Cautionary Tales

Jack Kirby (left) and Jerry Siegel. Both of their estates are in litigation to recover the copyrights to the comic book characters they created.

The comic book business is not the animation business, but both depend on the work of artists whose legal relationship to their creations is often misunderstood or ambiguous. Paul Slade has written a long article on the legal challenges that comics creators have launched against their employers in an attempt to regain ownership of their creations. It brings to mind the quote attributed to Balzac, "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime."

(link via Journalista. Image via Booksteve's Library.)

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