Legal Matters

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:

Two crimes peripherally involved with comics characters team up for one blog post!

By Jeff Trexler-- In March 2008, Grant Morrison's homage to Siegel and Shuster appeared in comic shops on the very same day that the Siegel heirs recaptured half the original Superman copyright.  Now Morrison is set to work his shaman's magic once again in the September relaunch of Action #1--and this time, the Siegels could lose everything. Morrison's upcoming Supergods holds the key to understanding why. For an explanation and a sneak preview of Morrison’s new book, click below. A mysterious appeal, Joe Shuster’s super-swastika and the final crisis of the legal multiverse--this one has it all.

A comics writer who sued Adam Sandler, his production company, Judd Apatow and Sony Pictures has had his case dismissed after a judge found that using a hair dryer as a weapon was not infrangible

This is practically all kibbles and legal bits, but that seems to be where things are going.

DC has cited its changes and additions to the Super-verse as grounds for reducing the Siegel heirs’s share of Superman material produced since 1999. A recent Variety article takes this even further, reporting thatNeil Gaiman’s success in winning co-ownership of Medieval Spawn provides legal precedent for giving DC complete ownership of the contemporary Superman, limiting the Siegels’ interest to the far less lucrative 1938 version of the character. Does DC have strong legal grounds for splitting Superman between The Man of Tomorrow and The Man of Yesterday? Click below to see if Gaiman v. McFarlane is legal kryptonite for creators' rights--or whether that's just another misconceived retcon.

Imagine traveling to another country and having your comic books and electronic devices seized. Then, you're arrested because of the books you read. This may seem like a horror story, but for one comics reader, it's come true.

-- Thus begins the story of one traveler. We make a lot of jokes about the US/Canadian border but as tales of the comics that were seized on the way to TCAF make clear, Canadaisn take their ideological border security seriously.