Marvel Comics and Jack Kirby Estate Announce Amicable Resolution

[Brazoo]

I think you mean "sole" writer.

Haha, yeah! Thanks John! I meant "sole" instead of "soul" - I'm always struggling with grammar, as I'm sure most of you notice.

[Mr.Marion]

Good for his family and marvel/Disney for paying it forward. Many of us had megos of Cap,Hulk, and the FF as kids Jack got a goose egg for his efforts.

[samurainoir]

I was listening to this in the car last night night... kind of a fascinating first-person account by Neal Adams, of what it was like to create comics with Stan Lee, by someone who was there at the height of the Silver Age.

http://www.nerdist.com/pepisode/nerdist-comics-panel-59-neal-adams/

[samurainoir]

http://community.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?19301-Marvel-amp-Jack-Kirby-Family-Settle-Long-Running-Legal-Dispute&p=552706#post552706

Kurt Busiek...

This wretched, insulting narrative that Kirby's heirs up and sued Marvel because they smelled money so they ignored the deals their father had made to stick up the poor victimized company is wholly inaccurate. To start with, the Kirby Estate didn't sue Marvel. Marvel sued the Kirby Estate.

As Brian noted, Congress changed copyright law in the mid-70s, and in doing so, they gave a huge gift to corporations: They made copyright last years longer.

So when the Fantastic Four were created, under the law, Marvel only expected to own them for a maximum of 56 years, since that was the maximum length of copyright at the time. At the end of that period, the FF would go into the public domain.

So when Congress changed the law, they knew they were giving copyright buyers something extremely valuable -- many more years of copyright ownership -- and they balanced it out by giving copyright sellers some new rights, too. They gave them the right to terminate any copyright assignment (i.e., sale of rights) during a particular set period of time. They couldn't do it before that time, and if they waited to long, they couldn't do it after that time. But they had a window during which they could reclaim rights.

The reasoning on that is pretty simple -- they figured that if someone like, say, Jack Kirby sold Marvel all rights to a new creation, then both sides knew that the term of sale was 56 years. After that, Marvel wouldn't own the thing any more; it'd be in the public domain like the Wizard of Oz and Frankenstein.

So if Congress was saying that sale was actually going to be for much longer (95 years, I believe), then the buyer was getting a much better deal, and the seller should get a chance to get a better deal too. So Congress allows the creator to revert the sale, thus being able to make more money off of the extended copyright period.

Companies get something, creators get something. The law benefits both of them.

So what happened wasn't that the Kirby family sued Marvel just because they one day decided to up and want more money. They didn't even sue. What they did was file for termination of copyright assignment -- the very thing that the law allows creators to do. They didn't do this against the wishes of Kirby himself -- Kirby had been all for doing it, ever since the law had been changed. But they had to wait a certain amount of time, and Kirby didn't live long enough to see it happen. But he was always on board with it.

So: Kirbys didn't sue. Kirbys didn't decide that Marvel had suddenly become rich so let's bleed 'em. Kirbys followed the law -- a law that Marvel benefits hugely from, but which gives benefits to creators, too.

People complain that it's unfair for creators to use the part of the law that benefits them, but rarely complain that publishers get to use the part that benefits them. But fair's fair -- observe either the whole law, or none of it.

So the Kirbys filed (note: They did not sue), as they were legally entitled to, and in accord with Jack's wishes.

And then Marvel sued them, to stop them from reverting those copyrights.