You pretty much explained it the best way possible for me so I greatly appreciate it. Now I’m fine with hoping the families will get what they are asking for from this.

 

Awesome.

 

Also, with many of these creators there was no contract until a much later date, which was the case with Jack Kirby who didn't sign his first contract until 1976. Ignoring the obvious moral bankruptcy at the heart of the way Marvel treated their most famous creators, many of them did not sign a contract when they created some of their most famous creations and the heart of many of these disputes is if they constituted work for hire employees at the time. In the case of the Copy Right Act of 1909, the act is so vague that courts have adopted the instance and expense test in order to have some sort of litmus test for what constitutes work for hire. It's no accident that they agreed to settle with the Kirby estate when the court was more balanced, and RBG had displayed an interest in hearing the case. Marvel isn't on particularly sure footing here, and I doubt it's an accident that they decided to sue Lieber, and the estates of Ditko, Colan, and Rico only once there was a conservative majority on the SCOTUS.

Sure, but they named the character, developed a power set that other creators only evolved, came up with an enduring slogan that's universally recognized about the character even today, established his alter ego and identity as a reporter. and created Lois Lane. I also want to say that they did invent Lex Luthor, he just appeared only as "Luthor" and was genius bent on world domination. His first name, position as a business mogul, and deep resentment for Supes were created later, but I think they're still created as the creators of Lex Luthor. Similarly, while you're right that they didn't flesh out Olsen (I think he came from a radio show), I think they also still get credit for him. I get your point, I just think they are still technically created as creating Lex and Jimmy.

I don't disagree with you about it being a unique medium that lives and breathes based on the creative impulses of those who often times come after creators. It's interesting that Chris Claremon didn't "create" Wolverine even though most of what defines the core of Logan comes from things he did on X-Men, and Wolverine. I think the malleability of it is precisely what makes it such an enduring art form. It's just that it's still important to acknowledge and reward the contributions of those creators fairly. If it was easy to find the "it" factor that made a character a media giant then modern creators like Todd McFarlane, Kevin Eastman and, to a lesser extent, Ben Edlund wouldn't be famous for successfully spinning their creations into media powerhouses. It is really hard to develop even that template, and there have been tons of great writers that have failed, with great stories, to bring something to life in the same way that the characters we've been discussing have been. It seems both morally and legally questions (hence the continued suits) that only the publisher should profit in a substantial way from these creations.

Also, just as an aside. If Marvel wasn't next level shitty about it, they'd probably have fewer of these disputes. DC was just as awful back in the day, but at least with contemporary properties that they develop they do a much better job of fair compensation. Len Wein has said that he was paid more money for Lucius Fox than Marvel paid him for Wolverine. I'm not saying that "shut up money" is a great long term solution either. It's just that Marvel is even bad at being less shitty than DC when it comes to hush money. Disney is just awful.

 

Disney needs to be taken down several pegs.

 

People now forget back in the Disney comics days Uncle Walt took credit for all the art and the writing. It took years for fans to uncover many of the artists behind the comics. Disney has a long history of not giving people credit for their work. Marvel and DC also famously treated their creators poorly. Though in later years DC would have better compensation due to later editors treating their creators better. Marvel started doing so as well, but has long been known to be stingy. One of the reason Image was formed was the artists saw their art on all sorts of stuff from t-shirts to mugs. But if they wanted one, they had to use their own money to get it. They also saw no compensation for it. So they left.
Yes it's work for hire, but there are a lot of unfair things they do.

 

Why don’t people understand this? This is the way it is. If I invent something doing my job it’s owned by the company. That is not fucking me over. I know the rules I signed up for in exchange for my compensation.

 

Just people wanting free money by mooching off their ancestors because they're not relevant enough to matter. Nothing to see here. Unfortunately, they'll get their pay day just so Disney can shut them up.

 

Because many of them never signed a contract, if they did it was much later in their career and the language implied that at some point they did own the rights because the law was so ambiguous, they were all very young and starting out in what was a fledgling industry, and contract law from the turn of the century was so grey and unclear that they had to develop a litmus test to determine how they would even identify what work for hire looked like? Also, they had few if any employment prospects outside the industry, were working for page rates so low that they were struggling to make ends meet at times, and the "Marvel Method" was so collaborative that Marvel had to settle with the Kirby estate the last time we had a balanced SCOTUS because they suspected things would go badly for them?

For the record, I am deeply conservative, but it boggles my mind when people can't seperate their ideological bent from complex issues and make reductive statements that make 0 sense if you're familiar with the issue. It's obvious who owns what in 2021. Copyright law was updated in 1976 and is far less ambiguous. Not only that, but creators are aware of the value of their properties. Companies like Image only exist because creators became aware of the value of their creations, and assuming contract law from the turn of the century accounted for the nuance of modern day life is utterly insane.

 

Yeah man, it's terrible how these greedy fat cats are terrorizing the helpless saints working at Disney.

I find it genuinely disturbing how quick people are to defend the massive corporation as long as they're getting something out of it. Christ on a bike.

 

As someone who owns a property, you better believe I'm all for defending copyright. Marvel owns every character their artists and writer created because they were the ones they were created for. You don't get to say, "Okay, well my grandfather made this for you while working for your company a hundred years ago, but I own it now because I say so, so give me money!"

 

It's depressing to me that you (at least claim to) own property and yet still don't understand where the estates of these great men are coming from and simply put it down to cynical, simple greed, siding instead with the exploitative and totally not money-hungry corporation. You probably don't even know anything about these people and just read the headlines.

Furthermore its thanks to those '100 year old grandfathers' that you can enjoy consuming such soulless, shitty content based on their hard work. Maybe a little gratitude is in order.

How much does integrity go for these days?

 

As I just said in another thread, as far as I'm concerned, until a company goes out of business or stop using a character for a certain number of years, they should always own that copyright. As such, Marvel should always own Spider-Man and Doctor Strange as long as they are using them just like how DC should always own Batman and Superman as long as they use them.

And unlike the Bob Kane situation, Marvel has fully credited every character to every creator. Every Spider-Man book I own says, "Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko." Every Fantastic Four book I own says, "Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby." Every Captain America book says, "Created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon." ETC.

 

Thankfully that isn't how the law works

The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it

Disney loves to make movies from Public Domain Character because it doesn't cost them money. Even recent movies like Tangled and Frozen are from Public Domain Characters.

But Disney is old really old, so eventually even their works will fall into the public Domain.

Any works whose copyrights have expired are in the public domain. In the United States, the length of the term of copyright is life of the author plus an additional 70 years. So, really old works (at least those published before 1923) are in the public domain.

Second, works can enter the public domain if authors put them there before the copyright expires.

Also this only applies in the United States, other countries have shorter lengths and many works have already fallen into their public domain.

 

Pay what's owed, you cheap bastards.

 

You'd think with all the money Disney has (and seemingly likes to throw away, looking at all the shitty content they put out these days) paying these people to continue misusing characters they didn't create wouldn't' be a big deal.

 

The only issue I hold with that statement is that this is a really old problem in the comic industry and not one limited to a single one of the Big Two. And I know Disney is the villain of the moment but I don’t see how they’re suddenly the assholes in this instance. Most of these characters were created long before they and Marvel Comics had even any relationship.

So while I say pay people what they’re owed, it should be Marvel Comics doing the paying, not Disney.

 

Won't this start effecting everything else?

Years from now:
Sorry Hasbro, my relative created Rodimus Prime, he's mine now. Or all the IDW created Transformers characters.
Hey Paramount, my relative created The Borg. You can't use them in Star Trek anymore.

 

Trek already has a little of that with writer royalties, especially depending on which story you believe about the Tom Paris/Nick Locarno deal.

Also to answer your question, probably eventually. Long lasting companies holding copyrights over fictional characters for nearly a century is uncharted territory.

 

I only see that as a future problem if there's no (legally valid) contract or agreement on record, either acknowledging that all materials created by the artist are owned by the employer as part of the terms of employment, or if such a document was created a later in which the employee legally gives up/transfers any ownership they might have to the employer.

Including issues in the recent past (see, for example, the situation with Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog series and Ken Penders, for example), any companies with any (business) sense are almost certainly more clear and obvious about such things in their contracts/agreements.

 

I am more worried about the precedent set. Who is to say that they stop here? Who is to say that the estates of the inventers of several components to pretty much everything produced won't try the royalty squeeze themselves? How will that affect the prices of pretty much everything, IF it doesn't make the company view it as not profitable enough to produce?