Cover detail from Action Comics #864, art by Kevin Maguire. DC Comics.
The Siegel estate may have overextended their grasp , and the result is that DC Comics (and its parent company Warner Bros.) retain all of the rights to all of the elements involving their flagship character. This should officially bring the long-running legal battle for Superman to an end. The Beat has a simple breakdown of the legal mumbo-jumbo, if you're interested.
I've never been 100% sure what to think of this fight (though I've written about it in the past for Movies.com). DC Comics artist Kevin Maguire posted an interesting bit of perspective on his Facebook page today...
"Well, I'm gonna get a little controversial here, but I've been seeing a lot of people bemoaning the fact that the estate of Siegel and Shuster have lost their court battle to get the rights to Superman, saying that creators are once again being screwed by corporations. I disagree. Siegel and Shuster created the seed of the idea (taking it from the book Gladiator), but that seed would have been worthless were it not for the time and money that DC invested in it for the past 75 years. Superman would not be the pop culture behemoth it is were it not for the contributions of the hundreds, if not thousands, of creative minds that came afterwards from print, radio, television, and film. What rights do we give to the man who designed the Superman shield, an image instantly recognized world wide? Or to the man who invented Kryptonite? Or Jimmy Olsen? The truth is, this is NOT about treating the creators fairly. The original creators have passed away. This is about the relatives of the creators wanting money , people who had nothing to do with the creation or development of Superman. And what are they going to do with those rights if they got them? Print their own comics? Produce their own films? No, they'll license it out to others. So, let's say Disney gets the rights (cuz they own pretty much everything else). Is it fair that Disney reap profits off of the property that DC spend 3/4 of a century keeping valuable? Obviously I'm all for creators being treated fairly. I'm a creator. I think the creators should have gotten a piece of everything Superman made and continues to make. But I think DC deserves to keep the rights. I have to start creating now. Feel free to discuss."
You can do so on Maguire's Facebook page or in our comment section below.