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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133555
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 9:43am | IP Logged | 1
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Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had many bites of this apple over the years. And while I agree it was a bad business deal for them originally, they went into with eyes wide open. They were not children when they signed it. But DC re-negotiated numerous times with them, when they really had no legal obligation to do so, and paid them additional money, of which this Shuster settlement was one. Did they get what they were REALLY owed? No. But they got a lot more than many others in their position have gotten over the years.•• Why do you think they did not get what they were owed? They sold the character outright. National Periodicals (and DC, later) from that point "owed" them nothing further. Think of it this way: you buy a house from the builder, and turn it into a hotel. The hotel becomes enormously successful. The builder turns up on your doorstep saying he wants a piece of that. What do you"owe" him?
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Kevin Brown
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 9006
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 10:00am | IP Logged | 2
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Why do you think they did not get what they were owed? They sold the character outright. National Periodicals (and DC, later) from that point "owed" them nothing further. ************************************************************ * I agree about National legally owing them nothing, but I still remember when Neal Adams pretty much shamed DC into giving them a yearly "fee". That's what I was recalling when I made that comment.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 11:57am | IP Logged | 3
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The campaign to get a "better" deal for Siegel and Shuster was well under way when I came into the industry. People were crying loudly about how the creators of Superman had been sorely mistreated. (By "sorely mistreated", of course, we mean paid millions of dollars over the years, most of which they wasted on pointless lawsuits.)Meanwhile, at the very same time, many of the very same people were excoriating Bob Kane FOR DOING WHAT SIEGEL AND SHUSTER HAD FAILED TO DO. That money-grubbing scumbag!! Damned if you do, and damned if you do!! (A few years later, DC jumped at the chance to play Good Guy, by joining the legions who were demanding Marvel return Jack Kirby's artwork. DC, of course, didn't have any Kirby artwork locked away in their warehouses. Why not? BECAUSE THEY HAD DESTROYED IT!!)
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Lars Johansson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 June 2004
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6113
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | 4
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What JB wrote I have been thinking 99% percent of my life. So thanks for writing it. However, when I read the lawsuits and the settlements a couple of years ago, I have to say that I got a somewhat different picture. I'm sure that JB's version is the correct one still, but it looked more like a scenario where DC tried to advance a license kind of deal with Siegel and Shuster into eternity by advancing it a few years at a time, rather than saying outright that they own the character. For example the Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster intro text is because of such a deal. I still believe in JB's hotel scenario though and that is what happened to National/DC, but it does not completely look like it to me when I read the papers, 99.9% perhaps but not 100%.
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Brad Wilders
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 December 2008
Posts: 183
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | 5
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The current lawsuits have nothing to do with whether Siegel and Shuster got a bad deal. When Siegel and Shuster transferred their copyright to DC, that copyright had a fixed term (28 years with a 28 year renewal, I think) after which the character would become public domain. In 1976, when Congress extended the term, it split that extension between the current rights holder and the original author, provided the author jumped through a bunch of procedural hoops to terminate the transfer. The law did not "take anything away" from DC because under the laws enacted at the time of the transfer, Superman would have entered the public domain by now, divesting DC of the exclusive right to tell Superman stories. Rather, the extension of the law allowed DC to retain its ownership unless the author acted to terminate the transfer. The Siegels did so, entitling them to their half of the copyright in Action #1. The Shusters did not because they had already assigned their right to transfer back to DC.
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Caleb M. Edmond
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 May 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 762
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | 6
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"Why do you think they did not get what they were owed? They sold the character outright. National Periodicals (and DC, later) from that point "owed" them nothing further."
Think of it this way: you buy a house from the builder, and turn it into a hotel. The hotel becomes enormously successful. The builder turns up on your doorstep saying he wants a piece of that. What do you"owe" him?
************************************************************ *************************************
Perfect Analogy!
I've been trying to explain this comparison for years.
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Clifford Boudreaux
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Joined: 19 July 2012
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | 7
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Lest we forget that this law suit stems from the Copyright Extension Act, without which Superman would be in the public domain.
So more like DC built a house on land owned by the government and to extend the lease they had to forfeit certain rights to the creators.
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Andrew W. Farago
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Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4079
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | 8
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I'm thinking of a different building analogy. There's a big, vacant plot of land, with some small shacks, huts, and a few storefronts. Two guys come in with some ideas that transform it overnight into a bustling metropolis, and the people that let them build something in the city have become prosperous beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
Do you build statues of these guys in the town square? Do you name the city after them? Do you make sure that they and their children and grandchildren will always be welcome there?
Take Siegel and Shuster out of the comic book industry, and what is there? I understand the legal aspects of all of this seem to strongly favor DC and Warner Bros., but Superman and DC Comics are a multi-billion dollar industry now. Why not take the high road here and settle this one out of court with the heirs?
Same question for Marvel/Disney. Avengers was a billion-and-a-half dollar movie. Why not give Jack Kirby's estate a million bucks for each character of his they used in the film? Why not kick some of that money back to Don Heck's family, or the Buscemas, or Neal Adams, or John Byrne for his part in creating James Rhodes? Not out of any legal obligation, but because it's the right thing to do. No one had any idea these characters would become what they did when they were created, and now that giant corporations own these characters and characters as obscure as Blade can helm major film franchises, why can't Disney and Warner Bros. treat the people who created these characters with dignity and respect?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133555
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | 9
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Take Siegel and Shuster out of the comic book industry, and what is there? •• Somebody else with a similar idea. Remember, there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ORIGINAL in the "creation" of Superman. S&S cobbled together bits and pieces from a dozen or more preexisting sources including, famously, Philip Wylie's 1930 novel GLADIATOR. All that stuff was floating around for anyone to stitch together. Lee Falk almost got there first, with the Phantom. If S&S hadn't done it, you can be sure someone else would have. +++ Why not kick some of that money back to Don Heck's family, or the Buscemas, or Neal Adams, or John Byrne for his part in creating James Rhodes? •• Because that wasn't the deal. There's an old saying, "You take the King's shilling, you do the King's bidding." The old deal was a crummy deal, but it was the only deal in town (unless, like Eisner, you were prepared to incur all the risks of striking out on your own, or, like that "money grubbing bastard" Bob Kane you had a smart lawyer). And more importantly IT WAS NOT A SECRET. Everybody knew what they were getting into. Back in those days, of course -- and feel free to call us all crushingly naive -- many of us got into comics not for the money, but for the sheer joy of the job. So the deal was crummy, but we didn't mind. Look at the great toys we got to play with.
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Jason Czeskleba
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Joined: 30 April 2004
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | 10
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Aaron Adam Leach wrote:
| I am curious what this now means for the Siegal and Shuster heirs. |
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For the Shuster heirs, it means they've exhausted their legal means to seek partial ownership of Superman. For the Siegel heirs it means nothing, since this decision was only about the Shuster half of the copyright.
Brad Wilders wrote:
| The law did not "take anything away" from DC because under the laws enacted at the time of the transfer, Superman would have entered the public domain by now, divesting DC of the exclusive right to tell Superman stories. |
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Exactly. DC did not pay for the ownership of the character in perpetuity, they paid for ownership for the length of the copyright at the time, which as you say was up to 56 years. They got what they paid for.
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Tony Centofanti
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Joined: 16 August 2007
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | 11
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Meanwhile, at the very same time, many of the very same people were excoriating Bob Kane FOR DOING WHAT SIEGEL AND SHUSTER HAD FAILED TO DO. That money-grubbing scumbag!! Damned if you do, and damned if you do!! ----- I think a lot of the fan resentment comes from his treatment of Bill Finger. If Kane had worked his shrewd deal with National AND taken care of Finger, I think people would look on his memory a bit differently. The resentment can't stem from just the money. After-all Eastman and Laird still get accolades for their achievments, and they've whored their creations out more than any other singular comic creator I can think of.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 18 October 2012 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | 12
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think a lot of the fan resentment comes from his treatment of Bill Finger. If Kane had worked his shrewd deal with National AND taken care of Finger, I think people would look on his memory a bit differently.•• How many of their uncredited assistants and ghosts did Siegel and Shuster "take care of"?
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Topic Closed)
