Marvel Reacts To Kirby Estate Rights Revoke

COMMENTS (10)

• What?

  No “These charges are groundless” no “there is no merit to this case,” and no “Marvel will be vindicated in court”?

  They must have found something in the paperwork that righteously smacked them around the gob to stun them enough to not use the usual lawsuit statement boilerplate.

  This could get interesting.

  Comment by Furious D — Monday September 21, 2009 @ 11:09am PDT  Reply to this post

• I don’t believe for a second that Marvel and Disney didn’t see this coming. They probably just didn’t expect Toberoff to immediately try to turn this into a public fight.

  These parties need to negotiate an appropriate settlement and finish this as fast as possible.

  This is not like the case of the Siegels. Hypothetically, the Siegel family’s half of the Superman copyright and the Shuster estate’s half could one day be recombined into a salable whole that could be put to use outside of Warner.

  The Kirby kids can, in their best case scenario, win Kirby’s PORTION of the rights to these characters, which would not actually grant them the rights to reproduce the material or produce any derivative works. The portion Marvel (or any other entity) still held would be rendered useless until Kirby’s was sold back.

  It’s in Marvel’s interest to start negotiating so they can continue their film business. What’s in the interest of the Kirbys? It depends. 2011 brings the Thor and Captain America films, with archival collections of Kirby’s work on those characters actually hitting mainstream bookstore shelves and falling into the hands of readers outside the shrinking audience for the current superhero books. Movies shoot these characters back into the public consciousness in a huge way. Kirby’s legacy is being secured right now, but that can still be derailed.

  Why is Toberoff beginning immediately with the bullying tactics, the public salvo of termination notices that won’t actually take effect for years? This isn’t karmic balance for the shameful way Kirby was treated by Marvel in the 80s, this is just his standard procedure. If he’s angling for a settlement, fine. If Toberoff is trying to replicate the Siegel case, this is a grand swindle. Never mind that the Kirbys don’t stand to gain what the Siegels did; their money’s just as good. They could freeze Marvel’s film production and drag that fight into the 2020s and beyond, when Captain America and The Incredible Hulk would be on their way to acheiving Superman’s irrelevance.

  Comment by nemo — Monday September 21, 2009 @ 12:46pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Situations like these are going to crop up with increasing frequency in the coming decade. Maybe Hollywood can observe that there actually is an upside to basing their films on original screenplays.

  Comment by nemo — Monday September 21, 2009 @ 12:54pm PDT  Reply to this post

• “Lawsuit” might be misleading here. Didn’t he file and serve only termination notices under Section 304?

  Comment by Kent A — Monday September 21, 2009 @ 7:36pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Oh no!!! There’s a termination notice! Marvel might lose half the rights to a few characters, starting in 2014!!!! DISNEY WILL HAVE TO SETTLE FOR THE OTHER HALF IN ABOUT 10 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!!

  Comment by nobody — Monday September 21, 2009 @ 9:13pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Why did they wait until Disney picked up Marvel to sue…? Hmmmm?

  Comment by Robert Not So Wise — Monday September 21, 2009 @ 10:06pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Are you kidding me? First rule of copyright law: DON’T MESS WITH THE MOUSE.

  When Disney’s copyrights are about to run out, they get the damned United States Congress to extend them for decades. You think that the Kirbys are going to threaten their newly-acquired IPs?

  Comment by JoeE — Tuesday September 22, 2009 @ 12:52pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Marvel’s heading from some tough days. All their books have lost their mojo and the characters aren’t really heroes anymore. What are they going to do when the whole Marvel Movie thing is over?

  Did I mention Civil War sucked?

  Comment by Alex — Tuesday September 22, 2009 @ 3:43pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Right. It’s not a lawsuit. There may be lawsuits eventually, but it isn’t one at present.

  And if Marvel’s “gobsmacked” by this, they haven’t been paying attention. They had to know it was coming, and that there’ll be more to come as time marches on and the copyright-reversion window opens for other creations. They just don’t have anything to say, because there’s no point to saying anything.

  If they’re smart, they’ll be trying to make quiet advance settlements with other creators before their reversion windows open, like they did with Stan Lee.

  Comment by Kurt Busiek — Tuesday September 22, 2009 @ 6:26pm PDT  Reply to this post

• *Sigh*.

  Ex-Marvel writer Kurt B. is half right. There are a couple other creators who can seek copyright reversions and maybe actually win something. The Kirby estate is not one of them.

  Short version because I’m tired of writing this: Read the Larson decision giving the Siegels 50% interest in *aspects* of the Superman character, in the U.S. only. Then apply Larson’s basis to the Kirby estate’s claims. The estate fails miserably. With luck, they (and others) should get what Siegel and Shuster got in 76, not what they got/will get in 2009/2013. More specifically. the estate’s strongest claim involves a character that a created in a collaboration, was a blatant rip-off by the time offered to Marvel, and Kirby never plotted, wrote or drew the character to any significant degree, the first time being a couple of years after its debut. Compare that to what Larson determined in regard to Action Comics 1. Again, it does not look good.

  Yeah,at the end of the day, this will cost Marvel or Disney money but their copyrights? No way.

  BYW, I’m curious how Kurt feels about the approach of Warner/DC to the Siegel’s claim. (Kurt works for DC these days. His ex-publisher allegedly attempted to work something out with the Siegel estate. The estate was interested but Warner shot him down.) You know, Kurt, something like full disclosure

  Comment by Mitchell — Sunday September 27, 2009 @ 3:30am PDT  Reply to this post