boyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN) (01/25/86)
> From: fluke!moriarty (Jeff Meyer) > ...Kathy's suggestion > is interesting; I don't know how legally sound Kirby's claims are to the > characters (morally, I think he's what Mr. A would call "without a speck of > black"), but it is an interesting proposition. However, if Kirby were to > win, which characters would he take with him? First, CBG said that only > Kirby was going after character rights (and that Marvel is saying that this > voids his rights to the original artwork -- the shitheels!); Stan says he > doesn't want to pursue it, and Ditko signed the rights away a couple of > years ago. So basically this means FF, Silver Surfer, Inhumans, scads of > villains, the Avengers(?), Thor(?), and many others would go. Still, not > the entire Marvel Universe (I don't think the X-Men would leave -- that was > Lee and someone else). Also, how many issues of a comic would Kirby have > had to do to get rights? Does he have to be the "creator" (issue #1)? In > that case, he really does have the majority of the old-liners, especially > Captain America. As I said before, I don't believe that Kirby can sue for complete ownership of the characters, only co-ownership with Marvel. As for what characters he would "get", I would think that they'd be any characters that he created/ designed, which would give him most of the early Marvel characters. He was responsible for creating/designing (at least partially, with Stan Lee): FF, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man, The Avengers, Doctor Doom, The X-Men, and so on. About the only early "Marvel Age" character I don't think he had any hand in at all is Doctor Strange. Even though Ditko was the original artist on Spider-Man, I believe that Kirby worked with Lee to design the character. As for the X-Men, Kirby did indeed do the pencils on the first dozen-or-so issues and layouts for the next half-dozen-or-so (with pencils by Werner Roth as "Jay Gavin"). When someone says that "without Kirby, there would *be* no Marvel Universe," he ain't just-a spittin' inta the wind. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...} !decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.DEC.COM