The latest round of the seesaw “one for you, one for me” legal battle between the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel and Time Warner has gone to the Siegels, according to ICv2:
The heirs of Jerry Siegel have won another round in the court case over the rights to Superman because of a blog comment on Newsarama by long-time publisher and agent Denis Kitchen. The ruling in federal court determined that the Seigel heirs own the rights to Action Comics #4; Superman #1, pages 3-6; and the first two weeks worth of Superman daily newspaper strips. The court had earlier held that the Siegel heirs owned the rights to ACTION #1 (see “Siegel Heirs Win Superman Case”).
While we expect Jeff Trexler to come along any minute and explain this in depth, the ruling stems from a post by Trexler (not, as far as we can tell, Denis Kitchen) revealing early versions of of Superman — predating their contract with Detective Comics — by Siegel and artist Russell Keaton. The material has been deemed to be owned by the Siegels due to their previous recapture of Action #1.
And here’s the initial reaction from Mr. Trexler:
http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/08/12/blog-post-gets-siegels-more-superman/
Wow.
Obtaining a portion of the copyright for the first two weeks of the newspaper strip is important to the Siegels because those strips include the first references to “Krypton” and “Kal-El”.
On the Trexler/Kitchen question, I believe the blog post was by Trexler, but the new information came from a comment to that post by Kitchen (that is the way I understood the reference).
I’m not sure whether this ruling will make settlement more likely or less likely, but it is an interesting development.
Good lord how did I miss this! And I am Newsarama almost every other day. Trexler almost may single handedly ruined DC’s chances of keeping the character? Lets hope not!