Let's boycott Marvel!

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Senbei
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Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Senbei »

If you're planning on seeing Captain America, checking out the latest X-Men issue, or purchasing a Fantastic Four omnibus, consider this:

The estate of Jack "The King" Kirby, the man who co-created nearly every iconic Marvel character you can think of and helped build Western comics as both an industry and an art form into what it is today, has no legal right to royalties from Marvel. As I understand it, this means that Kirby nor, now that he passed away, his family have ever seen a penny of the incalculable number of comics, toys, movies, and dozens of other types of products produced using characters he created.

Recently, the Kirby estate lost a legal battle to Marvel's lawyers as his heirs attempted to reverse this situation.

As a result, Steve Bissette, co-creator of Swamp Thing and John Constantine, comics sage extraordinaire, and one of my mentors at the Center for Cartoon Studies, is calling for a boycott of Kirby-created Marvel products.

The boycott would include products featuring Captain America, Black Panther, Doctor Doom, the Fantastic Four, Galactus, the Hulk, Iron Man, Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D., the Silver Surfer, Thor and associated interpretations of the Norse gods, and the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, including Magneto, all of whom are characters created or co-created by Jack Kirby. Since the bulk of the most iconic members of the team is made up of some of these characters, the Avengers would also be affected.

Steve Bissette is a really smart guy with a strong sense of morality, and he's seen and studied a lot of comics history. Believe me when I say that when he weighs in on the important issues in pop media, you should be listening. If enough people contributed, the boycott would absolutely cripple Marvel's sales -- besides Spider-Man, all of their most famous and popular characters were created by Kirby, and the company has been milking those characters for over 40 years.

The point isn't so much to get Kirby's family the royalties they and he deserve(d). It's to try to change things. As I understand, freelancers and employees of Marvel are required to give up considerable rights to all pronouns and work created for the company. One of the first things I learned about the industry was, "Don't work for Marvel or DC," because they're known for trying to take as much recognition from creators as possible -- that way, if some character makes it big, the revenue from that character's popularity goes into the company's pocket, not the creator's.

Frankly, Steve is much more knowledgeable and articulate than I, and if you care about the rights of artists and writers in ANY medium, you should read the article on his blog. Some selections:
S.R.Bissette wrote:I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that San Diego Comicon 2012 should be the least comfortable event Marvel or any fleeting participant in any product, movie, videogame, or anything derived from Jack Kirby’s Marvel legacy, should ever attend in the history of comicbook conventions—if you make sure it is.

But there’s a lot to do—or rather, not do—between now and then.

After all, given the biggest news in the comics industry this week, in a vertebrate world, pros would cease working for Marvel and any Marvel product that involved Jack Kirby’s co-creations or derivations of Jack Kirby’s co-creations.

Fandom would cease buying/supporting any Marvel product, including its movies, in Jack’s memory.

Then again, we live in an invertebrate world; in a vertebrate world, Marvel/Disney would not have so easily prevailed over Jack Kirby’s heirs in seeking justice for Jack Kirby’s legacy. Read it and weep; Stan Lee is damned.
I direct those of you who care to Catherine L. Fisk’s excellent “Authors at Work: The Origin of the Work-for-Hire Doctrine,” from the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Vol. 15:1, linked here.

Fisk writes in her introduction:

“One of the claims I make in this article is that the legal fiction of corporate authorship does what Lon Fuller suggested legal fictions always do. That is, it persuades lawyers that the corporate employer has a legitimate right to the copyright—the moral and legal entitlement that flows from the exalted status of being an author—without the necessity of explaining why. …it works as what Lon Fuller called an “intellectual shortcut” to persuade when a statement of the actual reasons for the ruling are difficult to explain.” [Fisk, pg. 5; the reference to Fuller is citing Lon L. Fuller, Legal Fictions 9-19 (1967).]

The whole lockstep with Marvel policies reveals systematic presumptions and assumptions proffered as legal reality and legal precedent—though it is obvious to one and all that what Kirby did at Marvel was and remains, over half-a-century later, in and of itself exceptional, in that it goes far beyond what ANYONE other than Stan Lee did at Marvel, sans the nepotistic position Stan maintained.

That is what makes Jack’s contribution/work for Marvel extraordinary, and above and beyond what Thomas, Romita, Byrne, or any other creator ever did before or after for Marvel.
I don’t question the legal logic Marvel’s attorneys made, and the court decision reflects. However, nothing is being said about the conditions under which Kirby signed, and was pressured to sign, the contracts presented. I don’t think “extortion” is too unfair a word to use, particularly in the very public case of the Marvel artwork “return” contracts.

That is a moral issue here, and Marvel’s pattern of decades of effectively slandering, maligning, and dimissing Kirby and his legacy is, too.
If, in the 1970s, Neal Adams and Jerry Robinson hadn’t rallied around Siegel & Shuster, who had multiple signed settlement contracts with National Periodicals to wield against them, agreements they had signed over their lifetimes (agreements they and their legal reps—like Albert Zugsmith—had negotiated), nothing would have changed.

Adams and Robinson brought to the public the moral case, the moral outrage, over the treatment of the creators of Superman.

At that time, the legal matters were considered “settled.”

C’mon, folks: Jack changed a century, the medium, the industry, our lives, and Marvel.

Let’s change how the rest of this onfolding story goes.
He makes a lot more points over on his blog, so check it out, if you care to.

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Zeta
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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Zeta »

But I don't believe creator rights and royalties should stick around after the creator dies in the first place. That's how we got stuck with the copyright law that states nothing goes into the public domain unless Mickey Mouse says it's OK.

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Majestic Joey
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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Majestic Joey »

even though I know my art work is too crappy for marvel, this is one of the reasons I don't want to ever work for them. I heard they barely ever pay their royalties to any artist. That's why they are able to make all the reprint graphic novels so much faster than DC.

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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Farmer »

An interesting boycott, although I can't say I was in much danger of seeing Captain America outside of seeing my home city filmed in a cool way. I'm with Zeta on this, in that I believe the creator should get their due, and not their estate after their death.

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Post by Senbei »

That was my first thought too, but realize that Kirby was being actively screwed by Marvel throughout his career. He worked for them on three separate occasions (creating Captain America in the 40's, the rest of the characters mentioned above in the 60's, and returning briefly in the 70's) and left each time because he knew he was being swindled. From what I've read, he was either too busy to make a ruckus or cared more about the work and where his next paycheck was coming from.

The point isn't whether his kids acquire what is rightfully theirs. It's that Marvel's been getting away with this for four decades. Legally, they're arguably in the right, but morally, that's pretty shit-tastic. The idea is to tell them that the fans and creators recognize this and don't want it to happen agan.

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Zeta
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Post by Zeta »

Senbei wrote:That was my first thought too, but realize that Kirby was being actively screwed by Marvel throughout his career. He worked for them on three separate occasions (creating Captain America in the 40's, the rest of the characters mentioned above in the 60's, and returning briefly in the 70's) and left each time because he knew he was being swindled. From what I've read, he was either too busy to make a ruckus or cared more about the work and where his next paycheck was coming from.

The point isn't whether his kids acquire what is rightfully theirs. It's that Marvel's been getting away with this for four decades. Legally, they're arguably in the right, but morally, that's pretty shit-tastic. The idea is to tell them that the fans and creators recognize this and don't want it to happen agan.
It probably won't happen again given that no new big characters have been created in the Marvel universe for the past 15 years. If you're talking about the rights of new creators - new creators are smart enough to turn to independent studios or self-publish if they want a new IP published. Your whole point is essentially moot for so many reasons.

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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Crisis »

I wasn't really planning on seeing Captain America - naming your superhero "Captain [country]" is already pushing at the limits of my tolerance for unironic nationalism - so I guess this makes one more reason not to bother. A shame, because I did actually quite enjoy First Class and Thor, but I also think Kirby has a valid point in that Marvel has dragged a lot of people through shit and ought to be financially penalised to discourage them from doing it again. The courts haven't done it, so a boycott is the only option. I think it's a pretty optimistic move, though, given that Marvel is having one of their best summers ever among film critics.

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Zeta
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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Zeta »

CA is the best movie with a Marvel property ever made, btw, and I don't even care that much for Captain America as a character.

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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Radrappy »

Zeta wrote:CA is the best movie with a Marvel property ever made
crazy talk.

Unless you mean best movie with a marvel property that marvel currently holds production rights to, then maybe!

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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Locit »

Senbei wrote:Let's boycott Marvel!
Way ahead of you.

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Post by Senbei »

Bissette's follow-up post, for those who care. Mostly responsive to arguments made by irate fans and apathetic bloggers/journalists, causing the article to retread a lot of ground.

(Also, my mistake: Bissette is not a co-creator of Swamp Thing, but his name is synonymous with the character.)

Zeta, the point is that what Marvel is doing, and has been doing for forty years, is wrong. Would you list the reasons why morality is a moot point?

(I could try to preemptively argue some of the reasons I think you would list, but I'd like to respond to them after you've made them, if you do.)

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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Sniffnoy »

...just because they're doing something wrong doesn't mean a boycott is the appropriate or an effective response that will accomplish what you intend it to without harmful side effects that outweigh the good it did? "Wrong => boycott" is not exactly a full chain of reasoning...

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Zeta
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Re: Let's boycott Marvel!

Post by Zeta »

Zeta, the point is that what Marvel is doing, and has been doing for forty years, is wrong. Would you list the reasons why morality is a moot point?
The fact that:

1) This won't help anyone and will only hurt a vast number of people who were likely not even born when these policies were put into place?

2) The fact that anyone with a brain would rather go independent than try to sell a new property to Marvel and DC?

3) The fact that Marvel hasn't had any new major characters in the past 15 years, and thus no new cases of them screwing over original property creators?

4) The fact that even if they boycott works, the vast majority of people who were wronged by what you're bitching about will never see any compensation regardless?

5) The fact that boycotts, in general, hardly ever work? Those Disney folks sure did ban those awful gays from their park after the Christian boycott worked. Oh wait, no they didn't.

6) Anyone that really mattered in this case (IE - the golden and silver age writers) are mostly dead?

7) This has been the industry standard for the past 40 years and they should have known better in the first place?

And this:
...just because they're doing something wrong doesn't mean a boycott is the appropriate or an effective response that will accomplish what you intend it to without harmful side effects that outweigh the good it did? "Wrong => boycott" is not exactly a full chain of reasoning...
Boycotts are a way for people on the internet to fool themselves into thinking they're accomplishing something. Why not try a digital petition, too, I hear companies always respond to those. Hur hur hur.

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Post by Senbei »

1) An effective boycott could cause short-term damage, but enough pressure from fans can break a company before it comes to that -- as happened when Jerry Siegel got the story of his arduous, decades-long legal battle with DC (National) over Superman recognized in the media in the 70's.

2) Absolutely, but Marvel is still a big fish in a little pond. And I can imagine other publishers trying similar shady tactics, though my impression of most so-called "indie" publishers is that they're pretty honest.

3) You can't predict that this won't happen in the future. I can't predict it will.

4) So we should just let those that did the wrong, and show every intent of continuing the wrong, get away with it?

5) Yeah, I have no illusions about this one. But, hey, wouldn't it be exciting if it did?

6) The Kirby estate is, obviously, not, and they are morally entitled to what they've been fighting for. Also see my answer for 4.

7) Sorry, I need clarification on whom you mean by "they."

Sniffnoy, I was using rhetoric to provoke a more complete response from Zeta. Thanks, guys!

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