keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Kaj Pindal is the lucky owner of this New Year's greeting from animation legend Norman McLaren. There's much more than the above photo shows, and you can see it all by clicking here .

Can this film tell us something about animation? I recently saw The Artist , the new silent film that has been picking up awards at festivals and is in the running for the major awards this season. It's clear that the film's creators have a genuine fondness for silent Hollywood cinema and I found it to be a very enjoyable experience. I recommend it. The film is silent, black and white and with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, taking on all the trappings of films of the silent era. It occurred to me, though, that at this point in time, it's all an affectation. Silent black and white films existed due to technological obstacles. Early sound and colour systems were unreliable, producing results that clearly failed to meet the audience's standard. Without sound and colour, films compensated with the use of orchestral scores in the larger cities, increasingly sophisticated photography and a style of directing, acting and editing that communicated characters' thoughts clearly ...

I keep an eye on politics, even though I've kept this blog free of it. However, today I saw this image of Ron Paul at Salon.com . Film history buff that I am, I immediately thought of this image from the 1910 version of Frankenstein produced by the Edison company. As I said, no editorial comment on Ron Paul intended, but the pose similarity is too strong not to note.

Howard Fine of the New York Film Critics Circle writes about why the group declined to give an award this year for the best animated feature. "To me, the key word in that award title is "feature." It's not an award strictly for animation -- it's for the whole movie, which happens to be animated. And I'm hard-pressed to think of an animated film this year that could make that claim, among the 18 recently announced as the animated titles that qualified for this year's Oscar. "Because it's not about the animation -- it's about what's being animated. If the script is dumb or flat or just plain not funny (and, like it or not, the vast majority of animated films are comedies aimed at children), I don't care how spectacular it is visually -- it's not cutting it."

I'm interested in this year's Oscar race for Best Animated Feature because my perception, right or wrong, is that it was a weak year. The various film critic organizations have begun to weigh in on their bests of the year, and Rango seems to be off to an early lead. The Boston , L.A. and S.F . critics have picked it as the best animated feature. The N.Y. film critics chose Tintin , though Richard Corliss of Time also picked Rango for his 10 best list. It's interesting that with critics from three major cities accounted for, there isn't a Pixar or DreamWorks film mentioned.

No, I'm not implying that Bird is ignorant. But a great many of the reporters who interview him about Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , which Bird directed, definitely are. Here's an article in the N.Y. Times about Bird and it contains this paragraph: "Plenty of live-action directors have successfully taken on animated movies, including Gore Verbinski ( “Rango” ) and Tim Burton (“Corpse Bride”). But the flow almost never goes in reverse — if you can name a successful example you have movie historians beat — making Mr. Bird’s chance at bat a fascinating one for Hollywood to watch. A similar attempt will come in March, when Andrew Stanton, the director of Pixar’s “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E,” unveils his live-action space saga, “John Carter.”" So the writer has no knowledge of film or animation history. He doesn't know that Tim Burton's first job was as a Disney artist. He has no knowledge of Walt Disney(!), let alone Frank Tashlin, Gregory La Ca...

The National Film Board of Canada holds an annual hothouse, where emerging Canadian animators are offered a 12 week internship at their facility in Montreal. The next hothouse will take place from March 5 to May 25, 2012 and submissions on the theme of sheep dreams must be in by January 24. The complete details are here . By following links on the left, you can see the films that have been created during previous hothouse sessions.

This is something I've been meaning to do for a long time. The 1976 paperback collection, Dennis the Menace: Short Swinger , contains a flipbook that appears to be done by Hank Ketcham. The registration, however, is horrible. I bought a cheap copy of the book on Ebay and pulled it apart, registered it to the best of my ability and then shot it. The character is less than an inch and a half high and the pulp paper was surprisingly hard to see through on my lightbox, so the registration still leaves something to be desired. Here it is exactly as it is in the book, on 2's. Here it is with my retiming to make it read better: Ketcham got his start in the animation business, working for Walter Lantz and then Disney before he enlisted in the navy during World War II. After the war, he concentrated on magazine cartooning before selling Dennis the Menace to newspapers. After the war, Ketcham really blossomed as a designer. His style, using a pen, was expressive and elegant. With ...

UPDATE : Here's a link to the schedule at the IFC Center. A major Studio Ghibli retrospective will soon be starting at IFC in New York City and will travel to Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C, Toronto, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and other cities in 2012. The films will be projected in 35mm. Here's a list of what will show and the dates for IFC: STUDIO GHIBLI FILMS – IFC CENTER – DEC 16 TO JAN 12 Title Director (Producer) Versions Year RT Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Hayao Miyazaki (Isao Takahata) Subtitled and dubbed (Uma Thurman, Shia LeBouf, Edward James Olmos, Mark Hamill) 1984 116 min Castle in the Sky Hayao Miyazaki (Isao Takahata) Subtitled only 1986 126 min My Neighbor Totoro Hayao Miyazaki (Toru Hara) Subtitled and dubbed (Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Tim Daly, Frank Welker) 1988 86 min Kiki’s Delivery Service ...

Profiles in History is having an auction entitled Icons of Animation on December 17. While the majority of items are out of my price range (maybe all of them actually), you can download a catalog of the auction for free. Even if you're not in the market to buy, the catalog is a mini history lesson by itself. It contains art from Disney, MGM, Warner Bros, Fleischer and Hanna Barbera. There is work by Bill Tytla, Fred Moore, Carl Barks, Bob Clampett, Virgil Ross, Irv Wyner, Mary Blair, Preston Blair, Gustav Tenggren, Charles Schulz, etc. There are worse ways to spend time than by paging through the download and admiring so much beautiful stuff. (link via Disney History )

If you've ever worked on a TV series, you know the limitations. The budgets are tight and the schedules are short. There is always the danger of attempting something too ambitious for TV or letting the limitations restrict everyone's creativity. Either way, the end result is mediocrity. Usually, the first casualty of TV schedules and budgets is the animation itself. Whether it is subcontracted to a low wage studio or not, it still takes a lot of time to get done. Shows often throw the animation overboard, relying instead on the scripts, the audio tracks and the designs to keep the audience entertained. Occasionally, though, somebody decides otherwise. Pocoyo is a pre-school cgi show made in Spain. The creators, Guillermo García Carsí, Luis Gallego and David Cantolla, made conscious design choices that free them up to move the characters. What are they? No backgrounds Little to no dialogue A limited number of characters Most TV series will have the characters go into ne...

Bil Keane, cartoonist of the comic strip The Family Circus and the father of Disney animator Glen Keane, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 89. Details here .

I'm sure some of you have your eyes glaze over every time I bring up Jack Kirby or copyright. However, I keep mentioning it as intellectual property, more than factories or natural resources, has become one of the most valuable assets in the world today. The decision against the Kirby estate in its attempt to recover copyrights on many of the Marvel characters is a warning to anyone who creates for a living. At the Center for Cartoon Studies, a graduate school program in comics located in Vermont, Stephen R. Bissette, cartoonist, publisher and creator rights advocate, discussed the Kirby decision with lawyer Oliver Goodenough, a professor at the Vermont Law School. The audio runs an hour and covers issues like nepotism, work-for-hire, risk, ethics and the history of employer-employee relations in the comic book field. I recommend it highly.

I haven't seen this film, but Movie Morlocks , the official blog of Turner Classic Movies, has a review and stills from the French animated feature A Cat in Paris . It looks like a film I'd like to see, though I have no idea if it will get a North American release outside of Los Angeles. In any case, I will keep an eye out for it.

The following 18 films have been submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the category of Best Animated Feature. With 18 submissions, there can be five nominees. The Adventures of Tintin Alois Nebel Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked Arthur Christmas Cars 2 A Cat in Paris Chico & Rita Gnomeo & Juliet Happy Feet Two Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil Kung Fu Panda 2 Mars Needs Moms Puss in Boots Rango Rio The Smurfs Winnie the Pooh Wrinkles I have to admit to not having seen many of these films and some of them have not yet been released. Many of them are sequels or spin-offs. At least three contain motion capture ( Tintin , Happy Feet 2 and Mars Needs Moms ). And none have a strong buzz, at least so far as I've heard. While it is great that this many animated features are being made, both from an employment and audience standpoint, it's disheartening that this year's Oscar winner will likely be something that won't stand...

On November 4 at the NFB (150 John Street), the Toronto Student Animation Festival will screen. The doors open at 6:00 and the screening runs from 6:30 to 8:30. Admission is $10. John Bissylas, a local high school teacher, created a festival several years ago to showcase the animation of high school students. This screening, however, will feature work from older students from around the world. On November 10, there will be an industry event to raise funds and awareness for the Toronto Animated Arts Festival International . It's an animation festival that will take place next June at the Bell Lightbox downtown. Admission to the fundraiser is $15 in advance and $20 at the door and the event takes place at the Vogue Supperclub, 42 Mowat Avenue in Liberty Village.

Børge Ring called the above to my attention. It's a 2005 Tom and Jerry, co-directed by Joe Barbera. In some ways, it does a remarkably good job of duplicating the look and feel of the Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons of the 1940s and '50s. However, in other ways, it doesn't, and surrounded by those things that work, the lapses stand out even more. Børge pointed out that Bill Hanna's timing just isn't there and that this cartoon inadvertently shows the importance of Hanna's contribution. He's right. For instance, the gag at 3:05 where Tom hurtles into the garbage truck is timed too slowly. Hanna never would have had the extended pause between Tom landing and the jaws closing. Furthermore, the jaws would have closed faster. That wouldn't have been true to life, but it would have been funnier. Like the opening titles, a collision of Warner Bros. and MGM fonts, some of the character poses look to be from Warner Bros. rather than MGM. Jerry'...

Comic Book Resources has an interview with Dean Mullaney and Kurtis Findlay, who have edited Chuck Jones: The Dream that Never Was , a collection of the comic strip Crawford that Jones did in the late 1970s. The book will be available in December. I remember reading the strip and clipped a few of them before I lost interest. One of the ironies of Jones' career is that he received more attention and opportunity when his work was in decline than he did when he was at his peak. Crawford suffers from the cuteness that infected much of his post-Warner Bros. work and the coarsening of his drawing that also occurred then. I will definitely look this book over when it is published for the opportunity to see unpublished work and to compare my current impression with my memories of the strip, but I don't believe that Crawford is a hidden treasure that will add anything to Jones' reputation. This is not Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes . If it was, the strip never would have b...

The second volume of the reprinting Andew Loomis's art instruction books is now available. I've seen copies in stores, though Amazon won't release it until Oct. 25. Loomis was a commercial illustrator in the days when mass circulation magazines were full of painted illustrations accompanying fiction. He also authored a series of art instruction books that are still much sought after, even 6 decades after first being published. The books were out of print for years and copies commanded over $100 apiece on used book sites. Titan Books (who are also publishing The Simon and Kirby Library ; the next volume is of their crime comics and due out momentarily) have undertaken to reprint Loomis. This volume follows Figure Drawing for All It's Worth . While art styles have changed since Loomis's day, the fundamentals don't change. Anyone interested in learning to draw will benefit from Loomis's books.

By now, I assume everybody has experienced at least one of the lectures illustrated/animated by cartoon drawings on a whiteboard. They are done by Andrew Park, a British artist who listens to each audio entry 50 times before completing his art. Here's an article on Park, detailing his approach to making these pieces.

From Galloping Gaucho From Peter Pan Disneyscreencaps.com features thousands of screen captures from shorts, features, and made for DVD films. It also includes work from Pixar and Dreamworks. I don't know if there's any rhyme or reason for the particular captures. It doesn't appear that they were selected by an animator. For all I know, the captures were done by an automated process. In any case, if you're looking for a handy visual reference from any of the films they've covered, it may be quicker than hauling out the DVD.

You would think that by volume 11 of Walt's People, a series of books composed of interviews with people who worked with and for Walt Disney, that editor Didier Ghez would be down to interviewing the grandson of the janitor who emptied the wastebasket of Milt Kahl's inbetweener. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Editor Ghez continues to come up with interviews of historical importance filled with fascinating anecdotes and production details. The contents of volume 11 are: Foreword: John Canemaker Didier Ghez: Ruthie Tompson Christopher Finch & Linda Rosenkrantz: Walt Pfeiffer John Culhane: Shirley Temple John Culhane: I. Klein Peter Hansen: Basil Reynolds Christopher Finch & Linda Rosenkrantz: Eric Larson John Culhane: John Hubley Robin Allan: Jules Engel Darrell Van Citters: Ed Love Darrell Van Citters: Mike Lah JB Kaufman: Frank Thomas Dave Smith: Carl Nater John Culhane: John Hench John Canemaker: Ward Kimball Dave Smith: Ward Kimball Didier Ghez: Frank Arm...

Go here , for an interactive version of the above. And go here if you want a print. (Link via Boing Boing )

In addition to voicing the Loony Tunes characters for animated cartoons, Mel Blanc also voiced them on records for children. Warner Bros. has now created new cgi animation to go with one of those records. I previously mentioned Sam Register's address to Mipcom Jr, a TV market in Europe. Above is the video of that address and at 27:03, you can see a clip of the Daffy Duck animation done to the Mel Blanc record. You can also see a clip of Thundercats at 19:33 and the cgi Green Lantern at 23:39.

Someone known as lostvocals4 has taken live action footage from Operation Wonderland , a live action promotional piece that Disney made for Alice in Wonderland , and synched it up with the finished film. Disney was shooting live action reference footage at least as early as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . That procedure continued in the 1950s, especially because the budgets were tighter and the films had to be made more efficiently. Ed Wynn was filmed as the Mad Hatter and Jerry Colonna was filmed as the March Hare, with Kathryn Beaumont as Alice. What's interesting is that the audio from the reference footage was used as the final audio in the film. The artists on screen, in order of their first appearance, are Les Clark, Fred Moore (at left) with John Lounsbery, and Ward Kimball. If you want to see the entire Operation in Wonderland , which contains additional live action reference for the Walrus's dance and the march of the playing cards, you can see it here and here ....

Left to right: Mike and Tim Rauch. "The key is to try and be as honest and true to the story as possible." - Mike Rauch I admire the work of the Rauch brothers enormously as their work, based on documentary audio recordings done by Storycorps, is built on emotional truth. That's something too often lacking in modern animation. The brothers are interviewed by Jeremy Helton, talking about their history, their influences and their process. There are also photo comparisons between real people and settings and the designs that the brothers have created from them. You can see four video interviews with the brothers here and a selection of their work here .

Left to right: Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs, John Lasseter. Image lifted from the Pixar website. It's been a few days since Steve Jobs passed away and I've had some time to gather my thoughts. It occurs to me that Jobs was like Walt Disney in that they shared traits common to visionary entrepreneurs. Walt Disney didn't create animation. He wasn't responsible for every advance that came from his studio. And while there were others in animation who broke ground, the public identified the animation medium with Walt Disney. Disney went through a bankruptcy and several setbacks (the loss of Oswald the Rabbit and the defection of staff), but still managed to overcome the problems and continue to pursue his goals. Steve Jobs didn't create personal computers. He wasn't responsible for every advance that came from Apple. Certainly there are others who broke ground in computing, but Jobs was the very public face of computers as lifestyle enhancers. Jobs was tossed out...

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and savior of Pixar, has lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. The official announcement is here . Jobs was also a major shareholder in Disney after he sold Pixar to Disney. While he clearly prepared Apple to continue without him, we'll have to see who inherits his Disney shares. In any case, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull have lost an ally and Robert Iger's hand is no doubt strengthened. Men like Jobs are rare and he will be missed. There was no one in the computer or electronics field to compare with him.

Those of you interested in what's happening with the Looney Tunes characters, Thundercats and the animated version of Green Lantern should read coverage of Sam Register's keynote speech to MIP Jr, a European TV market for children's programming. One of the revelations in the article is that Warner Bros. is teaming up with Aardman Animation to make clay animated Batman shorts. There's also a cgi Batman series coming in 2013.

Everyone who attends the Ottawa Festival (or any other large event for that matter) is going to have an individual opinion. It's impossible at Ottawa to see every screening and attend every presentation, so opinions will vary based on what a person experienced. What follows are my thoughts, based on being there for just the weekend and the programs I chose to attend. It's a shame that the animator picnic is not included in the weekend pass, as it is now the only venue at the festival where everyone is together. When the festival used the National Arts Centre, it was a central place for everyone to meet. This is my second year attending since the National Arts Centre is no longer used, and my feeling that the festival is spread over too great a distance remains. The individual venues are nice, but the lack of a real hub makes it tougher to find people and lessens word of mouth for any hot films. I saw The Bug Trainer , a European documentary on Ladislas Starewitch, the stop...

Animation Insider is a site whose mission is to "focus on the real people in the trenches who make the award winning stuff we love. " The good news is that there are a great many interviews on the site, focusing on people who don't normally get coverage. The bad news is that the questions are standardized, so all kinds of opportunities for follow up questions are missed. Still, the site is a good place to discover the varied backgrounds and sensibilities of the people who earn their livings in animation. Here's a link to an alphabetical listing of interview subjects.

Fresh from his appearance at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. (click to enlarge.)

I will be at the Ottawa Animation Festival from sometime Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. On Saturday at 1:00, I'll be on a panel called Web Portfolios with Richard O'Connor of Ace and Son Moving Picture Company and Brooke Keesling of The Cartoon Network. Stop by and say hello if you're there.

Most animation fans are familiar with the sequence in Anchors Aweigh where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry, the mouse from Tom and Jerry cartoons. Fewer fans have seen Invitation to the Dance , a feature spearheaded by star Gene Kelly which consists entirely of three dance sequences. The last sequence is "Sinbad the Sailor" and features Kelly dancing with animated characters produced by Hanna Barbera while they were still at MGM. The film will be showing on Turner Classic Movies early in the morning of Tuesday Sept. 20 at 12:15 a.m. Eastern Time. Or if you prefer, late Monday night. In any case, TCM only runs the film every few years, so you might want to catch it if you're interested. Below is an excerpt from the animated sequence.

Steve Bissette, a comics artist who also writes and publishes, has posted a great piece on issues surrounding collaborating on a graphic novel. The piece is relevant because the requests that Bissette is addressing are similar to those that I regularly address as the coordinator of Sheridan College's animation program. I am constantly fielding phone calls and emails requesting that students create films for individuals and organizations. As Bissette points out, like it or not, drawing takes longer than writing. And animating most certainly takes longer than writing. My first question when I get these requests is to ask if this is a paying project. Most times it isn't. In that case, my response is that we have a highly structured curriculum and we're not able to accommodate the request. If the job is paying, I try to connect a recent graduate with the project. I don't doubt that many animation artists get requests like this. I remember somebody who wanted an anim...

Kim Deitch, son of animator Gene Deitch, has been writing an autobiography of sorts at The Comics Journal site. This installment mixes comix, music and animation into a gumbo that features animators Sally Cruikshank, Tony Eastman, Gene Deitch, and comix artist R. Crumb.

(Click to enlarge. It's a big one.) Charlie Jane Anders at io9 has put together this chart showing how six large corporations essentially control the pop culture franchises that make up our common experience. The chart doesn't really represent ownership as much as it represents control. New Line Cinema doesn't own The Lord of the Rings , only the film version. And Harper Collins doesn't own Tolkien's novels, only the publishing rights. But when you see how much these six companies control, it's clear why copyright and digital rights management have become major issues and why the United States is leaning heavily on other countries, including Canada , to write legislation to protect U.S. corporate assets. The chart is also incomplete. Notice that while Disney is listed, none of the drawn animated characters are on this chart. Neither is Nickelodeon or CBS (both Viacom companies), though Cartoon Network makes it. That just shows that what's here is onl...

Cartoon Brew has a photo of Moore I've never seen, Jenny Lerew posts a lovely photo of Moore with his wife Virginia and their infant daughter, and Andreas Deja posts a large sampling of Moore's work. The above is the one Moore from my own collection. Moore is practically a mythical character. His influence is ubiquitous, not only in animation but also in greeting card art of a certain vintage. Because he died before fans and historians could interview him, he's a mystery compared to other Disney artists. His death, often falsely attributed to his alcoholism, has spawned more versions than I can count. He's the Bix Beiderbecke of animation: the flawed boy prince, bursting with a unique talent, who left us too soon. What would we give to have known him?

Another Storycorps film from the Rauch Brothers.

Ed Catmull, currently the president of the Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios, was one of the key people in the development of computer animation. Catmull was and is a software engineer, somebody who developed the nuts and bolts of making animation work with computers. A couple of his early pieces have surfaced. The first, reported on Cartoon Brew , is a film from the University of Utah in 1972. After the University of Utah, Catmull went to the New York Institute of Technology, located on Long Island, where he was involved with trying to find ways of joining the computer with drawn animation. John Celestri has reprinted a paper Catmull wrote called "The Problems of Computer-Assisted Animation." Computer animation has reached a high level of sophistication but it wasn't that long ago that it was struggling to establish itself as a practical medium. These pieces show how far it has come in less than 40 years, all within the working lifetime of Ed Catmull.

Andrew Murray and Adam Hines are two Sheridan graduates who have a podcast talking about what it's like to be starting out in the animation business. You can find all their podcasts here . I'm their guest in episode 22 , talking a bit about my career and a whole lot about creator rights .

August 28 would have been Jack Kirby's 94th birthday. Mark Evanier, who worked with Kirby, has his birthday tribute here , including an embedded documentary on Kirby made for the DVD release of one of the Fantastic Four movies. Tom Spurgeon prints a great gallery of Kirby artwork and Mark Seifert has a gallery of Kirby originals to enjoy. I wish that we could be celebrating the success of the Kirby estate's attempt to recover copyrights, but the recent court decision that went against the Kirby estate is now being appealed. Perhaps there will be better news for Kirby's next birthday.

The Rauch Brothers' latest short combines documentary audio of grown children remembering their Sunday school teacher with animation designed by Bill Wray. I love this kind of work, mixing real life events with animation. All of the Rauch Brothers' work for Storycorps can be seen here and all of it is worth watching.

Salon has an interview with Bill Plympton .

Courtesy of Tom Knott, here's the complete contents of that 1975 Film Comment issue on animation. Get it quickly as Tom has indicated that it won't be up for long.

I've been on the road for the last ten days: Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley (second time!) and now Loveland, Colorado. I'm guessing that readers are scratching their heads over the final location, but this weekend was the occasion for two annual shows that attract hundreds of sculptors who display their work. As I've been sculpting for the last two years, I wanted to see what was being done. Sun Dog by Ellen Woodbury I knew that I'd see Ellen Woodbury at Sculpture in the Park . I met Ellen a year or so ago when she visited Sheridan College and I learned that she's now living in Loveland and sculpting full time. Ellen works in stone and her subject is animals , not a surprise given her animal animation at Disney on characters like Pegasus in Hercules . Reviewing the Troops by Mark Henn I did not expect to see Mark Henn , who participated in the Loveland Sculpture Invitational Show . Mark is still at Disney, having recently completed work on the W...

In early 1975, Film Comment magazine devoted an entire, oversize issue to Hollywood cartoons. It's well worth finding in a library or through an online service, as it contains a comprehensive interview with Chuck Jones as well as an interview with Grim Natwick and articles by Greg Ford and Mark Langer. One piece was an essay on Walt Disney by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum has now posted the first part of that essay on his website with the second part to follow shortly. As Thad has pointed out in the comments, part 2 is now up. And here is Rosenbaum on Tex Avery .

Here's an oddity. The trailer for MGM's 1935 feature No More Ladies starts and ends with an animated Leo the Lion. According to Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation , the animator is Bill Nolan, a veteran of the silent era whose previous job was at the Lantz studio in the early '30s. The voice, of course, is by Billy Bletcher, who voiced the Big Bad Wolf in Disney's The Three Little Pigs and also did cartoon voices for Warner Bros. ( Little Red Riding Rabbit ). (Link via The Golden Age Cartoon Forum .)

I am sure that this judgment will be appealed, but a Federal court has ruled that the work Jack Kirby did for Marvel was "work-for-hire." This is despite the fact that the legal term was not part of the copyright law at the time Kirby co-created characters such as The Fantastic Four , The Hulk , The Silver Surfer , Thor , etc. Here's the Associated Press story and here is Deadline Hollywood 's. While I am sure that there is a celebration occurring in the Disney and Marvel boardrooms as a result of this ruling, it's a questionable victory. When the artists at Marvel realized that the company was not going to compensate them beyond paying them by the page, they simply stopped creating new characters. Image Comics exists because a group of artists realized they would never be fairly compensated for their work at Marvel and so they formed their own company. Marvel's treatment of their artists has been consistently bad. See this article on the recently decea...