The Biltmore House kicks out Wolverine.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Wolverine, a comic-book superhero - Legal Beat - Brief Article

Wolverine, a comic-book superhero, started out looking for his past but wound up facing a foe fiercer than any in X-Men, the series in which he stars. His new nemesis: Asheville's The Biltmore Co.

The saga began with a plan by New York's Marvel Enterprises Inc. to create a past for the character. What emerged was a six-part series called Origin, which includes scenes from a mansion that looks suspiciously like the 250-room former home of George Vanderbilt.

Too much like it, says Jerry Douglas, a senior vice president at The Biltmore Co., which owns the house and grounds and has copyrighted Biltmore's image. Even if Marvel had asked to use the image, "we'd probably have said no."

Early versions of Origin include three views of the house. A Marvel spokesman concedes the illustrator "apparently had a pretty firm image of Biltmore in his mind."

Douglas saw the drawings in a Marvel preview catalog someone had slipped him. "We wrote, explaining they were copyrighted. When we didn't get the response from Marvel that we were looking for immediately, we filed suit."

Biltmore demanded Marvel destroy all copies of the comics and any promotional materials bearing images of the house. Marvel first refused, then relented in September.

Money matters, even in make-believe. And money is what this spat was about...