ComicCollx Daily — Tuesday, September 8, 2026

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Good morning. A 1938 comic just changed hands for $15 million, DC and Marvel lost their decades-old trademark on Super Hero, and Black Cat joins the mutant roster. Here's what moved the market.

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has declared Super Hero a generic term, stripping DC Comics and Marvel Entertainment of their joint trademark protection. The ruling ends nearly five decades of exclusive control over the phrase, which the two publishers had co-owned since 1979 through a series of trademark registrations covering merchandise, comic books, and other media.

The USPTO determination means any publisher, toy maker, or entertainment company can now use Super Hero in product names, marketing, and branding without seeking permission or paying licensing fees. The decision follows a challenge filed by a third party arguing that the term had become too widely used in everyday language to qualify for trademark protection under federal law.

The immediate impact hits licensing deals and merchandising agreements that relied on the trademark's exclusivity. Smaller publishers who previously avoided the phrase can now market Super Hero comics directly, while toy manufacturers no longer face legal threats for using the term on packaging. DC and Marvel retain copyrights to individual characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and the Avengers, but they cannot block competitors from describing those characters as superheroes in promotional materials.

The ruling also affects secondary markets. Collectors have long used Super Hero as shorthand for a category spanning Golden Age to modern books, and auction houses routinely deploy the term in lot descriptions. That usage was always technically a gray area under the trademark; now it's unambiguous fair game. Expect grading companies and marketplaces to lean harder into Super Hero language in labels and search filters, making it easier for buyers to discover books across publisher lines.

Why it matters: This is the biggest shift in comic intellectual property since the Siegel and Shuster Superman lawsuits. DC and Marvel built empires partly by controlling who could call their characters superheroes in commerce, and that control just evaporated. For collectors, it means more competition in the market as indie publishers flood shelves with Super Hero branding, potentially diluting the Big Two's dominance and creating new speculation targets outside the traditional Marvel-DC duopoly.

Read at source (Google News - Superhero Comics) →

Black Cat is a mutant now Marvel Comics has retconned Felicia Hardy, the Black Cat, into a mutant ahead of the Avengers: Doomsday storyline. The change alters decades of continuity for the Spider-Man supporting character, who debuted in 1979 as a non-powered cat burglar before gaining probability-altering abilities through scientific means. The mutant designation opens the door for Black Cat to join X-Men titles and appear in mutant-focused events, a move that could lift demand for her first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #194 and key storylines like Maximum Carnage. Read at source (Bleeding Cool) →

Dark Horse may lose Star Wars license CBR reports that Dark Horse Comics' current run with the Star Wars license could be ending, with changes ahead for the publisher. Dark Horse held Star Wars from 1991 to 2014 before Marvel reclaimed it, then regained rights in 2022 for a second era of titles. If the license shifts again, it would mark the third publisher transition for Star Wars comics in 15 years and could create a final wave of speculation on Dark Horse Star Wars variants and limited series before they go out of print. Read at source (CBR) →

Gloria Steinem dead at 92 Feminist icon Gloria Steinem has died at age 92. The Comics Beat obituary notes her role in restoring Wonder Woman to her classic 1972 appearance after the character had been depowered in the late 1960s, a change that aligned with Steinem's broader advocacy for women's rights. Steinem famously featured Wonder Woman on the cover of the first standalone issue of Ms. magazine in 1972, cementing the character's status as a feminist symbol and influencing DC's editorial direction for decades. Read at source (The Comics Beat) →

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