Former Marvel president Bill Jemas announced he is going back to his roots with the launch of trading card game company True Justice For All — with both printed and online cards.
As a leader at Fleer Corp, a Marvel subsidiary in the mid-90s, Jemas launched a new entertainment card business. And the team is launching a Kickstarter campaign on November 19 for a Superman-related card game.
He is now joining forces with some of his Marvel and Fleer team members to publish games that promote positive changes by weaving interesting and important information into fast, fun game play. Fans can play the virtual version of the My First Monster Starter Deck for free at justiceforalgame.com. Printed starter decks are scheduled for release next Summer.
The company doesn’t have rights related to the DC Comics, but it does have access to Superman Animated Shorts that have fallen into the public domain, Jemas said in an interview with GamesBeat.
“At Marvel, in the early 2000s, my team created many of the most interesting, important, and funny stories in Marvel’s history,” said Jemas. “We treated the Marvel Universe like a curated creative commons: opening the doors to writers and artists long excluded or ignored by Marvel and the Distinguished Competition, then giving them creative freedom and marketing support.”
Superman Animated Shorts were created in the 1940s, and the copyrights expired in the 1960s onward. At this point, they’re in the clear. Jemas said his work is not treading on DC Comics rights, and it is only referencing Superman with the phrase “powered by Superman Animated Shorts.”
He added, “We would like to do something like that with the universe established by those fantastic Superman shorts. From Baum’s books came The Wiz and Wicked; from Homer’s epic came Nolan’s Odyssey. Free from corporate control, who knows what we will all do with the copyright-free Superman Universe (©-FSU)?”
Powered by an all-new innovative TCG platform called the Supersets System, True Justice will kick-off with the release of the Justice For All trading card games – simple, collectible and strategic games based on the beloved 1940s Superman animated shorts produced by Fleisher Studios, which are now in the public domain. In the 1940s, the famous Fleischer Studios produced 17 Superman animated shorts (the “Originals”).
Back in the 1990s, Jemas’ Fleer dominated the industry with a succession of best sellers including Fleer Ultra X-Men, Marvel Cards Spider-Man, Marvel Masterpieces, Fleer’s Marvel Flair and Marvel Metal, along with Marvel’s mighty OverPower Trading Card Game.
Lush, cinematic, and years ahead of their time, the Originals helped define the superhero on screen. Then, in the 1960s, when their copyrights were not renewed, the Originals passed into the public domain. All Justice for All games, including My First Monster and America First, will help build ©-FSU one card at a time.
They will feature frames from the Originals. To create the art and new stories set in the same universe as the Originals, True Justice is commissioning the next generation of writers and artists. True Justice will use this creative work in new games, and all rights will be released under a Creative Commons license.
“Nearly 90 years after the first Superman stories, we can finally reveal new truths: that Krypton was destroyed but not by an explosion; about the twelve alien children who lived alongside Superman in an orphanage; and how a handful of wealthy malefactors have been waging a never-ending battle against truth, justice, and the American way,” said Jemas.
Games for Good
All Justice For All games promote positive changes by delivering interesting and important information along with fast, fun game play.
For example, America First is based on Fleischer’s Destruction, Inc., first released in December 1942, in the wake of attacks by American Nazi saboteurs on at least eight of the nation’s munitions plants and armories. Twelve Special Cards reveal historical facts about the powerful people who drove America’s pre-war Nazi movement, and the private citizens who fought them for truth, justice, and democracy.
“Fleischer Studios did depict Superman stopping the sabotage of an American munitions plant,” Jemas said. “But it is telling that the studio depicted the saboteurs as working for cash from some unnamed source, and not for the massive, rampant pro-Nazi movement operating in plain sight before the war.”
It’s a Bird . . . and it’s Superman!
Justice for All games run on Jemas’ innovative Supersets System. Supersets is super simple, super strategic, and super stretchy. You can read the rules and start playing in five minutes. You’ll make dozens of interesting decisions in every game. And you can mix, match, and stack your deck with any cards from any Supersets game.
“My colleagues and I are developing a wide array of Supersets games in conjunction with several separate corporations”, Jemas said, “we have True Justice with its Justice for All series and Another Door Comics with The Boy in the Bot; then there’s Mythik Entertainment with the Hindu Pantheon and Chirp Up with six Starter Decks featuring beautiful bird art and photography.”
Chirp Up’s first two virtual games are free to play here: https://chirpupgame.com/ and printed decks will be available through DCBS in December.
Play Free Now
To open the ©-FSU, True Justice has adapted the first Justice for All Starter Deck into an online game that anyone can play for free at https://justiceforallgame.com/
True Justice For All, LLC is the creator and publisher of the Justice for All trading card games and the company behind the copyright-free Superhero Universe. The company has bootstrapped itself in the past couple of years. The team has about a dozen people.
Origins
Jemas recalled leaving the NBA to work at Fleer Corp. to start an entertainment card division within Marvel in the 1990s. The team created a bunch of Marvel, Batman and Power Rangers Cards. He helped design the Overpower trading card game.
About a year and a half ago, a couple of entrepreneurial, game-loving people realized that Marvel had let the copy the trademark lapse to Overpower and hadn’t touched the game system, so they signed up a license from for Invincible, and they did a Kickstarter campaign for that.
Then Jemas started working on a path toward doing card games again. His friends wanted to create “games for good,” which are fun games with positive messaging. He noted there are a lot of people out there who are “pro bird” and “pro ecology.” That was one part of the mission.
And along the way, they learned that Superman Animated Shorts, a part of the Superman universe from the 1940s, had fallen into the public domain. They designed a card game and it has done well in both physical card and online card testing.
And now the team is going live with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for November 19. In the game, you put your cards in a grid on a table, and your opponent does the same. Then you can throw perils and powers at each other’s grids. There’s a party version of the game too.
“It’s a cozy, fun family game,” Jemas said. “You can figure out how to play in three to five minutes, and the games go fast in 15 or 20 minutes.”
The first game, My First Monster, is based on a game called Mechanical Monsters, which is the first time a monster showed up in a Superman cartoon. And then the next game is called America First, and that’s based on a very topical comic book, as it focuses on a pro-Nazi movement. Jemas said there is a lot of inspiration for public domain work that he got from seeing the revival of properties like The Wizard of Oz with Wicked and Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, based on The Odyssey by Homer.
“As more and more properties, as as more and more copyrights expire to more and more famous properties, people are getting more and more interested in the public domain,” said Jemas. “(The art style) is surprisingly contemporary for a 1940s work.”
The whole project has been bootstrapped, Jemas said. The team includes a dozen or so people.