http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/03/kirby-marvel-lawsuit.html If you can't be bothered to clicky:
Under U.S. copyright law, creators or their heirs may file to regain copyrights, at a certain period of time after the original transfer of rights. I think it's either 50 or 45 years. Kirby was never properly rewarded for almost singlehandedly creating the marvel universe, (properties that disney just bought for 4 BILLION dollars!!) kinda hard to begrudge the family for wanting a bit of a payback. I know from previous lawsuits the Kirby estate has filed, this is more about recognizing Kirby as the creator of these characters, as much as anything else.
That's pretty insane. I think its deserved considering I and most likely many, many others were under the impression stan lee was the creator of these characters. Iv always liked comics but iv never been huge into them and I imagine there's plenty of people who were similarly "misled".
It's pretty undisputed that the real creator/co-creator behind those silver age Marvel characters was Kirby. The snafu is that he created them as " work for hire" according to Marvel and now Disney. What the definition of " work for hire" really entitles him to, is wherein the battle lies. There have been plenty of articles, interviews written in the "Comics Journal" over the years including great transcripts of Frank Miller speeches regarding the Kirby, Lee, Marvel creations that make great observations and point to some compelling facts. Really great reads. Lee never really created anything unless you count a couple of characters in the 40s he supposably co-created. Kirby has been creating characters and stories since day one. Prior to Marvel, he and Joe Simon created Captain America, he created the Fighting American, Boy Commandos, Sandman, etc...it goes on and on. Yeah, I'd say he is due. Unfortunately, most of the great comic creators were not great business men and didn't protect themselves or their creations very well, Kirby and Siegel are the biggest examples. Bob Kane was the exception, his father who was in the printing business during the beginning of the golden age of comics, advised and made sure his son's creations were legally protected so that he would get his cut / share of royalties. One of the most in-depth written books on the history of comics and one that details the struggles of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, Superman's creators, is "The Men of Tomorrow" by Gerard Jones. It's one of the most engrossing books on comics I've ever read, I couldn't put it down.
There's some article about it somewhere but there are two versions of the story. In 1 Lee and Kirby supposedly came up with the concept and Kirby initially drew out sketches of the character. Ditko inked them and later redesigned them to Lee's liking. In the other story...Kirby claims that he and Simon came up with the character and Lee had minimal involvement. Anyway..it's too bad that all these great creators back then couldn't secure the rights to their characters. It would nice to see the Kirby estate get something.
Kirby's son was a science teacher at my middle school in Aliso Viejo. He never wanted to talk about his dad or his work and he never let anyone read comics in class. I never looked at Kirby bubbles the same after a few detentions from his son, a hard year in his class and a ton of extra assignments hahahahaha.
