Legal Matters

Golden/Silver age artist Joe Giella who worked for Fawcett in the Golden Age and inked things like Gil Kane's Green Lantern in the Silver age, has had some artwork stolen. Jim Amash reports that "A certain person Joe Giella trusted apparently stole a few pieces of original comic art from his house, mostly likely on Sept. 7 and Oct. 13 of this year.  We want to get the word out so that anyone who may have already purchased this work or may be contacted about it will know it's considered stolen property, and hopefully will help get Joe's artwork back to him. A police report has been filed in the case, but spreading the word to the comics art community is absolutely vital."

Looking upon the images of this check inspires both awe and revulsion. Awe that such a key part of American cultural history has been found. Revulsion that the American comic book industry was birthed in exploitation of the creators. And before anybody gets up in the comments to complain about "the greedy family," know that buying all rights in perpetuity was not necessarily the standard even in 1938.

BY JEN VAUGHN - This Friday, 'Marvel' will face the ghost of Jack Kirby when professor and attorney Oliver Goodenough squares off against creator rights advocate and cartoonist Steve Bissette.

The 20-year legal saga of Michael George reached another conclusion when he was found guilty again in the murder of his wife.

My last post explored how continuities between the cover image of Action Comics #1 and subsequent material could give DC a substantial part of the copyright in the original Superman.  One question left unaddressed, however, was the issue of Clark Kent, not to mention other key elements of Superman’s character and mythos appearing in that historic first issue. In this post, let’s take a quick look at that question and the role it could play in bringing this case to an end.

An oddball story that has only been seen on comics sites because it contains the word "cartoonist" or "cartoon" and keeps showing up on everyone's google news dump, is still fairly incredible in its own right. However to really get all the excitement you probably need to live in Renton, WA., a quiet Seattle suburb that was rocked by a scandal involving cartoon mockery of the police department.

Is there a more cautionary tale in comics than that of the failing fortunes of Diamond Comics owner and über-scollectorSteve Geppi? Daniel Best reads through some of the court documents on the Montana Estate vs Steve Geppi lawsuit we alluded to the other day, and they are not too thrilling if you are Steve Geppi, the owner of Diamond Comics and once considered the richest man in comics. In a nutshell, back in 2006, a flush Geppi offered the family or Archie artist $1,000,000 for a collection of original Archie art, while attesting that he was worth $20 million, as the attached exhibit shows. As time went by, a few things happened -- Geppi made a series of very bad deals which ate up his money, especially as the economy and the real estate market tanked; and the art also lost a lot of value:

The must-read from yesterday is Michael Dean's look at the actual court documents ALSO, Spanish cartoonist Pepo Perez has his own comments on creator ownership, here in the Google translation. That's makes for some awkwardness, but also some great stuff.

WHAT? Yes. In the UK anyway. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that because the iconic garb was created as an industrial prop, the rights expired after 15 years.

A sad day for those who hoped, perhaps against hope, that Jack "The King' Kirby's heirs would get some of the money their father's creations have made over the years. Characters including Captain America (created in the '40s with Joe Simon), The Hulk, Iron Man and Thor-- you know, if they called next year's potential biggest-movie-of-all-time THE AVENEGRS "JACK KIRBY'S AVENGERS" they would not be far from the mark. Deadline has analysis, seeing it as a big setback for lawyer Marc Toberoff, who has won many unlikely IP cases against giant studios in the past:

We heard of a couple of car break-ins at Comic-Con, and one of the worst was artist Brent Anderson's :

"Brent Anderson had a lot of art stolen in San Diego. His car was broken into at the San Diego Zoo and the following original art was stolen: 50 pages from Astro City Vols. 1 & 2 & Local Heroes; AC: Dark Age Books 1 (#s 1-4), 2 (#s 1-4) & 3 (#s 1-4) (50 pages). Green Lantern and Rising Stars artwork was stolen as well. Please share this to as many venues as possible, to get the thief caught and the art returned."

Oi. Think Archie Comics is a place where no one ever says a bad word? Think again. As revealed by TMZ, Archie Comics has filed papers alleging that co-CEO Nancy Silberkleit has been harassing employees and should not represent the company at San Diego Comic-Con: