By Jeff Trexler
Whatever the merits of the latest summary judgment motion in the dispute over the Superman copyright, its supporting exhibits bring together a number of important documents in two accessible filings.
The first set brings collects key contracts and court filings in chronological order, from the sale of Superman to the current termination dispute. We’ve seen much of this before, but not in one place. Especially worth noting are full copies of the complaint, court opinions & settlement in the 1947 Siegel & Shuster lawsuit.
The other set of documents, focusing on the Shuster heirs, contains material pertaining to Shuster’s estate and the 1992 pension arrangement, including an unproduced screenplay for a Siegel and Shuster biopic.
This is interesting stuff. I’m bookmarking it to read later.
Interesting stuff. Thanks for making it available in such an accessible format.
Levitz: “I was disappointed when I learned when I learned that the Shuster family filed their termination claim.”
I’m kind of disappointed in Levitz. He comes across as playing a sort of corporate “good cop”, convincing the heirs he’s genuinely interested in Shuster’s contribution to comics history and that the pittance DC’s paying is the best deal he can get them. I don’t know if his interest is genuine, but I can see that by filing the termination, the heirs were able to get an offer, that they rejected, which would have paid a guaranteed $4 million dollars from 2005 to 2033 (and probably considerably more, unless DC was planning on playing accounting games with the profits. Just the 1% cover price royalty on comics should cover the guaranteed amount with just direct market sales), more than five times that deal Levitz got them, even assuming DC was willing to modify that deal to cover Shuster’s nephew and niece after his sister passes away.
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