Quote Originally Posted by SlashDash View Post
There's also the obvious issue of that I highly doubt the author planned for someone as notable as the monster in the dark to be something that's not in the open license.

I mean sure, he uses Sunny now, but I don't know how secure he would have been way back when the monster in the dark was set.
Considering that he had an eye tyrant back in the first year of the strip, I would wager that he was banking on parody granting fair use, but that's about as close to the legal side as I'm willing to go.