* The opening brief in Gary Friedrich vs. Marvel Comics has been released. The Australian blog "20th Century Danny Boy" posts the entire document, along with a tantalizing bit of business that the blog's author picked up on, regarding the fact that Marvel published the 1978 Silver Surfer graphic novel with the copyright assigned not to Marvel, but to the book's creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
* That book has always seemed like an oddity to me, retelling the origin of the Silver Surfer without any mention of or appearance by the Fantastic Four, and even at the age of 12, when I first read it, I was both baffled and intrigued by the fact that Lee and Kirby held the copyright, rather than Marvel Comics, as was the case with virtually every other thing they had published up to that time. Perhaps the FF was absent because Lee and Kirby felt that they characters were owned by Marvel, but how were the Surfer and Galactus (who also appears in the GN) any different? Did Lee and Kirby create the book simply to make some extra cash or was it intended as a statement of ownership, or at least a declaration of their creation of these characters? Did they intend to do more books like 1978's Silver Surfer? Or did they intend to use it as a lever against Marvel in some way? Probably not Lee, at the time, but what was Kirby's motivation? What did he want to happen as a result of the book's existence and his co-ownership of the copyright?
* I find it even more intriguing now, as it clearly shows that Marvel's copyright was not something that was enforced 100% of the time. And I know from talking to creators who worked for Marvel in the 1960s and 1970s that they were not always working under the understanding -- never mind the legal requirement -- that the writing or art they created was necessarily copyrighted by Marvel or wholly owned by the company. Things were pretty vague and undefined back in those days, but I'm pretty sure at least some creators never intended to assign Marvel 100% ownership of their work, and the only thing that has prevented most creators from asserting their rights or trying to reclaim their work is the fact that Marvel can afford much better lawyers, for far longer periods of time, than the average Marvel Bullpen veteran now likely in their 60s or even older. Keep in mind those writers and artists are living (those of them that are still living, of course) with whatever financial reality one lives with as a result of throwing in your lot with a corporate superhero publisher and hoping they keep whatever promises they made to you when you were giving them the best years and best work of your life.
* So I would not be surprised if the Silver Surfer graphic novel copyright assignment to Lee and Kirby becomes significant in the months and years ahead. The fact of the matter is that Marvel is decades in arrears in making things right with hundreds, if not thousands of writers, artists and others who created comics for them before work-for-hire was codified into law in the U.S. in the mid 1970s. A little goodwill and a moderate reward would have gone a long way toward assuaging a lot of justified bitterness, and might have prevented many, many lawsuits that could be coming down the pike, depending on how Friedrich vs. Marvel pans out.
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