The Comics Rack

The Siegel Heirs - Round 2

   In the beginning, nobody expected comic books to really take off and make it big, or, shall we say, to take off and last as long as they have. Today's media conglomerates would be startling to the publishers of the 30s since super heroes were considered to be one fad among many. These conglomerates, however, were built on the work of others: the creators who were forced to sign away the rights to their creations. Sadly, there are barely a handful of the early comic creators still with us who could hope to receive a small portion of the money their efforts have made for others, but one current case may have a happy ending for the Siegel family.
   On March 23, 2006, a federal judge found in favor of the heirs of Jerry Siegel in their suit to terminate DC's copyright of the character of Superboy. This suit was the result of a change to the copyright law made in 1976, which extended the length of the copyright term and also allowed creators, or their heirs , to file for return of the copyright that they may assigned in the past. In this particular case, it allowed Joanne Siegel, Jerry Siegel's wife, to file for return of the copyright that was granted to DC in 1948 (for more information about that filing, see The Siegel Heirs and a Boy of Steel). In a nutshell, the judge ruled that the Siegel family had a right to the copyright of Superboy and that this right has been theirs since November of 2004. While this is good news for the Siegel family, it also opens up another can of worms, since the judge did not rule on whether the TV show Smallville was an infringement of the copyright.
   This is great news for the Siegel family, since their attempts to reach a settlement over Superboy has been ongoing for nearly 4 years. There are a number of points that still remain, however, besides the question of Smallville.
1) The series Infinite Crisis (Spoiler warning) presents a different Superboy than the character who disappeared at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Is this an attempt on the part of DC to work around the ruling?
2) According to legal experts, although the Siegels now own the copyright to Superboy, DC still owns the trademark, which could effectively block any publishing of the character by another publisher until around 2023.
3) If I'm reading all this correctly, it would seem that DC would have to pay some form of compensation to the Siegel family for the use of Superboy. Assumedly, this would also extend to any reprints of the character, which probably explains why DC cancelled their proposed Superboy Archives series.
   Whatever the outcome of these matters, this is still a victory of sorts for the Siegels. Now, if only information would surface over the copyright ownership of Superman, which hasn't been mentioned in years, I could rest easy.

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SIDEBAR:
   In doing some more research for this Thought Balloons piece, I unearthed a box of material that contained the source of the earlier article, Siegel, Shuster and a Boy of Steel. Seems that I had the facts fairly correct in the earlier piece, but just had my dates all confused. So, in light of the latest Siegel family doings, I will attempt to correct my earlier writings on the origins of Superboy. To whit:

• Siegel created, either by himself or with Joe Shuster the character of Superboy in the late 30s, shortly after the creation of Superman.
• At some time during this early period, they had a deal with DC that would allow DC to have first look at whatever comic characters they created.
• DC rejected Superboy on a number of occasions, only to turn around and start s Superboy series in More Fun Comics without Siegel's involvement. Oddly enough, Shuster was the artist for the first Superboy story.
• As part of a settlement reached in 1948, Siegel (or Siegel and Shuster) received the copyright to Superboy and the character was determined to be a separate entity from Superman
• At this point, Siegel attempted to shop the character around to other publishers, only to find out that he was virtually blackballed in the industry. So, he ended up selling Superboy back to DC.

   I hope this helps clear the record on how all these events came about and apologize to one and all for having a faulty memory.