Legal Matters

Let's start the year out with a return to comics' original sin: Daniel Best reprints Truth, Justice, & The Corporate Conscience by Steve Gerber, an article from WAP, a creator's rights newsletter published in the 80s by Gerber, Steven Grant and Frank Miller. Gerber, for those who don't know, was a very influential writer for Marvel in the 70s who eventually sued for ownership of a character he co-created, Howard the Duck. He lost the suit, but never the anger. He died in 2008.

Given the lively discussion of what folks don't want to see on The Beat, I couldn't resist noting that an attorney representing Smallville co-creators...

Over the past year creators' copyright crusader Marc Toberoff took some serious hits in the various Superman and Kirby lawsuits. Yet there was also a deceptively routine procedural matter that could have already assured him a victory in the Siegel estate's Superman appeal.

You might hear today that the district court judge has handed Toberoff another stunning defeat this week, "a doozy and an outright win for DC."  It's actually a win for Toberoff, at least procedurally. Here's what happened. 

Some quickies from the mailbag and around:

One of the ugliest comics related stories of recent years reached a resolution with artist Josue "Justiniano" Rivera's sentencing to 10 years in prison...

If the juicy, fact filled excerpts aren't getting you to run down to the bookstore to pick up a copy of Sean Howe's MARVEL: THE UNTOLD STORY, you must be dead to comics. io9 has a lengthy excerpt that goes right to the heart of the glory days of Lee and Kirby. I cut and pasted five different revelatory paragraphs before to settled on this one, regarding Carl Burgos, the original artist on the Human Torch, and his thoughts back in the 60s of trying to get the rights back.

Yesterday's victory in the Joe Shuster case has definitely left WB looking to jump on a lot of movie-related stuff, including, a Justice League...

By Jeff Trexler In the book of Genesis, Esau sells his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for some lentil soup. Yesterday, a judge ruled that...

It's being reported that Warner Bros have won a court case which will determine who owns the copyright to Superman, meaning they will retain...

This week the long, long battle for the rights to Superman took another turn, as Warners sued attorney Marc Toberoff , who has been representing the family of Jerry Siegel, Superman's co-creator, for many years. The Siegel's have won several legal rounds, leading Warners to adopt very aggressive tactics to delay enforcing a decision to award the Siegel family half of Superman's copyright -- a decision which a court reached 13 years ago, in 1999.

A former assistant is suing Frank Miller and his girlfriend, Kimberly Cox, for discrimination and mental anguish, the NY Post reports, although most of...