This is some interesting, albeit fragmentary, reading:
A series of court documents from the current lawsuit between the heirs of comics creator Jack Kirby and Marvel Comics. The Kirby family is suing Marvel over ownership of various characters, including the Fantastic Four, Hulk, X-Men, etc.
The documents include depositions from Stan Lee, John Romita, Kirby assistant/comics historian Mark Evanier, Kirby's children and more.
If you've read about about Kirby's career and the various arguments about whether he did or should have had a stake in ownership of different characters, etc., I doubt you'll glean much new information. But it's interesting to see the details laid out in this fashion.
What struck me were the details, mostly from Romita, of what it was like working for Marvel as a non-staff person (the argument seems to be whether "work-for-hire" and freelancing are the same thing). There were no contracts, no benefits and always the risk that the publisher may not buy the pages you spent days drawing.
I'm reading in my own interpretation and arguments here, but, this leaves open the possibility that, if artists were free agents, generating their artwork and, under the "Marvel method," stories "on spec" as it were, does this mean the publisher really has a right to claim copyright on any of the ideas or characters the artists generated? Did payment for pages just secure publication rights, or the rights, for decades thereafter to profit from movies and TV shows and toys and t-shirt images, etc., of those characters?
This case and it's outcome will be of great interest.
