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Specifically, the estate of Jack Kirby, co-creator of Captain America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Avengers, Iron Man, Hulk, The Silver Surfer and Thor, has sent notices terminating copyright to publishers Marvel and Disney, 
as well as film studios that have made movies and TV shows based on characters he created or co-created, including Sony, Universal, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. That's the news from the website bleedingcool.com, which covers all things comic book. Normally these kinds of lawsuits are run of the mill for Hollywood. But not when they're litigated by Marc Toberoff, who is the bane of Big Media. He's had so many victories they're hard to count, especially in he comic book arena on behalf of Superman creator Jerry Seigel against DC Comics and Warner Bros. 
Like that case, Kirby’s estate is looking to regain his share of copyright in the characters and their use in comics and other media. "Such claims, if found valid, would begin from 2014 and, as always, it's worth noting that Marvel/Disney will still own the trademarks of the characters in comics, and the studios in movies. The likelihood is that, if successful, the Kirby estate would enter into negotiation over terms to continue publishing comics based on his work," the website wrote. Other recent cases which Toberoff has won or settled lawsuits on Lassie, Get Smart, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Wild Wild West, and Smallville. On the Superman case, Warner Bros could have been draped in black mourning the loss of a shitload of Superman dollars because of U.S. District Court Judge Stephen G. Larson's ruling: "After 70 years, Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago — the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics, Vol. 1. What remains is an apportionment of profits, guided in some measure by the rulings contained in this Order, and a trial on whether to include the profits generated by DC Comics’ corporate sibling’s exploitation of the Superman." Think about it: Siegel sold the rights to the action hero he created with Joseph Shuster to Detective Comics for $130, and his heirs got back ownership of the character in 1999 and could possibly lay claim to $50+ million of Warner Bros' and/or its DC Comics' cash. Can that happen in the Kirby case? The iron is that Disney CEO Bob Iger's ties to Marvel go back two generations to Kirby himself. That's because Iger's late great-uncle (his grandfather's brother) was illustrator/cartoonist Jerry Iger, who partnered with illustrator/cartoonist Will Eisner back in the 1930s to create the comic book packager Eisner & Iger Studios. And their first hire was Jack Kirby, who as you know later became the co-creator of many of Marvel's best known characters with then Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee. Lee, meanwhile, has been supportive of the Disney/Marvel deal (though he is fighting lawsuits of his own on other fronts.)
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Disney/Marvel *should* do the right thing. I mean, shit, even Stan Lee had to sue Marvel to get his fair share.
I have a better idea. Why don’t movie companies come up with some original stories instead of rehashing what’s already been done time and time again? I don’t want to see another comic book or old tv show redone as a movie!
You know I think the big comic companies should just figure out what needs to be settled, then make some sort of reasonable deal, and stick with it.
It should have been done by the companies years ago, because right now is the perfect time for the screwed over artists and their estates to strike back. Comic book movies have big profit potential, but they cost a lot to make, and they certainly do not need millions in litigation slapped on top of their budgets, because that could burn out those profit margins.
Judging from Toberoff’s and Disney’s respective records, this could turn into a battle royale.
Toberoff wants the media to interpret this as the apocalypse for Disney/Marvel but it’s not. The Siegel case was built on a stack of comics and notes that proved the first Superman story (and additional material) existed in a fixed medium well before DC made a flimsy offer to purchase the character.
Marvel is notorious for forcing their writers and artists to sign contracts that cede all rights for their creations to the company. The exceptions, characters who fall outside of these contracts, are few. Captain America was co-created in the 40s by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby when Marvel was known as Timely Comics and had far less legal savvy than their modern incarnation. This is where the Kirbys will find the most traction: Simon sued Marvel for his share of the copyright about six years ago and Marvel settled. Marvel should settle now with the Kirbys for their portion of the character, and I’d expect that to be the extent of this. In the case of all the other major Marvel properties, those created in the 60s and beyond, Marvel will probably prove now to be as faultless as they’ve been for the last several decades. That’s the reality of work made for hire.
Does the reference to Stan Lee’s “lawsuits of his own” refer to Stan Lee Media vs Marvel? Please be aware that that company bears his name but does not represent Lee. Lee himself has been sued by them.
The problem with your analysis is that “work for hire” as it exists today began back in 1976, long after Jack co-created the foundation of what is known as the Marvel universe. Marvel will have an impossible time proving Jack signed any such documents back in the day as they didn’t exist. Marvel was no DC back in the early 60’s, so the chances of the company having anything like DC did with Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel are slim to none since they were thisclose to closing the doors permanently.
Back in 1985, when the issue of original art being returned to the Marvel artists surfaced, it became a huge industry cause to see that Jack was treated no differently from any other artist when it came to getting his pages of art back. Marvel’s lawyers, naturally, didn’t see it that way, and issued a release form that was several pages in length, basically forcing Jack to relinquish his claims to any Marvel character in return for art. Every other Marvel artist, however, only received a release form that was 1 page in length, even though many of them were receiving pages they inked over Jack’s art.
Marvel eventually backed down due to the bad publicity and a compromise was reached, as jack had no desire to spend the rest of his days in court battling Marvel’s army of attorneys.
The fact is however, that Jack’s estate should be able to recover rights that involve more than just comics publishing. That’s just the opening salvo of a war I can’t wait to watch and see both Marvel and Disney lose bigtime.
I hope the Kirby estate gets a ton of money and credit. The man was a genius of artwork AND story. A true artist. Though I have great respect for Stan Lee, his monumental self-promotion should not overshadow or negate Kirby’s singular brilliance and equal contribution to Marvel’s overall success.
Somewhere Jack is smiling.
Siegel and Shuster made a colossally stupid deal because they never imagined this character would amount to more than a short running comic book back when there was a glut of those on the market…they should have been treated well by DC but at this point it’s all water under the bridge…I fail to see why a degenerate estate deserves to rake in millions for having the dumb luck of being the offspring of those guys…but then I fail to see why DC should retain ownership so whatever…unlike Kirby, Siegel and Shuster were one hit wonders who never did anything but come up with the idea for Superman…they aren’t even responsible for some of the best Superman mythology, which is the work of many people over decades
I agree wholeheartedly. Once someone sells something they should not be able to come back (or worse yet, their “heirs”) years later and say “oh, dang. I didn’t know it was going to be worth something later. I want my ‘fair’ share now.” That’s just stupid. What’s next? Can I go back and ask for some of the profits from a house that I had built and then sold “not realizing that it would further appreciate in value.”
I do think that Marvel/Disney does need to do the right thing and give not just some credit but also some money to those people who helped make their properties so successful. But I don’t think there should be any legal obligation to do so. It’s just a matter of moral right. They reap huge profits – great! But share the love with those who were responsible for getting you there. Even if it’s not legally required.
The real losers in this lawsuit will be the fans. This could tie up movies and delay or cancel releases that we have waited for interminably. I’m going to be royally pissed if there is never a Captain America movie because some dork wants money for something his grandfather did(get a job kid! Follow your grandfather’s example and work for a living instead of suing other people for your “right to live the high life!”)
The nature of the beast that is Federal Copylaw… The author(s) and her heirs have the right to terminate the grant of copyright 56 years after the assignment. There are formalities regarding proper notice from the heirs to the assignees. This right of termination cannot be waived even if there are contractual provisions to the contrary. This provision exists for pre-1978 copyright assignments that may have been poorly negotiated on the behalf of the author.
Note: If the author composed a “work made for hire”, it should kill the right of termination.
Jerry Siegel and Schuster created Superboy, a title that ran for decades (and is the basis for Smallville.)
Siegel wrote most of the very early Legion of Super-Heroes stories (outside the first one), and introduced a ton of characters that are still around today (characters that were the main ones in the recent animated series.) Braniac 5, Phantom Girl, Sun Boy, Shrinking Vioet, Chamelon Boy and on and on… Siegel also co-created the Spectre, another character that still appears often.
i agree & disagree with your statement they were one-hit wonders. Yeah Supes is pretty much their claim to fame but besides writing the comic book version of Supes they also started the newspaper strip. Both publications were very popular and the years away from the character that S&S spent were when the original Capt. Marvel kicked Supes off his thrown. Supes started pulling ahead once DC bought the rights to Capt. Marvel and shelved him.
Also, if we want to be legalistic, their creation inspired and influenced the creation of a myriad of other characters, complementary to their creation. Superboy amongst the closet. You would have no Superboy or Supergirl without their Superman.
Also, Siegel created the Spectre who has been in continuous publication since his first appearance, albeit he was no where to be found in the 1950s. In addition to the 1940s, he has become a major character since the 1960s for DC and for years to come.
just sayin
cheers
Basically you’re saying they did a couple of Superman spin-offs and a few characters no one remembers. Except maybe the 20,000 people who still read comics.
Compare that to Kirby, who has a list of original creations (not spin-offs like Boy Thing or Mrs. Fantastic) as long as your arm. They’re not in the same ballpark as creators. Siegel and Shuster got massively lucky–DC should have treated them better while they were alive, but compare them to Bob Kane, who was in their league creatively but a much better businessman. He also created a family of spin-offs based on one thing that caught on.
Toberoff is going waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out on a limb here. There’s no way in heck that the Kirby estate is going to get anything except — and only *perhaps* — a piece of Captain America, the only major character that Kirby co-created for Marvel before the 1960’s. And maybe some lesser Golden Age characters that I forget about right now. Marvel was a fourth-tier publisher back then and other writers and artists created the only other real properties that Marvel has that are significant parts of its line: the Sub-Mariner and the original, oxymoronically android version of the Human Torch.
And even then, Captain America’s other co-creator, Kirby’s partner, writer, Joe Simon — who, FTR, is still alive — already filed his rights reversion claim on Captain America and even cites that he created Cap without Kirby, brought in the concept more or less fully-formed, including the design work, for Kirby to illustrate.
Virtually all of Marvel’s other famous properties that yes, Kirby did co-create with Stan Lee — The X-Men, the Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, the Fantastic Four, etc. — were created in the 60’s and wouldn’t be subject to the reversion clause for another 20 years.
That is, if the Kirby estate would even have legal standing to challenge the contract that Kirby signed two decades ago to get hundreds of pages of original art back in which he agreed that characters that he co-created with Stan Lee were indeed work-for-hire. And it’ll be pretty darn hard, probably impossible, for the Kirby estate to make that case when Stan Lee was even then on the editorial staff of Marvel and therefore his work was explicitly work-for-hire. This is also why the lawsuit against Stan Lee is bogus: Lee has never owned any of the characters he co-created at Marvel. (Which itself is the primary reason that Marv Wolfman lost his lawsuit against Marvel over the rights to Blade and other characters that he created when he was at Marvel, with the largest part of his term there on the editorial staff as an editor or writer-editor. Hard to claim work-for-hire when you’re on the editorial staff rather than just a freelancer. But I Digress . . .)
Even if someone were to challenge the ownership status of the Marvel characters based on the fact that Marvel back in the 60’s claimed copyright on the characters based on the artists/writers endorsing the backs of checks, that’s an entirely different situation than the rights reversion clause that Toberoff is pursuing for the Kirby estate. Toberoff would have to find some way to void the four-page settlement that Kirby signed two decades ago that reiterated that he had co-created the characters as work-for-hire. There are interesting points to be made about that later contract that Kirby signed, but trying to enforce any of it through the rights reversion clause in the Bono Act that the Siegel estate has used to successfully reclaim some sort of share in Superman — that just seems like hilarious over-reach to me. The Kirby Estate has got a LOT more hoops to jump through than the Siegels ever did to reclaim their share of their respective properties.
So, to reiterate: this is much ado about, well, Captain America, but little ado about anything else about Marvel. Virtually all of Marvel’s properties not named Captain America that Kirby co-created are safe for at least the next few decades no matter what anybody thinks about the Bono Act’s onerous extension of copyright to darn near infinity and beyond. While I despise the mere concept of the extension of the copyright past 56 years, I think that Toberoff’s approach is entirely wrong, regardless of the treatment of Kirby twenty and thirty years ago by people who have been lonnnnnnnnnng gone from Marvel.
To clarify: I think that Kirby should never have signed the artwork contract, even though I understand why he did. Signing that contract put him and the estate on *much* shakier ground than the Siegels and Shusters have ever been.
On the other hand, I think that the Kirby estate (and Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and . . .) should be getting the same kind of royalties from toys and other licensing for each of their characters that creators of newer stuff have been getting over the past twenty years. But that’s really a whole ‘nother issue.
Makes me wonder what Mark Evanier will have to say about all this on his blog.
— Rob
To clarify, work for hire as it exists today did not exist when Kirby co-created the majority of the Marvel universe. Unless you know specifically what he signed back in 1985, everything is not as cut and dried as you imagine.
The contents of the document that Kirby signed were pretty well detailed in The Comics Journal. It was a special four-page document in which Kirby’s work was in-case-there-were-any-doubts retroactively declared work-for-hire. In any case, Toberoff’s tactic in citing the Siegel case is moronic.
Under the pre-Bono-Act provisions, copyright only existed for 56 year s — the 28-year duration of copyright plus a one-time 28-year renewal — , the 2014 reclamation date would mean that they’re only trying to get rights for stuff that was published before 1958. Which still means that all of the characters that Kirby co-created at Marvel except Captain America are NOT covered by the Bono Act by which the Siegel Estate recovered the copyright to Superman. Because they were all created in the 60’s, starting with the Fantastic Four in 1961.
And mind you, under the pre-Bono-Act copyright laws by which the Siegels recovered their share of the copyright on Superman, the five-year reclamation window for Captain America, based on the character’s creation date of 1941 (based on the March cover date of the first issue of Captain America Comics) means that Kirby’s claim on Captain America expired in 1997. (Note: Co-creator Joe Simon filed for reclamation of his rights to Cap within the 5-year window ending in 1997.)
— Rob
Correction…the magic date for the end of copyright terminations of transfer is with the Copyright Act of 1976, not the Bono era copyright law changes.
They can go after anything pre 1976 not pre 1958.
The Comics Journal article you’re referring to can be found here:
http://www.tcj.com/aa02ss/n_marvel.html
It does detail things pretty well, including supplying the text of that 4-page document in all its onerous glory. However, it also points out that Kirby didn’t sign that document, and didn’t even sign the one-paragraph document other creators signed; he signed something else, and since it’s not available for us to see, you can’t really say what it contains. Though Toberoff has certainly seen it and knows what it says.
Also, you can’t retroactively declare something work-for-hire. The law doesn’t allow it. Work-for-hire is a very particular legal structure whereby a work will stay owned in perpetuity by the hiring party because the person doing the work has never owned it. The corporation is the legal author of the work. That can only be done in advance of the work. After the work has been done, the most you can do is a transfer of all rights, but that transfer will only be for the life of copyright, and the law the Kirby estate is using was written precisely to allow people to recover the rights from such transfers.
So no, Kirby didn’t sign the document you say he signed, and no, retroactively declaring something a work-made-for-hire isn’t actually legal anyway.
According to Nat Gertler in the comments section of the thread at Bleeding Cool, Kirby did sign the “standard” two-page release that Marvel requested that other artists’s whose work was in that stash sign at the time.
Okay, sure, fine, my recall wasn’t the best, but nevertheless Kirby signed the two-pager.
But all of that is more or less irrelevant anyway. The working theory — at least from Marvel’s perspective — is that these contracts weren’t retroactive declarations that these comics were work-for-hire, they’re reiterations that they understood all along that the work was always work-for-hire to begin with.
As others have noted, the TERM “work-for-hire” (WFH) didn’t start coming into usage until the ’70’s, but the concept of WFH has existed in practice since approximately 1909 and was described as “work-MADE-for-hire” (emphasis mine, abbreviated hereafter as WMFH).
IMO, Toberoff’s going to have a large uphill climb to convince the judge/jury that the Marvel work was anything other than WFH (regardless of whether it’s called WFH or WMFH) due to the well-documented process of those books’ creation. The continuing tiresome attempts by a certain segment of Kirby fans to diminish Stan Lee’s role in the books and characters’ creation is absurd on its face — as is Kirby’s (and his estate’s) attempts to claim co-creator (and sometimes SOLE creator) credit for Spider-Man.
The environment and circumstances of the books’ creation is what is going to matter in this case and the simple fact of the matter is that Kirby (and other creators) did, in fact, directly work with a person in a management position at Marvel — Stan Lee. In direct collaboration with Stan Lee.
The check endorsements are likely going to matter little directly *because* Kirby was working with Stan Lee, a member of the management at Marvel, who was writing and therefore co-creating the stories and thus, the artists were working to Marvel’s specs. Moreover, the fact that he was co-creating in collaboration with Stan Lee so many characters and stories in and of itself defines a WFH relationship.
That said, I could see Kirby gaining half of the rights to just the Silver Surfer, since the character was indeed thrown in there by Kirby without consulting Lee, but Marv Wolfman did the same thing with characters he created before he joined Marvel (most significantly, Nova) And while Kirby wasn’t an editor at Marvel like Wolfman was, Kirby was nevertheless collaborating with an editor/manager at Marvel who was writing most of the scripts that Kirby was co-creating.
So I suppose that the question is, can a creation be one-half WFH and one-half non-WFH? Given that even the Fantastic Four was commissioned at the request of Marvel’s publisher (”Give me an equivalent to the Justice League of America” (paraphrase)) and directly co-created with writer/staffer Stan Lee, there’s little evidence to support that either Kirby or Lee were creating these works on their own, without the direction of Marvel. Because Stan Lee, as management, represented Marvel in the first place and because even the inception of the Marvel Universe (the Fantastic Four) was done at the direct request of Marvel’s publisher.
IMO, Toberoff is trying to void the WFH circumstances under which the characters were created by distorting (and not exploiting) weak technicalities. It’s a classic case of over-reach — over-reach by galactic (and Galactus) proportions.
But I suppose that Toberoff is getting ideas from this public discussion of the lack of merits of the Kirbys’ case anyway.
— Rob
What a great post! Thank you.
America is the only civilized country that doesn’t recognize artists’ rights, allows retroactive work-for-hire, and permits the assignment of copyright under contracts of adherence. Where does it say that artists and their heirs have to suffer? Go Toberoff!
Leading to the thought that America isn’t so damned civilized anyway.
if the kirby estate wins the case, it will not be the kirby estate that gets most of the money. it will be toberoff. he takes the lion’s share for himself. he just repeats the original ripoff. it’s worth noting that his father was a philadelphia personal injury lawyer. the apple fell right under the tree.
Stan Lee (who openly aknowledges his own tendency to claim more than his fair share of credit) has published accounts of the creation of Marvel characters that indicate just how much of the work was really Kirby’s (the famous anecdote about Stan getting artwork back and discovering that Kirby had re-written the discussed plot to add a new character called The Silver Surfer is the obvious example). The big problem here is that Marvel ACTIVELY tried to discredit and diminish Kirby’s importance when he was alive- this could have all been wrapped up in the 1980’s if Marvel had just dealt with it like adults. Now, it’s going to cost them, and it’ll be fun rooting for the Kirby estate…
CST, you’re actually arguing for the exact opposite of what you think you’re arguing for. By the time that Lee & Kirby started creating the core Marvel characters in the 60’s, Kirby was part of the fabled Marvel Bullpen. For years. (Including his time on Marvel’s late-50’s giant-monster comics). And it’s well documented that the Marvel Universe characters were created off riffs improvised by Stan and the artists (in this case, Jack) in the Bullpen, with Stan famously acting out plots as he was describing them (which, of course, the artists were semi-free to interpret loosely or ignore). The Fantastic Four were even commissioned as a request by Marvel’s publisher at the time to create an equivalent of DC’s Justice League. Kirby doesn’t even really have any claim on the Silver Surfer because he threw the character into the story as an extension of the Galactus concept into Christ imagery. (Which is amusing when you consider that both Stan and Jack are/were Jewish.) The Surfer wouldn’t exist except for the fact that Jack was doing a riff off Galactus — the Surfer wouldn’t even exist without Galactus. This makes the Surfer a property that is a derivative (loosely: spin-off) of the Galactus concept, which itself is a derivative concept from the Fantastic Four.
Yes, it’s fun to root for Kirby and against Marvel in what is nothing more than schadenfreude against Marvel, but the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Marvel characters is radically different than those surrounding the creation of Superman, who was created several years before DC bought the character. The mere existence of Marvel’s horrific treatment of Kirby back in the 80’s does not in and of itself increase Kirby’s claim on the characters.
And to respond to Santayana above: yes, the US doesn’t follow the Berne Conventions. It should, IMO, but it doesn’t. Nevertheless, the artists and writers and composers and musicians sign the contracts and do the work. So they have not just the legal obligation to work under those conditions, they have the moral obligation to live up to their legal agreements.
By the time that Jack was working for Marvel, he had already co-created The Fighting American (a Captain America spoof) with Joe Simon and they retained the copyright on that character. There were other long-existing precedents by the 60’s that Jack knew — among others: Eisner’s retaining his own copyright on The Spirit (which he created in the 40’s) and Bob Kane getting his sweetheart deal on Batman (due to his having a lawyer for a brother). These were unusual arrangements, but nevertheless, they existed and Kirby clearly knew about them. And he chose to work rather than fight for them.
— Rob
As hard as you are arguing against this, you must own Marvel stock.
Nope. I’m just tired of this argument coming up again and again and I simply side with those who have pointed out the ridiculousness of Kirby’s continual attempts to minimize Stan Lee’s contributions to the creation of the MU. That Jack would change around the plot from what was agreed upon is entirely beside the point — the plots were discussed and part of the process was the agreement that Jack (and other artists) were free to change the plots as they deemed necessary. That doesn’t make the work any less WFH because even his alterations would not exist without the initial discussion with the Marvel employee named Stan Lee. Moreover, these changes were further changed by the Marvel employee named Stan Lee. And Jack Kirby accepted these changes — I mean, these changes by Lee — including Lee’s rewrite of the Silver Surfer into something different than Kirby intended — were published, with Lee’s contributions and alterations, after all.
— Rob
>> By the time that Lee & Kirby started creating the core Marvel characters in the 60’s, Kirby was part of the fabled Marvel Bullpen. For years. (Including his time on Marvel’s late-50’s giant-monster comics).>>
You’re buying into a myth, but it just isn’t so.
The “Marvel Bullpen” was the guys who did production work and art corrections and such. Marie Severin worked in the Bullpen for years. Herb Trimpe worked there for a while. Irv Watanabe worked there. I worked there for a while (many years later). But while Stan called the artists who drew the books “the Bullpen,” most of those artists, including Kirby, were freelancers and worked from home. Kirby would come in once a week or so to deliver pages, and any time he actually spent working in the Bullpen amounted to sketches or corrections he’d do while he was there. He didn’t actually work a regular shift in the office; he was a freelancer.
In addition, what you’re thinking of as the “late Fifties monster books” were largely early Sixties monster books. Most of those great monster comics are from 1959-1962, and it was while they were still going on that the FF, the Hulk and some others were created. As late as January 1960, he was still doing work for Archie, along with his assignments from Stan Lee.
So are you trying to argue that freelancing is something other than piecework?
— Rob
PS #1: I find the argument that Kirby and other freelancers weren’t part of the Marvel Bullpen because they worked from home to be a distinction without difference. They worked in direct discussion with Stan Lee, taking part in plotting discussions at Marvel itself and over the phone from home. The myth isn’t that the Bullpen didn’t exist — it did — it’s just that the artists were part of it even at home.
PS #2: Yeah, so the Monster books were primarily published in the period from 1959-1962. So what? Much of that period pre-dates the start of Marvel’s Silver Age, the publication of Fantastic Four #1 in 1961 and only indicate some overlap between the end of Marvel’s 1950’s output and its Silver Age output. The Monster books simply aren’t Silver Age books because they weren’t part of Marvel’s Silver Age. The two periods of Marvel’s history simply coincide for a year or so in the same way that the beginnings and ends of eras in Fine Art overlap.
— Rob
Oh for Gods sake, here we go again. Can’t the studios learn from past mistakes? Disney should just give the Kirby family The California Experience and be done with it.
This isn’t a strong a case as Siegal and Shuster, because they had some evidence that they created the Superman mythology before Action Comics #1. Action Comics was just a bunch of purchased comics from independent artists.
Kirby was an employee of Marvel when those comics were created.
“America is the only civilized country …”
Hehe, we need a new version of Godwin’s Law to cover this. If your argument devolves to “America is the only civilized country …,” you lose.
Check some place other than Wikipedia, Mike. Godwin’s Law precludes qualifiers.
Toberoff should just pick up everyone’s check at Coogie’s from now on.
RnsW
Jack Kirby deserves every iota of praise he is due. He deserves equal status with those who’ve done such a fine job town crying themself into “living legend” status […Stan}. Emotionally, I want his estate to be showered with cash and copyrights. But, more realistically, we just need to see this get slogged out in the courts and see how it all plays out.
BTW – does anyone understand the actual reality of the Superman/Seigel decision? Is DC potentially enjoined from using Clark, Lois, Krypton and Superman after the cutoff date? I undertstand there are huge elements of the mythos that are DC’s by decision, but the core concept belongs to the creators.
Mark Toberoff is a parasitic scumbag, the worst of the worst of the worst.
I hope he reads this.
So if Disney holds the trademarks, and the family wins back the copyright, does that mean that neither party could produce toys/comics/movies based on those characters without the consent of the other party?
And if that’s the case, this is rather ironic justice considering Disney was the big player in trying to extend copyrights indefinitely. It’s not so cool when somebody else can win back the copyright to some of your most valuable trademarks, is it?
According to this TCJ article, Kirby did not sign the four-page document forfeiting his claims that Marvel had demanded he sign:
Arguing that Spider-Man was derived from Simon and Kirby’s Silver Spider, though, seems very weak and could easily work against the estate, since the Hulk was arguably derived from Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Thor originated in Norse mythology. Laying claim to merely the visual rendering of a character is nearly worthless.
SRS
I sincerely hope the Kirby estate wins back the rights to the Kirby created characters, at the current rate at which these characters are earning I’d say it’s more then fair that his children partake of some of the profit, Kirby would have wanted it that way. Of all the Marvel characters created it was always his that made the most impact. This wasn’t an accident, Kirby worked his can off & was a fantastic story teller (as much as Stan was but in a different way). Marvel/Disney/Universal/Sony/20th Century Fox/Whoever else should simply pay up & be done with it. Legality be damned, it’s the right thing to do.
I’d have to disagree there man. Spider-Man and the X-Men are Marvel’s most well known and highest earning properties. While Kirby helped create the latter, Chris Claremont and the artists he worked with have more to do with them being as successful as they are today.
I’m a very big comic fan, and I think Kirby is a great figure in the history of comics but I hate the estates law suits. If the creator doesn’t himself challange the copyright in his lifetime I have no sympathy for the family and a lawyer trying to cash in now. Kirby’s estate saw $$ signs after the Superman decision and moved. I hope they lose and lose quickly for the sake of the medium.
This is why the new generation of creators read their contracts before they sign. Contracts are contracts and in every other industry we expect everyone to abide by them.
Agreed wholeheartedly…though this one seems more like they saw the words “Four Billion Dollars” and decided they wanted on the gravy train.
Now, if they want to fight for stuff like The Eternals? I say go for it. But Iron Man and the X-Men? Blatant, ridiculous cash grabs. The former has been changed A LOT since his introduction, and the latter had most of their iconic characters created by people other than Lee and Kirby.
I believe we need a new version of Goodwin’s Law to cover this issue. Most dont even understand why this has happened or what will be done to solve this from happening again.
Toberoff should just pick up everyone’s check at Coogie’s from now on…
My dad wrote, composed and orchestrated many songs that you all might know, but the fact that he was a “for hire” means,though I hear the woman with the big nose singing, and know it’s my dads, the family don get shit….my dad always said he was just doing the work.
Nevertheless, the artists and writers and composers and musicians sign the contracts and do the work.
Sounds like Rob Jensen is right…it sucks out loud, but it might be right.
Fans will cry “greed” but I don’t share in their sentiments. It’s a display of “fanboy” selfishness and childish behavior on their part. They don’t give a hang about the “screwing over” the creators of these comic characters had to endure just so they could work and create, much less the love and devotion the families have for their talented family members and their work.
All they care about is getting their “fix” of their favorite superhero and nothing had better get in the way of it.
My sympathies lie with the Siegel and Kirby families.
Jack Kirby underwent terrible treatment at Marvel that left him bitter and angry. Right up to his death he found it difficult to talk about. His defection to DC fared him no better. When he went to work at DC, his desire was to create various comic book characters and series, and then hand them off to others to continue with himself as the guiding force. (This is fact).
DC wouldn’t allow it. Instead, he was turned into a one man publishing company creating and writing and drawing multiple monthly books himself.
That my friend, is A LOT of work for one man, and it’s taxing to the extreme. They stretched the man too thin in my opinion.
Adding insult to his work load, DC didn’t care for a “Kirby” styled Superman, so in his own books they enlisted the aid of artists Al Plastino and Murphy Anderson to “re-draw” Superman in the panels the character appeared in. (In my mind, THAT equates to the defacing and mutilation of great art. It can’t be undone nor repaired)
Knowing these facts, I don’t see the Kirby family acting out of base greed, and I only wish they had named DC in the notification also. I think their timing was smart and serves their interest best.
I wish both families the best in their quest to see a little justice after all these years.
Toberoff is no Robin Hood. He’s a scumbag and a dirtball whose screwed more than a few artist out of rights and millions upon millions of dollars while he rides the system for all its worth. He’s a parasite who’s never satisfied, no amount of money is enough for him; let’s just be clear about that.
I hope you’re reading this Toberoff, before they take this post down because it’s the truth.
Comic book writer/editor Nat Gertler has an excellent post at his blog that might clear up some of the misconceptions people have about the Kirby/Disney-Marvel issue.
http://www.gertler.com/nat/tv/?p=1425
It should be noted that Jack Kirby did NOT sign the 4-page agreement offered by Marvel. Also note that some reports say it was a 5-page agreement.
>> The contents of the document that Kirby signed were pretty well detailed in The Comics Journal. It was a special four-page document in which Kirby’s work was in-case-there-were-any-doubts retroactively declared work-for-hire.>>
Did you go look? They “pretty well detailed” the case, but not in the way you claim.
Here’s the link: http://www.tcj.com/aa02ss/n_marvel.html
As you’ll see, they report that he didn’t sign the document you claim he signed (though it’s there to be read, i all its onerous glory), and didn’t even sign the one-paragraph release that other artists signed. He signed something, but what it says has never been made public.
In addition, work-for-hire law does not allow for things to be retroactively declared work-for-hire. They’re either work-for-hire, agreed upon and documented as such, before work commences, or they’re not work-for-hire. Things can’t be made work-for-hire after the fact, because work-for-hire is not a transfer of rights, it’s a deal that depends on the idea that the artist/craftsman never had any rights to begin with, that the corporation is the legal author of the work.
If something isn’t work-for-hire at inception, the best one can do is an all-rights sale, and in that case, the reversion procedures being used here apply. In fact, it’s what they were created for.
So your assurance that the Kirbys have no leg to stand on and Toberoff doesn’t understand the law involved as well as you do are based on a misunderstanding of the facts and a further misunderstanding of the way the laws covering work-for-hire work.
>> ’m a very big comic fan, and I think Kirby is a great figure in the history of comics but I hate the estates law suits.>>
This is not a lawsuit. It’s a coptright filing.
>> If the creator doesn’t himself challange the copyright in his lifetime I have no sympathy for the family and a lawyer trying to cash in now.>>
The law allowing this is very clear — there’s a specific window of time in which such a claim can be filed, and Kirby died before that window commenced. However, the law also specifically allows the children of a creator to file such a reversion, and was designed and written to allow them to do so.
>> I hope they lose and lose quickly for the sake of the medium.>>
Whereas I hope the parties involved reach an amicable and equitable settlement that will see a fairer share of the profits generated by Kirby’s co-creations go to his family, and that more creators from the pre-royalty era get fairer deals for themselves and their family by using laws that were created specifically for them to do so.
I think that’d be better for the medium, rather than deciding that it’s somehow good for the medium to see all that money go to Disney.
lol at “good for the medium”…the medium is like a sick dog and the best thing for it would be a bullet through the brain…comics are so far off their glory years, so pitiably reduced to nerd fan fiction, that even you are famous for doing them (and nothing else)
back when I grew up, normal kids read comics…walk into a comic book store or convention today and it is the geekiest, fattest, creepiest segment of humanity on display…these guys are just waiting for chris hanson to step around the corner and ask them to take a seat
>> Kirby was an employee of Marvel when those comics were created.>>
Much like the assurance that Kirby signed a contract he never signed, this is not true.
Kirby was not an employee when the Marvel Universe was created. He was a freelancer.
The number of people who want to rush to declare that the Kirby Estate has no leg to stand on is — well, not exactly surprising, but depressing. Is it really so threatening to imagine that Disney and Marvel might have to share a little of the take? They share on stuff created more recently, and it doesn’t seem to have bankrupted them.
Interesting choice of words, considering Marvel filed for bankruptcy protection in the 90s.
(Although it should be noted that the main factors leading to this were only tangentially related to copyright/creator issues)
Marvel’s bankruptcy filings had NOTHING to do with their business model or freelancer payments or copyrights at all, and everything to do with the fact that Ron Pearlman piled the company sky-high with crap debt from his other companies and then sold it off to rid himself of his debt load. Insinuating that being kind to their freelancers had anything to do with their near-bankruptcy is completely disingenuous.
They weren’t related to copyright/creator issues at all. Marvel Comics’ publishing division was profitable throughout the bankruptcy — it was their corporate owners overleveraging the company into unsustainable debt that bankrupted them.