I don't know why Lee is putting "heir" within quotation marks.  Children are the very definition of heirs. 

Because that is what the article refered to them as. Anyways, relatives of the greatest comic artist of all time vs. ginat heartless corproation (Disney) I don't like the Kirby familie's chances.

From what I understand, it was Joe Simon who came up with the Spider-Man name, not Kirby....

"And of course when Alan Moore denied Marvel permission to reprint his stories, they did the ethical thing and...

Reprinted the stories anyway. 

Bring on the good guys! "

Nope. Alan Davis (who drew those stories and had copyrights on the artwork) kept pushing for the stories to be published. Alan Moore kept refusing to allow it. Then he finally relented, but when, through a production gaffe, he was not credited as a copyrightholder or writer on the indicia page (the one with all the legalese in front of the book) he refused to allow further printings of a book that rapidly sold out.

However, according to european copyright law, if a copyright to an inseperable work is split equally between 2 people, all that is required is for one party to show that the deal to have it published is reasonable in terms of money and quality.

The publication, which Alan Davis had been pushing for decades had only been held off on to appease Alan Moore.

In fact, one might say that what was unethical was to delay the printing of the Captain Britain stories when Alan Davis wanted it and the project was clearly financially viable.  Alan Moore was denying his co-creator Alan Davis the revenue from the book at the time that it would have profitted him the most out of spite because Marvel asked for the name "Marvelman"  to be changed to "Miracleman" on publication in America, a perfectly reasonable attempt to protect their trademark.

As I understand it, it has now been reprinted again, and that's good. However, had it been published when Alan Davis was writing/drawing Excalibur (with Captain Britain and several of the secondary characters from the Captain Britain strip), when Alan Moore was a hot seller in mainstream comics  and before the comics market collapsed, Alan Davis (and Alan Moore, but that's irrelevant as he can deny himself whatever he wants) could probably have earned at least 10 to 20 times as much in royalties from it. Add to that steady sales over 2 decades (just like everything else in Alan Moore's catalogue).

And that's a lot of steady income for any freelancer to lose out on.

But by all means, let's all indulge Alan Moore his little hypocrisies.

Well, as the copyright law is pretty much the same in all of western Europe on this issue, they probably didn't actually need Moore's permission to reprint the Captain Britain stories, since Marvel owned copyrights on the characters and Alan Davis had split copyright on the stories.  He was due money, though. At least as much as Alan Davis received.

Either way, it was not unethical for Marvel to reprint the stories without his permission as long as they had permission from his collaborator. They may have unethically failed to pay him for reprinting them, but that's another matter.