deejayway wrote:
I don't care about the legal issues - leave that to the lawyers - Kirby should've received more recompensation during his lifetime and I think it is perfectly legitimate that his heirs - who he worked all his life to provide for - should profit. Marvel/Disney should show some common decency and largesse and give the Kirby's a lump sum settlement. As far as I'm concerned, they don't even have to concede the legitimacy of their claims but just settle out of court. Who else have they got to fear? Who else could make similar claims?

My particular (leftist) bias is against corporations (I work for one so I know whereof I speak) so when it comes to Kirby vs Marvel/Disney, my sympathies squarely lie with the former. This reflects in no way on my admiration for Stan.
wow, deejay, you pretty much summed up exactly how I feel on the issue. 

For me, this isn't about whether or not Kirby's children should benefit from his creations. If this were an equitable system from the start, it is almost certain they would have benefited from their father's work throughout their lives, to this day. 

The key to me is that Kirby never DID receive equitable compensation for the revenue generated by the work he did for Marvel in the sixties. This is true not just for the modern superhero blockbuster era, but the days in the late seventies when I was four and my mom bought me Spider-Man and Captain America Mego dolls. Obviously the modern age of licensing and adaptations has resulted in massive profits but these characters have always been powerful licensing tools. If these large corporations are entitled by the law to reap untold benefit and revenue from the work of this one man (and others), year over year and decade over decade, then how is it right that the law provides no recompense for these men to also share in the bounty? (Legally I guess the ultimate answer here is that "copyright law sucks right now" and I tend to agree but we're dealing with what is today and not what should be someday.)

Everything else about the situation to me is secondary--credits, Stan "taking credit" or not doing so, etc. Kirby deserved a greater share in his creations during his lifetime, and in absence of that, his heirs should be entitled to benefit from the work their father did. From a moral standpoint, I feel this is especially true given that he seems to have spent so much of his life working incredibly hard to generate massive profits for others, all in the name of scraping out his own living and providing for his family. Marvel and now Disney have filled and are filling many many coffers with profits from sleeping bags, action figures, motion pictures, toothbrushes, and so on featuring Kirby's co-creations. The man and his family deserve a share of that profit too. 

That's my gut, emotional reaction, irrespective of the law, mind you...

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