Radio Dead Air

Attack of the Legacy Kirbys

March 16th, 2010

No, not the white puffball thing from the Nintendo games . . . the heirs to the estate of legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby:

The lawsuit follows last September’s Notices of Termination for 45 Marvel characters – amongst them Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The X-Men – as well as January’s countersuit from Marvel. It rests upon the validity of its claim that Kirby was not engaged in Work for Hire when creating characters for the publisher between 1958 and 1963, as Marvel’s countersuit claims, but instead a freelancer co-authoring works to which his heirs are now eligible for part-ownership of the rights.

What does this mean? Dunno, but it’ll be a mess, and might even cause a clusterfuck when it comes to the long-awaited super-duper oh-my-god-Samuel-L-Jackson-is-Nick-Fury Avengers movie. Keep in mind, this same kind of nonsense kept Superboy out of comics for a few years until it was finally resolved.

As a fan, I don’t much care if his family is or isn’t entitled to the rights . . . I’m annoyed that this could cause problems for the stories I enjoy reading.

Oh well . . . at least Marvel has Disney’s deep pockets to fend this one off . . .

(h/t to io9.com

Leave a Reply

Proudly powered by WordPress. Theme developed with WordPress Theme Generator.
Creative Commons License