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I'm starting this thread as a place to discuss various significant lawsuits that have happened in comic book history. I loved researching these lawsuits because it gives us a good look at how the comic book industry works and you learn that many creative decisions in comic books are shaped by legal issues. If you see a character go through a sudden change or disappears from the books, it might have been in reaction to a lawsuit or the threat of a lawsuit. I'll kick off this thread by discussing the struggle over the copyright to Superman between DC Comics and the estates of Siegel and Shuster. The famous tale is that Siegel and Shuster sold Superman to DC Comics for a pittance of $130, and thereafter DC Comics proceeded to rip them off left and right. After researching this topic, I found a more nuanced picture. The short summary is that DC Comics did cheat Siegel and Shuster out of some money, but for the most part they compensated the two well and their attempt to take Superman back in a lawsuit was ill-thought and backfired badly. First of all, the $130 that DC Comics paid Siegel and Shuster for Superman wasn't actually for the copyright of Superman, it was payment for the first Superman story that appearend in Action Comics #1. The pay rate they received was $10 a page and they produced 13 pages. As for the copyright, they technically gave that away for free. I'm not joking, that was what the court ruled. In 1947, Siegel and Shuster sued DC Comics to get Superman back, and the judge ruled that the consideration that Siegel and Shuster bargained for in transferring the copyright to DC Comics was simply the pleasure of seeing Superman in print. It sounds weird but I am not a legal scholar so I can't explain why the judge would make such a ruling. Furthermore, Siegel and Shuster knew what they were doing, they weren't duped. They had done this before. Before Superman, they had created a number of other characters that appeared in DC Comics books, such as Sam Bradley and Henri Duval, and in all these cases they transferred the copyrights to DC Comics for no money. From what I've gathered, this was how the industry worked at the time, and this may have been the reason why they waited three years to pitch Superman to DC Comics. They started working for DC Comics in 1935 but sold Superman in 1938, after everyone else rejected them. Siegel and Shuster had wanted Superman to be a syndicated newspaper strip, which would have allowed them to retain the copyright, but the newspaper syndicates rejected Superman so finally they gave up and sold Superman to DC Comics. At least that way, they'd finally see Superman get published, and they didn't expect him to become a huge success. In 1947, Siegel and Shuster sued DC Comics to take back the rights to Superman. While Siegel was away serving in the Army, DC Comics published the first Superboy story by Siegel but didn't pay him for it. Siegel was pissed and he sued DC Comics for copyright infringement, but he also decided to sue for the rights to Superman too, and this was a mistake. In his final ruling, the judge ruled that Siegel owned Superboy because DC Comics had published that Superboy story without buying the character. However, he ruled that DC Comics owned Superman. The judge ruled that the contract of sale was valid and no deceit had taken place. Siegel and Shuster settled out of court with DC, giving DC Comics the rights to both Superman and Superboy in exchange for a settlement of $94,000, which is just over a million dollars in today's terms. And DC Comics of course fired them. I read in a book that S&S lawyer was inexperienced, and I showed a lawyer the plaintiff's complaint from the court records, and he said it was so badly written "it deserved to be taken out the back and shot". I do think, after considering all this, that Siegel and Shuster received poor counsel. Siegel and Shuster got a big settlement in this case, but in the long run this was a disaster for them because they blew threw the money quickly and they never managed to create another popular comic book character. Within a few years they were broke. You hear this sort of story often with lottery winners. When Siegel and Shuster were working DC Comics, they were paid very well. They didn't become millionaires as they would have had they retained the copyright to Superman, and DC Comics did cheat them out of some royalties from the radio show and Fleischer cartoon, but they still got good regular paychecks from DC Comics. And they threw that away by suing. In retrospect, they should have compromised with DC Comics. They should have accepted that Superman would never be theirs, and just asked for money for Superboy. They could have kept their jobs and their steady pay, they would have been set for life. But in their pride they went for the brass ring. In 1959, Siegel went back to work for DC Comics. Apparently, it was his wife that pushed him to do it because she was sick of them being broke. Luckily, the execs at DC Comics bore him no ill will and figured that he could write for them popular stories like he used to. It was business, nothing personal. For six years, Siegel wrote extensively for the Legion of Superheroes comic and created a lot of characters such as Bouncing Boy and Chameleon Lad. And then screwed it up again by suing DC again. See, in US copyright law at the time, it was possible for an author to "renew" a copyright after 28 years, which meant that the copyright would revert back to the author. The idea behind this renewal provision was that if an author failed to predict that his creation would be a big hit, he'd have second chance at making money by applying for renewal. But apparently there was some court precedent that said that an author could sell the right to renew the copyright. So when Siegel sued DC Comics for a second time in 1965, the judge ruled that he had given away the right to renew to DC Comics. It sounds weird, but as I said I am no legal historian so don't ask me to explain how this came to be. So again DC Comics fired Siegel and he was broke again. Shuster had it even worse, because he went blind by this point and couldn't find gainful employment, he was living on welfare. When Warner Bros came out with their 1978 Superman movie, Siegel and Shuster kicked up a stink in the press, claiming that they had been abused and cheated by DC/WB. From what I've learned about these legal cases, they were exaggerating. But it worked. The public bought their pity play, and to avoid bad press ahead of the release of their very expensive movie, WB agreed to pay Siegel and Shuster a stipend for the rest of their lives in exchange for forever shutting up. So after two dumb lawsuits, Siegel and Shuster publicly shamed WB into giving them money. You can read in depth about the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_lawsuits_by_Superman%27s_creators My personal opinion on this whole story: Siegel and Shuster made some dumb legal maneuvers, but I don't blame them entirely for their fate because US copyright law isn't well-designed. It gives too much favor to the business-savvy. The CEO of DC Comics, Harry Donenfeld, had the advantage over S&S because he was more business-savvy and he had money. There should be more protections in the law for the naive and impoverished artist, so that they can focus their energies on being creative without having the burden of also learning all the ins and outs of business and law. Next up: I will discuss the case of Captain Marvel/Shazam.
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Jul 2, 2021 20:47
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:50 |
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