Marvel Worldwide Inc has filed a lawsuit against the late Jack Kirby who worked on the Spider-Man and X-Men comics.
The heirs of Jack sent a notice to Marvel claiming they were going to take custody of the copyrights to all of Kirby’s work from the company. However, Marvel is claiming that because Kirby worked “for hire” Marvel technically owns all of the work he did.
The attorney for the Kirby family said:
“It is a standard claim predictably made by comic book companies to deprive artists, writers, and other talent of all rights in their work… The Kirby children intend to vigorously defend against Marvel’s claims in the hope of finally vindicating their father’s work… Sadly, Jack died without proper compensation, credit or recognition for his lasting creative contributions.”
Yikes! Thoughts?
Kirby is not strongly associated with Spider-man.
He is, however, partly or wholly responsible for Captain America; The Fantastic Four; The Incredible Hulk; The Invincible Iron Man; The Mighty Thor; The Avengers; The X-Men; The Silver Surfer; The Black Panther; The Eternals; Devil Dinosaur; Nick Fury, Agent of SHEILD; Machine Man; Ant-Man and the Wasp and many of the subsidiary properties associated with these franchises (e.g. Doctor Doom, Magneto, Galactus, The Inhumans). In fact, about the only major Marvel franchises of the 60s that he wasn’t strongly associated with were Doctor Strange, Daredevil, and Spider-man. Marvel has built its wealth off of the shameless exploitation of creators like Kirby. Hopefully the Kirby family will win its just desserts.