You ever see a blurb reported online and you can practically hear the sound of the other shoe dropping? That’s what I’m hearing when I see Comics Alliance’s report that porn company Vivid Entertainment is starting an imprint, Vivid Superhero, that specializes in, you guessed it, porn “parodies” of superhero movies. This is coming off the buzz created by the trailer for the BATMAN XXX PARODY you might have heard about at Lying the Gutters or on Attack of the Show. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s getting attention for its notably-high production values and its employing of costume and production designers from the 60’s BATMAN show to get that elusive authentic look.
The “other shoe” I referred to before will most surely be dropped by Time Warner and Disney’s lawyers, who probably aren’t going to be seeing these as “tributes” to their Marvel and DC properties. For one, you’ll probably remember that “superhero” is a trademark term that’s jointly owned by both companies. I recall that the indy comic SUPER HERO HAPPY HOUR had to change its name because of that and I’m pretty sure their corporate people are going to be even less sympathetic to a big established media company like Vivid using that name. I’m not a legal expert, either, but my understanding from some of the commentary on this is that the recent BATMAN porn hasn’t gotten away with it because it’s a “parody”, but because there’s still some dispute over which company has the rights to the 60’s BATMAN show.
Anyway, Vivid’s chair, Steven Hirsch, breaks it down like this…
" The parodies under this new imprint will pay tribute to the world's most popular comic heroes... [we’ve] already started pre-production on a parody of Superman, which will be followed by those of The Green Hornet , Spider-Man , Wonder Woman , Captain America , Thor , and The Incredible Hulk . [We hope to] mine the really rich treasure of superheroes and have a lot of fun doing it."
Like I said, you won’t have to count too many minutes before there’s a big legal hullaballoo about this.
-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Studios and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia. Pre-order the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover now on Amazon.com.