News: Superman/Superboy Lawsuit in WB Quarterly Report

[chatback]

This discussion is for comments about the news article News: Superman/Superboy Lawsuit in WB Quarterly Report.

[Captain Sigma]

Dang, I left my law degree in my other pants! :sad: I have NO idea what I just read!

[jrod1019]

I don't want details I want it in engrish!

[imported_athenieus]

i didn't read all of it yet but i'm pretty sure i won't. also i'm sure it involes money that someone wants from the other party because they deserve it and the other party (probably warner/dc) says "no."

[BrettH]

Basically, the heirs of Jerome Siegel (co-creator of the Superman character, along with Joe Shuster), want a substantial amount of money from Warner Brothers from the profits made by WB and its various companies on the Superman character. Also, those heirs claim that Siegel was the sole creator of Superboy, so they want the money from the "Smallville" TV show and DVD's.

A pretty good synopsis of the case can be found in a New York Times article online:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/business/media/29comics.html?ref=movies

[nerosday]

My problem with this: The creators of Superman sold...by Contract, signed and sealed, SOLD superman for $800.00 to DC. Once you have sold it, an intellectual property no longer belongs to you, now if said property goes on to earn billions of dollars it doesn't mean you are entitled to them if you gave your ownership of it away. Did these guys get screwed? Sure. Should they have asked for more money? Of Course. Did they? Nope. Whose fault is that? When Bob Kane sold batman he hired a lawyer to oversee the deal and get him a cut of future profits and royalties, thus making him wealthy the rest of his days. Why are DC at fault because Superman's creators did not do this? No you take money for your intelectual property and all rights to it are off in my opinion. The superboy law suit is ridiculous because if you sell Superman then of course any version of said character goes with him. Superboy is Superman as a youngster...duh. Same character and cast. I feel bad for these families and creators, but when you work for a company creating characters, or sell your characters, they are no longer yours. They got a raw deal sure, but they agreed to that deal. The rest is just sour grapes.

[ShadowVoyd]

No nerosday. What you're missing is that there was a reversion clause in play in the original contract that forced DC to reevaluate the contract in a fixed amount of time. This isn't the first time this case has come up, and, with DC's lawyers being bigger than "the little guys", what DC got that time was a deal that saw Seigel and Shuster receiving some amount of money and a continuance for DC to continue the use of Superman.

Now it's up and the Seigel's estate wants a more comprehensive deal this time around. The Superboy case stinks in regard to DC. Seigel pitched the idea to DC and it was shot down. While Seigel was oversees in WWII, comics saw a shift toward light hearted content and "Superboy", that little idea that Jerry Seigel had sounded like a good idea. DC interpreted their rights to Superman could possibly extend to this relatedcharacter. So, without Seigel's permission, Superboy went into publication with no compensation as, DC interpreted their ownership of the idea, with on clear grounds to prove that.

Oh, and Bob Kane had daddy work out the deal with DC for him, basically demanding his percentage deal and a condition that his and only his name would appear as "the creator". This left Bill Finger really screwed and reduced to very small, blue box in lower left hand corner with "Story by Bill Finger". Way to go to bat for your friend and a far more relevant creator of Batman than the guy with sketch of a guy in red tights and "bird mask", as that was Kane's Batman without Finger's revamping of the idea.