Marvel wins Copyrights over Jack Kirby Estate

[Chibibar]

Or you could work the fields as a slave or be killed... see, it's a choice, sure, dying is not an option that you want, but it is one...

And hara-kiri/sepuku, taking poisoned hemlock etc. where things people did.

Doesn't mean it justifies anything...

Now you are going into extreme, but ok. Yes, those are choices and people HAVE chosen that path (again a choice)

What Kirby could have done back then?
Negotiate a better contract? you always have that option, but some fear if they exercise that option they might not get the job.
Was it contract work? should have re-negotiate when contract was up.
He could have gone independent (risky and likely to fail)
He could have gone to a competitor?
Print in the newspaper?
print his own comic?

These are the choices I was refering to Kirby, but if you want to get extreme
He could sell everything he had and print his own comic

 

[@Li3n]

Now you are going into extreme, but ok. Yes, those are choices and people HAVE chosen that path (again a choice)

Well if you're gonna proclaim something like it always works then the extremes need to be taken into account...

What Kirby could have done back then?
Negotiate a better contract? you always have that option, but some fear if they exercise that option they might not get the job.
Was it contract work? should have re-negotiate when contract was up.
He could have gone independent (risky and likely to fail)
He could have gone to a competitor?
Print in the newspaper?
print his own comic?

These are the choices I was refering to Kirby, but if you want to get extreme
He could sell everything he had and print his own comic

Most of those choices where very likely not actually possible in the 1940's... even less so in the 60's, when Barry Allen Flash and Fantastic Four basically resurrected comics.

And that's the thing, you all seem to assume that even the option with the 99.9% failure rate is something to be taken into account...

 

[blotsfan]

Well, if he was entitled to the rights to all his work, working at a company like Marvel or DC might not have been an option either.

 

[@Li3n]

Well the companies wouldn't exist in the first place if that was the case...

 

[blotsfan]

Exactly. So you think it'd be better if the comic book industry didn't exist at all.

 

[@Li3n]

Because of course never in the history of the world have there ever been publishers that allowed authors to keep their copyright while still making enough money to be well off just by being publishers...

 

[Norris]

I think we're also forgetting that, in the 1940's and into the 1960's, comics weren't a big industry. At all. Stan Lee does by that name because he planned to have a "legitimate" career as a novelist and didn't want "Stanley Leiber" to be dragged through the funny book mud. When the Marvel Renaissance happened, the only super heroes to have ever had staying power were Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Owning the rights to, say, Captain America would have done Kirby no good until the mid-60's, at least.

Besides, you continue to sidestep the fact that Stan Lee co-created the disputed characters. He was the editor-in-chief/head writer at the time. One could easily argue that these characters were editorially, and therefore corporately, mandated.

 

[strawman]

Not only that, but had they some rights to the material, it's quite reasonable to assume that the company would have created different characters in order to avoid paying royalties on characters they didn't fully own. In other words the only way he could have gotten what he wanted was by pretending to give up his rights, then suing them only after the company showed commitment to them. It's a chicken and egg problem.

 

[@Li3n]

I think we're also forgetting that, in the 1940's and into the 1960's, comics weren't a big industry. At all. Stan Lee does by that name because he planned to have a "legitimate" career as a novelist and didn't want "Stanley Leiber" to be dragged through the funny book mud. When the Marvel Renaissance happened, the only super heroes to have ever had staying power were Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Owning the rights to, say, Captain America would have done Kirby no good until the mid-60's, at least.

No, in the 40's they weren't a respectable industry, but they sold in (or at least near) the millions, and non-superhero comics even more... it's not called the Golden Age for nothing you know.

The Interregnum not making him money was another thing (and there was still romance comics).

And WW doesn't count as the real reason they kept publishing it was because there was a clause that said the rights would revert to the author's family if they didn't publish anyWW book for more then a year.

Besides, you continue to sidestep the fact that Stan Lee co-created the disputed characters. He was the editor-in-chief/head writer at the time.

No i'm not because i never said he didn't contribute... you're thinking of someone else there. But of course nothing stops multiple creators having rights to a work...

One could easily argue that these characters were editorially, and therefore corporately, mandated.

Pretty sure most characters besides in cases like Superman, who was shopped around, most comic book characters where created because the company asked the artist/s to do it... but when i ask a photographer to take my picture he still owns copyright...

Not only that, but had they some rights to the material, it's quite reasonable to assume that the company would have created different characters in order to avoid paying royalties on characters they didn't fully own. In other words the only way he could have gotten what he wanted was by pretending to give up his rights, then suing them only after the company showed commitment to them. It's a chicken and egg problem.

Wouldn't it just be easier to create new characters from the start then? Unless you meant similar characters, and then he should be able to sue them anyway...