Work For Hire
This essay was originally posted to Twitter between October 24, 2021 and November 4, 2021. It was composed of 1,099 words across 24 tweets.
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman in the eary 1930s. For years, they shopped the character around, but nobody wanted it. Ultimately, Detective Comics showed interest, and Siegel and Shuster sold the rights, title, and pages for Superman for $130.
This was the Great Depression, when work was scarce and there were few opportunities to put bread on the table. Furthermore, Siegel and Shuster were Jewish, which locked them out of most of the industries where their talents might be applied. For them, it was this or nothing.
Superman was an immediate success and quickly grew into a multimedia phenomenon, moving to toys and other merchandise in 1939, radio in 1940, animated short movies in 1941, live action movie serials in 1948, a live action television series in 1951, and a stage musical in 1966.
Though not legally entitled to regular work, Siegel and Shuster were retained by DC in the first 10 years of Superman's publication and were paid handsomely on a work-for-hire basis. When Siegel sued DC over the rights to Superboy, DC settled out of court and fired them both.
Perhaps it can be argued that the $130 deal made in 1938 was the biggest risk DC could afford to take on an unproven character at the time. But those circumstances changed almost immediately, and Superman's runaway popularity and moneymaking potential were quickly apparent.
For DC, the moral obligation would have been to revisit the terms of the Siegel and Shuster deal as soon as it became obvious that Superman was worth a fortune. Their creation was making people rich and transforming DC into one of the largest comic book publishers in the world.
Obviously, DC Comics did not do this. DC was under no legal requirement to change anything about their deal with Siegel and Shuster, and saw no other reason to do so. DC retained the exclusive right to profit off of all economic opportunities related to Superman in perpetuity.
When DC struck this deal with Siegel and Shuster, they established a template by which all deals would be struck with the creators of superhero comic book characters. Any new characters or stories would be considered work for hire, and therefore the property of the company.
This pattern was immediately normalized within the superhero comic book industry. In 1939, Batman was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane. DC, eager to capitalize on the success of Superman with a second superhero, bought the rights and title, with the byline going to Kane alone.
The same sequence of events followed. Batman was enormously lucrative from the start. With two reliably big-selling characters under their ownership, DC had become more than capable of cutting Finger and Kane in on the success of their creation. Again, obviously, DC chose not to.
DC (and, appallingly, Kane) sought to minimize Bill Finger's role in Batman. Despite being a principle creator, Finger's employment status was essentially that of ghostwriter. By the '60s, Finger's name was seldom mentioned in official recountings of Batman's publication history.
When the big-screen Batman (Martinson, 1966) went into production, Kane demanded a permanent "created by" credit and residual payments. While he had no case, the legal fees might have torpedoed the movie, so DC caved. Kane deliberately excluded Finger from the negotiations.
Kane would publicly deny any claims Finger made for himself as co-creator of Batman. Only after Finger's death in 1974 did Kane admit that Finger was responsible for "50-75%" of Batman. This admission held no legal weight; his deal with DC stuck. Finger's family received nothing.
Kane's contributions to Batman were not negligible, but he also wasn't the mastermind that he styled himself as. He was the first, but not the least, of the smooth-talkers of the superhero comic book industry who took credit for himself at the expense of his creative partners.
Just as Superman established the template by which companies wrested ownership of superheroes from their creators, Batman established the template by which some small amount of restorative justice might be wrested back. In the mid-1970s, plans were announced for a Superman movie.
Siegel and Shuster, with the help of frequent Kane and Finger collaborator Jerry Robinson and prominent Batman artist Neal Adams, crafted a publicity campaign. They highlighted Siegel and Shuster's reduced circumstances and, in Shuster's case, his deteriorating eyesight.
DC and Warner Bros. rightly understood that this was a scandal, and that it could harm their movie's chances at the box office. Jerry Siegel was in debt and out of work. Joe Shuster was nearly blind, unable to draw, and had taken a job delivering packages for the post office.
To put an end to the negative publicity, DC gave Siegel and Shuster a permanent "created by" credit, a lifetime stipend with benefits, and an invitation to the premiere of SUPERMAN (Donner, 1978). The two men were reportedly thrilled with the portrayal of their creation.
This didn't come without strings attached. Siegel and Shuster had to agree to never again contest Superman's legal ownership. DC expanded this deal upon Shuster's death in 1992; they paid down Shuster's debts on condition that his family agreed that DC permanently owned Superman.
This did not quiet the conflict for good. There have since been lawsuits filed by both families, and appeals filed by DC in response. Due to a 2001 letter on behalf of the Siegels recognizing DC's terms and the 1992 agreement with the Shuster's, DC's ownership continues to stand.
Bill Finger's son Fred passed away in 1992. Beyond that point, any time fans or fellow creators would agitate for Finger to be recognized as Batman's rightful creator and for his family to receive a cut of the profits, DC would publicly state that they could find no living heirs.
In 2007, Batman fan and Bill Finger biographer Marc Tyler Nobleman learned that Fred Finger had left behind a living daughter, Athena Finger. It took him all of 10 days to track her down, despite not having the resources of a major publishing corporation at his disposal.
Over the years, Finger had occasionally received oblique credit for Batman. (In the acknowledgements of The Dark Knight Returns, for example.) In 2015, Finger was officially credited as co-creator for the first time in the movie Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Snyder, 2016).
Superman is set to enter the public domain in 2033. At first, only the elements contained in the 1938 stories will be publicly owned. As the years advance, so will the years of Superman story elements that leave DC's hands, unless U.S. copyright law is changed before then.
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Published 3/9/2024
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