[John C]

For those who are trying to keep score, the Siegels have regained a few more bits of Superman's earliest appearances:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118007269.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

I'm watching this with great interest, because I'm really curious what DC is going to do as they're backed (painted) further into the corner.  Will they cut the Siegels in on royalties and continue business-as-usual?  Will they try to assert that the modern Superman isn't anything like the original?  Will they take an unrelated character (like Majestic) and wrap him in the trademarks?

The comic strip seems weird, though:  There's no copyright statement to be seen on many of them (including the weeks referenced here), which means that they should be in the public domain.  There are renewals, but they would be invalid, since there's nothing to renew.

That, by the way, is why DC appealed in the Fawcett case.  Fawcett had won, asserting that Superman was "abandoned" when DC licensed the character for the strip.  Learned Hand overturned that ruling, basically since there's no such thing as copyright abandonment, but that doesn't retroactively copyright the strips.

Side issue, that I think I've suggested before:  What other DC properties have the potential for reclamation under the Sonny Bono copyright maze?  Are there any creators' estates that could be convinced to fight (perhaps with community financing) and release the stories to the public domain?

[OtherEric]

I can't think of anything that might qualify; Superman is unusual in that there's good documentation of the efforts to sell it before it finally landed at DC.

If the copyrights had been renewed the Mayer estate might have a shot at Scribbly but not the Red Tornado; given that the series started at Dell.  But A) the window of eligibility has passed and B) the copyrights on the early strips weren't renewed.

One problem is that the law that allows estates to reclaim works has a window of something like 5 years; I know the Superman case went right to the wire on the allowed date.  Most features are probably outside the window even if they were eligible now.  (The timing on the Superman filing was so tight that an ad for Action 1 figured into the filing on DC's side, saying that they were too late.)

One thing that I personally don't understand is why the Action 1 and 4 stories are the Siegels when Action 2 isn't.  The first two issues were a continued story; I would have thought the logic that reclaims #4 would apply to #2 as well.  We shall see, I fully expect DC to walk away with exclusive rights to the character and the Siegel & Shuster estates to walk away very, very rich.

[John C]

The reason I wonder about that window is because the Shuster case is about to start, so it can't be entirely complete.  As I understand it, there are actually several windows, based on how you interpret the copyright extension, so this may come up again.  But maybe not.

Regarding which issues are eligible, I would imagine that it comes down to establishing a paper trail.  I forget which stories are which, but the Siegels presumably need to prove that Jerry wrote a particular piece before coming to DC.  It may be that they have the original strips that went into the fourth story, but can't substantiate the dates for the second, or something along those lines.

And you're right.  An obvious option is to just buy them out.  However, with the copyrights only expected to last another twenty-four years and with a growing sentiment (absurd as it is) that the friendly, hopeful Superman doesn't play well to modern audiences, I have to wonder if they'll instead say that Clark himself can go take a flying leap.

I mean, they own the modern costume and the Superman name as trademarks, so if they change the guy inside the suit to whatever they believe "resonates," they can keep the "important" parts of the character in circulation without spending a dime.

(I admit that it probably is high time to ditch the Daily Planet.  Investigative reporters were already a dying breed when Nixon was still in office.  These days, they're deskbound paraphrasing the Reuters feed or otherwise waiting for stories to fall into their laps, making Clark and Lois seem more alien than Superman.  I don't know what Clark could do instead that represents an information-gathering career, but journalism sadly isn't it.)

[Yoc]

He'd be the kingpin of a vast 'Twitter Army' of sheep like 'Jimmies' ready to do his bidding to bring down the G8.
I see it an online only thing obviously. 

[John C]

Yeah, I thought about that, and something like it could be worked in.

Sorry, actually, I thought about this years back, when I suggested (to nobody officiial) that he be a hyperliberal (or hyperconservative) blogger living in his mom's basement.  That amounted to the same thing at the time.

Today, though, that's probably not a "job" so much as he carries a Blackberry to check the Twittersphere or whatever they call the microblogging zeitgeist.  He still needs a day job that supplies him with his supporting cast (other than his mother and a Pomeranian, I mean), but where he can walk out of the office without anybody particularly caring.

Yeah, these are the big issues I worry about...

[Yoc]

Hi drives a Zamboni at a hockey rink and each mission is exactly 45min long between ice scrapes...

Too Canadian maybe?

[misappear]

I don't know how to add pictures into these posts so I can't show you the comic book geeky synchroncity that happened last night.  I was reading Action Comics #42 and #43.  In the ad pages, National proudly proclaimed "Jerry Siegel's Superman" in ads for upcoming issues.  On top of that, it gives credit to Seigel for creating Star Spangled Kid and his sidekick ("Jerry Siegel's done it again" the ad proudly proclaims).  I guess it would have been nice if it didn't take 65 years for a judge to rule that you can't have it both ways.

Speculating on what would have been the outcome had Siegel and Shuster retained ownership can be fun, but reality is what it is. 

I picked up the new Adventure Comics.  Superboy lead with a Legion back-up.  It is explained on page 3 that Superboy is Conner Kent, the clone of Superman's and Lex Luthor's DNA.  Page 3 and I'm done.

[John C]

I don't know how to add pictures into these posts so I can't show you the comic book geeky synchroncity that happened last night.  I was reading Action Comics #42 and #43.  In the ad pages, National proudly proclaimed "Jerry Siegel's Superman" in ads for upcoming issues.  On top of that, it gives credit to Seigel for creating Star Spangled Kid and his sidekick ("Jerry Siegel's done it again" the ad proudly proclaims).  I guess it would have been nice if it didn't take 65 years for a judge to rule that you can't have it both ways.

Actually, I don't see anything  particularly wrong with the way DC handled it, except to the extent that it comes off as extremely petty.  Unlike Bob Kane, Siegel's contract didn't include a creator credit, so he only got one when DC saw profit in, well, pimping him out.

Probably when the Superboy argument came up, the potential downsides to using Siegel's name outweighed the benefits.

Incidentally, it shouuld be pointed out that these ads (which I've seen, but never gave any thought to) suggest something interesting:  That for all the talk of modern creator-driven sales and knowledgeable fandom, people were thinking about these things since the early days.

I picked up the new Adventure Comics.  Superboy lead with a Legion back-up.  It is explained on page 3 that Superboy is Conner Kent, the clone of Superman's and Lex Luthor's DNA.  Page 3 and I'm done.

Well, it's Geoff's baby and he's king of the castle, these days, so what else would they do?

In fact, if you go back to the post-Reign Superboy series, towards the end (after they determined the precise sources of Superboy's genetic donors), there was a letter column entry with a "better idea," that happened to be exactly the Superman/Luthor split.  It came from some guy named Geoffrey Johns away at college in the midwest.

I have this theory that the worst stories in comics could have been prevented by including the following question on an application and rejecting anybody who provides an answer:  "Since I was a kid, I've always wanted to write a story where..."  Whenever I see interviews with mediocre writers who've just done something implausibly revisionist or postmodern, they always seem to make that same statement or there's a paper trail that confirms they had the plot in mind before ever entering the industry.

Hi drives a Zamboni at a hockey rink and each mission is exactly 45min long between ice scrapes...
Too Canadian maybe?

I don't know if it'd fly with the audience as a character concept, but I do know that Clark would be the envy of every college kid in the world.  Who doesn't want to be the zamboni guy!?