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Showing posts with the label Jerry Siegel

Super Complicated

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Readers of this blog will know how interested I am in creators' rights.  Some of the most famous characters of 20th century pop culture were created under dubious legal and financial conditions.  The copyright to Superman was transferred from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the writer and artist, to their publisher for the sum of $130.  That was $10 per page for their first 13 page Superman story.  In order to get paid for their work, they lost control of their creation. The latest U.S. copyright law allows for creators who sold their copyrights to regain them during specific time periods.  If the creators are deceased, their heirs have the right to pursue the copyright. Jerry Seigel's heirs have filed to regain their half of the Superman copyright.  Joe Shuster's heirs are eligible to file in the near future.  Both are represented by attorney Marc Toberoff. On the face of it, it's a nice, clear story.  Two little guys were taken advantage of, lost ...

The Trials of Superman

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The character of Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, has a long and complicated legal history. Jerry Siegel's heirs have terminated their half of DC Comics' copyright of the character and are entitled to share in any revenues made since the copyright termination. Warner Bros, the owner of DC Comics, has not exactly cooperated. The Siegel heirs have been forced to sue, claiming that the revenue they are owed is being underestimated. That was the subject of the above trial. In the words of Daniel Best, who compiled those transcripts, "The argument was that DC Comics had undervalued Superman and licensed the rights to exploit the character in movies and television by dealing with their parent company, Warner Brothers. DC argued that it had always done the right thing, that the deals negotiated and that the payments received, going back to the Salkind era (the 1970/1980s Superman movies with Christopher Reeve) and extending through to the current deals, in...

Read This Letter

"My daughter Laura and I, as well as the Shuster estate, have done nothing more than exercise our rights under the Copyright Act. Yet, your company has chosen to sue us and our long-time attorney for protecting our rights." Nikki Finke has published a letter from the late Joanne Siegel to Jeffrey Bewkes, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner, Inc. The Siegel estate has been fighting to recapture their share of the copyright to Superman. Under U.S.copyright law, works sold to companies can be recovered by the creators at specified periods. There is no question that Superman was not a work for hire. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created it independently and tried selling it for years before it was bought by what was to become DC comics, now owned by Time Warner. I've spent a fair amount of time on this blog warning creators about losing their rights. Anyone who has an idea that they hope to bring to the public needs to read this letter. Paste a copy of it wherever you do...

Cautionary Tales

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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 .)