Yesterday fan speculation ran a little rampant after Bleedingcool reported that DC Comics might have made a legal move against Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's "Nemesis" project, which had previously been compared by Millar to DC's Batman with a Joker twist in an interview with Comicbookresources.

Today in a new interview with CBR Millar cleared the air, explaining that while DC wanted to avoid Batman and The Joker being mentioned directly in reference to "Nemesis," things were civil, informal and even friendly thus far:

"In all honesty, the story has been massively misreported," Millar explained to CBR. "There is no issue at all here. Someone simply saw that the image we had planned for the first cover had been removed and assumed DC had hit us with a writ or something. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the whole thing is much more informal. What happened was that someone in DC editorial was a little worried that we were casually mentioning two of their characters in interviews and asked legal to ask us not to. The legal guys at DC, who are friends of mine, just dropped me a casual, informal email asking me to be cool, and I agreed, promising them that Steve and I wouldn't cross any kind of line in the promotion of 'Nemesis.' "

The biggest clarification came with Millar revealing that, contrary to reports, the March "Nemesis" solicitation image, which depicted a white-cowled villain rocking Heath Ledger's Joker-style makeup, had been taken down as a courtesy to DC rather than in accordance with a legal order.

Here at CA, I try to keep things light - labeling rumors as clearly as I can and reminding everyone where info is coming from. Bleedingcool has since updated its initial scoop, so it looks like this rumor has been laid to rest without any cowled crusading vigilantes taking matters into their own fictional hands.

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