Jack Kirby co-created countless characters for Marvel, including the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Avengers, etc. His estate has sent out 45 notices of copyright infringement to such companies as Marvel Entertainment, Disney, Paramount, Sony and others, insisting they intended to own the full copyright for every character by 2014. This could be a major problem for Disney, who recently purchased Marvel.
Under copyright law, the author or his heirs can begin a process to regain copyrights a certain period of years after the original grant. If Mr. Kirby’s four children were to gain the copyright to a co-created character, they might become entitled to a share of profits from films or other properties using it. They might also find themselves able to sell rights to certain characters independently of Marvel, Disney, or the various studios that have licensed the Marvel properties for their hit films.
In July, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that Warner Brothers and its DC Comics unit had not violated rights of the Siegel heirs in handling internal transactions related to Superman, but an earlier ruling had already granted the heirs a return of their share in the copyright. In the late 1990s, Mr. Toberoff represented a television writer, Gilbert Ralston, who sued Warner over the rights to the film “Wild, Wild West.” The suit was ultimately settled.
Copyright issues have become increasingly difficult for Hollywood, as it continues to trade on characters and stories that were created decades ago, but are now subject to deadlines and expiration dates under federal copyright law.
[Editor's Note: It's both interesting and sad to see how litigious the comic book industry is. In order to stay in business and to only spend tens of thousands of dollars defending ourselves rather than the necessary millions (???), by agreement we aren't allowed to discuss the matter's details, but we have been under legal threats and attacks ourselves in the recent past. Who with, you wonder? What about? Well what do you think of the cool fictional photoshop work below? Neat, huh? Yeah, child's college fund and an entire retirement savings worth of "neat". It's quite inspiring illuminating to see super-heroes® in action first-hand.]
Downloadable content is arriving for Batman: Arkham Asylum on September 17th, but no one knows what it will add. We do know it will be free, which is either very generous or indicative of something minor that isn’t worth paying for. This information comes straight from the game’s news ticker. That’s all that is known for the time being, though more information is soon to be uncovered as the release date approaches.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is a game of amazing depth. For fans of the Caped Crusader it is a dark treasure trove of trivia, action, and intensity. The voice acting is superb and there is tons of it. Interview tapes you discover along your move through the game unlock hours and hours of dialogue from all of the villains as they interact with an Arkham shrink. The dialogue is well written and performed fantastically so it is a joy for fans and would do a great job of acquainting those with only a passing familiarity with some of the more obscure characters. They also do a great job, along with a load of other unlockable content, abilities, challenges, etc., of pulling you through the game.
And it is important to give the game sometime to fully reveal all of its potential. It actually wasn’t till a couple hours into the game that I wasn’t convinced everyone was crazy and that Arkham Asylum didn’t deserve more than score in the mid-8’s. After all, you were seeing nothing more than cell block corridors, and the visuals were great, but not perfect. read more…
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