Jack Kirby’s Children Sue Disney/Marvel Over Characters

I seriously doubt this will end Marvel Comics' ability to publish stories with the 45 characters the four Kirby children are suing over.  If anything, they will probably get what the daughter and wife of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel got -- a chunk of the money, which given what is coming down the line in terms of movies, toys, games, etc., is going to be very, very nice.

Until then, expect this to be THE watched copyright law case for the next few years.

Walt Disney’s proposed $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment may come with a headache: newly filed claims challenging Marvel’s long-term rights to some of its superhero characters.

Heirs to the comic book artist Jack Kirby, a creator of characters and stories behind Marvel mainstays like “X-Men” and “Fantastic Four,” last week sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel and Disney, as well as Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and other companies that have been using the characters.

The notices expressed an intent to regain copyrights to some of Mr. Kirby’s creations as early as 2014, according to a statement disclosed on Sunday by Toberoff & Associates, a law firm in Los Angeles that helped win a court ruling last year returning a share of the copyright in Superman to heirs of one of the character’s creators, Jerome Siegel.

Reached by telephone on Sunday, Marc Toberoff, the firm’s founding partner, declined to elaborate on his firm’s statement. A spokeswoman for Marvel had no comment.

Disney said in a statement, “the notices involved are an attempt to terminate rights 7 to 10 years from now, and involve claims that were fully considered in the acquisition.” Fox, Sony, Paramount and Universal had no comment.

Marvel’s management agreed to sell the company to Disney last month, though the deal still requires the approval of Marvel’s shareholders.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing to get uncovered out of this is that we may finally get to discover who is the artistic father of Spider-Man.  Since 1962 -- and pointed out in the three Spider-Man films by Sony -- Spider-Man has been listed as a co-creation of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.  Ditko, a recluse now living in New York City, has never given many interviews about the origins of the wall-crawler leaving most of the behind the scenes details to Lee.  According to Lee, both artists were in the running for the character, but Lee preferred Ditko's version of the character because Kirby made the then-teenage Peter Parker too bulky and muscular a character for his liking.  Ditko got the gig to do the internals of Amazing Fantasy #15 (the first appearance of Spider-Man) and the first 40 issues of Amazing Spider-Man; however, the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15 was done by Kirby.

If the Kirby children and their attorneys can prove Spider-Man was also a creation of their father's, then they would have the ability to draw from that pop culture cash cow too.

So what characters are we talking about here?  Well, IGN.com was kind enough to list them all. (Though you could probably list them all in a nice game of "You Name It, He Did it.")

Among the many Marvel characters created or co-created by Kirby (with Stan Lee) are: Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing, Human Torch, Doctor Doom, Black Panther, Silver Surfer, Alicia Masters, the Skrulls, Hulk, Betty Ross, Iron Man, Thor, Balder, Odin, Loki, Jane Foster, Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel, Beast, Magneto, Nick Fury, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Toad, Blob, and Henry Pym. Along with Joe Simon, Kirby also co-created Captain America, Bucky, and Red Skull for Timely Comics, the company that later evolved into Marvel.

Later while working for DC Comics, Kirby is best known for creating "The New Gods of the Fourth World," characters like Orion, Darkseid, and the like.