Thor and X-Men comics.
“It was with Radix that we became known and recognized in the American comic book industry,” noted Henault, one of the lawyers representing Horizon Comics. “We made a name for ourselves. It allowed us to work all over the place, including with Marvel.”
However, the firm could no longer tolerate Marvel’s “repeat infringement.”
“After years of litigation in the US and substantial sums, they continue to copy our characters,” Henault added. “It’s causing us significant damage and impacting our ability to make a living as artists. It is clear that we cannot accept this repeated behavior. The only way to make things right was to file these proceedings.”
In addition, the attorneys pointed out more similarities between its own costume designs and outfits in newer Marvel films, including “consistent” resemblances in Iron Man’s suit from 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War with “the Radix character Maxwell,” and outfits from Ant-man and Wasp as opposed to those of Radix 2’s military characters.
You can view the alleged lookalike designs here.
[via Little Black Book, images via OnePlus]
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