I fought the law and the law won. Because I am not the law. And I didn’t really fight them because I was wrong. Recently I was editing a script for an episode of an animated TV show that featured a singing frog. Well, to be more precise, the frog doesn’t sing at all, but his croaks are treated as if they come right out of Pink’s mouth.

For a long time, the frog character didn’t have a name, but when it came time to give him one, I thought it would be funny – and a nod to my old pal Steve Gerber – to have this non-singing amphibian called (you guessed it), Garko. Published by Marvel Comics, the Howard the Duck story that pits the cigar-chomping mallard against Garko The Man-Frog is one of my favorite Gerber (and Howard) stories of all time.

Everything was going along fine until the script was submitted to the company that verifies there’s no infringement or legally sensitive issue with it. You can see where this is going now, can’t you? And you would be right. The preliminary report said: “It is advisable that use of actual products, recognizable voices and characters, and items protected by copyright be avoided.” I knew Garko was a trademarked character of Marvel, but I was still hoping.

Then I read the rest of the report and what it actually said about using the Garko name: “Not clear. We find a frog character by this exact name in Marvel’s Howard the Duck comic series. See source material.”

And just like that, the frog that can’t sing became Darwin. Because Garko isn’t just a throwaway Marvel character – he’s a legally-protected part of the Disney pantheon now, lurking quietly in the background waiting for some clever writer to come in and have him turn all the Marvel super-heroes into frogs for the Marvel Frogs crossover event.

Stranger things have happened.

Maybe I should’ve made him a vampire cow…

[Artwork: a nice picture of Garko The Man Frog © Marvel Characters. All rights reserved, buddy.]