THOUGHTS OF "ACTION"
The court ruling this week that the estate of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel is entitled to the domestic copyright of Superman as he appears in Action Comics #1 (and a portion of profits from domestic Superman merchandise from 1999 on), seems like a significant victory for the Siegel family, though what it all really means is something that will likely unfold in the weeks and months to come.
What is interesting is the fact that based on a variety of forums, the response from fans has been pretty much split down the middle. While some are applauding the court ruling, feeling that the Jerry Siegel has posthumously gotten what he and co-creator Joe Shuster deeply deserved, others feel that the ruling is ridiculous; that Siegel and Shuster signed away their rights and neither they nor their families are entitled to anything.
I just want to make a quick point here. Yes, while it's true that Siegel and Shuster signed a work for hire agreement and LEGALLY transferred their rights to DC, once the Superman character became a phenomenon (which pretty much happened from the moment it was introduced to the public), with DC and, subsequently, Warner Brothers making millions turned billions of dollars on the character, there should have been a MORAL obligation on the company's part to provide financial restitution to Siegel and Shuster.
There are some who claim that DC/Warners HAS done what's right, beginning in the 1970s when they restored "created by" credit to the duo and started paying $20,000 (eventually $30,000) a year to each of them. While commendable, the important thing to not allow the passage of time to cloud is the fact that the ONLY reason Siegel and Shuster got anything was because Superman: The Movie was being released in 1978. Neal Adams had picked up the Siegel and Shuster cause and was embarassing Warners and DC by going public with the financial plight of Superman's creators, who were fairly destitute. This agreement was "shut up and go away" money, there's no doubt about that.
To argue that Siegel and Shuster don't deserve anything financially is -- and there's just no way to escape this -- wrong. It's like TV stars from the 1950s and '60s who, for the most part, had terrible residual deals that entitled them to payments on up to, I believe, five reruns or so. Well if you're the cast of Star Trek, for example, and your show is run five to seven nights a week on television stations across the country and around the world for the past near-30 years (since it began in syndication), the studio (in this case Paramount) is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars, while if you're William Shatner you're doing nude scenes with Angie Dickinson in Big Bad Mama or if you're Gene Roddenberry, you're doing college lecture tours and conventions just to pull in a few extra bucks. The same is true for the cast and crew of virtually every other TV show made during that era.
The bottom line is that at this point nothing can change the lives that Siegel and Shuster were forced to live, but on some level this legal ruling (which will no doubt be appealed by Warner Bros.) has got to be seen as a moral victory for all of the creators of the world who have sat by helplessly while others have reaped the benefits of their imagination. -- Edward Gross
