Q: What do Superman and Spider-Man have in common?
A: The heirs to the comics creators’ estates are suing to regain control of the copyright, which may put the production of any movies into doubt.
Similar to how earlier in 2009, the heirs to the estates of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sued to regain some part of the millions that were earned from Superman Returns‘s worldwide box office receipts, the heirs to Jack Kirby’s estate are seeking to terminate the hold that several companies have on the copyright to Spider-Man, the X-Men, and several other character that were created by Kirby during the Silver Age of comics.
Among the companies that were told that the rights would soon be reverting to the estate are Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Sony Pictures, each of whom have a great interest in making sure that they only have to pay Marvel Comics for the use of the characters in their big screen adventures.
Marvel responded last Friday by filing a lawsuit against the Kirby heirs stating that because Kirby’s work on the characters was under a “for hire” contract, his claim to the characters is invalid, according to many sources (but I’m using Digital Spy.com and Newser.com‘s accounts).
Marvel attorney John Turitzin commented on the Kirby heirs actions, stating that the heirs were trying “to rewrite the history of Kirby’s relationship with Marvel” and that “Everything about Kirby’s relationship with Marvel shows that his contributions were works made for hire and that all the copyright interests in them belong to Marvel.”
Marc Toberoff, also the attorney for the Siegel and Shuster heirs, responded:
The truth is that Jack Kirby was his own man. Like so many artists in the fledgling comic book industry of the late 1950s/early 1960s, Kirby worked with Marvel out of his own house as a freelancer with no employment contract, no financial or other security, nor any other indicia of employment.
Kirby’s wonderful creations, which leapt from the page, were not Marvel’s ‘assignments’, but were instead authored by Kirby under his own steam and then published by Marvel. It was not until 1972 that Kirby by contract granted Marvel the copyrights to his works. It is to this grant that the Kirby family’s statutory notices of termination apply.
What some are saying prompted the Kirby heirs to action was a recent change to the copyright laws which allows more avenues towards people regaining the rights to their work, but I have not been successful in seeking out the exact verbiage of the changes. If that’s true, then I really hope that they are able to get some control back.
However, unlike Siegel and Shuster’s situation, Stan Lee was also very much a part of the Silver Age character creation due to his employ of what became known as “the Marvel method” and since Lee has yet to make an official statement about the events, fan perception of how this all goes down could be split.
We’ll be bringing more news to you, as it happens.