By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/7/2013
Tweet News reports are circulating that the Siegel and Shuster heirs have asked the lower court to dismiss DC’s copyright lawsuits. What actually happened is rather different. The Siegel and Shuster heirs’ attorney, Marc Toberoff, appears to have conceded that the Superman copyright dispute is over and the heirs have lost. Here’s what happened in [...]
By: [email protected],
on 2/7/2013
In my last post, I wrote about The Diary of a Dr Who Addict by Paul Margs. In that book, the protagonist, David, mentions that his favourite of the Doctor Who novelisations (indeed, he says “Best book ever. No contest.”) is Doctor Who and the Daemons. So, of course, I had to re-read it… and tell you about it.
I used to read the Doctor Who novelisations all the time as a teenager — read and re-read and re-read — until my copies were tattered and dog-eared. Now, as an adult, I tend not to re-read books all that often. So it was rather nice to take a little nostalgic wander and re-read Doctor Who and the Daemons — my first novelisation re-read since Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth and Doctor Who and the Cave-monsters back in 2011 (see “Daleks and Cave-monsters”).
In this adventure, the third Doctor and his assistant, Jo Grant, head to the small town of Devil’s End, where an archaeological dig is about to unleash a demon. Of course it’s not really the occult at work — it’s an ancient alien science with the Doctor’s old enemy, the Master, at the helm.
The book is written by Barry Letts, one-time producer of the series and the co-scriptwriter of the televised story (using a pseudonym).
In all honesty, I don’t think this is the best of the novelisations. In fact, I thought it was a tad pedestrian, adding little to the on screen story (which I reviewed last year) beyond enhancing the spectacle of scenes that suffered from lack of special effects — the flying gargoyle chief amongst them. While I enjoyed reading the book, I much preferred Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth and Doctor Who and the Cave-monsters. All up, this book is not as good as the televised story, which has bucket-loads of atmosphere and visual style.
One of the charming things about the old Doctor Who novelisations is that some of them had black and white internal illustrations. Such is the case with Doctor Who and the Daemons, which has illustrations by Alan Willow.
While Doctor Who and the Daemons may not be the “best book ever”, it has made me yearn to dig out a few more of the old novelisations and give then another airing. But which one to start with?
Unfortunately Doctor Who and the Daemons is not currently in print. But fear not… because it is available as an audio book. And it’s read by Barry Letts! Now that I’ve re-read my print copy, I’m tempted to get a copy of the audio book to see how it compares.
Catch ya later, George
Check out my DVD blog, Viewing Clutter.
Latest Post: DVD Giveaway — Doctor Who: The Legacy Collection
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By: [email protected],
on 2/4/2013
How could I possibly come across a book called The Diary of a Dr Who Addict and not want to read it immediately? After all, I was, am and will always be, a Doctor Who addict. So, a novel about a kid with a similar obsession just had to be read. The fact that it was written by Paul Margs, who has also written Doctor Who books, made it even more appealing.
Set in 1982, The Diary of a Dr Who Addict is a coming of age story — a little one-year slice from the life of a boy named David at a crucial time in his growing up. He is about to become a teenager. He is about to start high school. And most important of all, he is about to watch season 19 of Doctor Who — the season in which Peter Davison took over the role of the Doctor from Tom Baker, who had held it for a marathon run of seven years.
David is a boy who relates so much of his life and experiences to his favourite television series. So there are lots of references to Doctor Who, both obvious and subtle. This includes what is perhaps the best Doctor Who to real-life comparison ever… when talking about his love of books and reading, David says:
“Books are bigger on the inside than on the out, just like a police box.”
Truer words were never written.
But there is a lot more to this book than Doctor Who. It is also a story about growing up, about accepting who you are and about finding your place in life. Most importantly, it is about the realisation that you don’t have to give up everything from your childhood in order to grow up.
I found reading this book to be an incredibly personal experience. Firstly, because it is such an intimate account of David’s thoughts and feelings about so many things (and one gets the feeling that there is a lot of Paul Margs in David). And secondly, because I saw so much of myself in David. In 1982, I was 14… so a little older than David. But I felt the same excitement as him over the introduction of Peter Davison. I too had read all about the new season of Doctor Who and eagerly awaited it, wondering what this new Doctor would be like… talking about it incessantly. I too, read and collected the series novelisations. There are so many little things that I could relate to as I read this book — from Doctor Who, to the excitement of a first video cassette recorder, to a growing interest in writing. Yes, just like David, I wrote my own Doctor Who stories as a kid.
But I also related to David’s feelings of isolation. I too often felt different and out of place, even though not always in the same way as him. I was a strange nerdy kid who preferred books and tv to playing sports. I wrote stories. I was quiet and socially awkward. I thought Doctor Who was the greatest thing EVER!
Just as I eventually grew up and found my place in the world, I finished The Diary of a Dr Who Addict feeling certain that David would as well.
The Diary of a Dr Who Addict is a lovely, thoughtful, touching, amusing, life-affirming, joyful read. And it has shot up into my list of all-time favourite books.
One final thing. Towards the end of the book, David reveals that, in his opinion, the Doctor Who and the Daemons novelisation is the “Best book ever. No contest.” So, of course, as soon as I finished The Diary of a Dr Who Addict, I went over to my Doctor Who bookcase and pulled out my battered old copy of Doctor Who and the Daemons. But I’ll tell you about that in my next post.
Catch ya later, George
Check out my DVD blog, Viewing Clutter.
Latest Post: DVD Review — Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror
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By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/31/2013
TweetIf you somehow didn’t know it already, then this is breaking news for you: this year marks the 50th anniversary of the longest running science fiction TV show in the world: Doctor Who. Long-running in some cases might mean plodding, but not in this case. The Doctor’s recent incarnation, actor Matt Smith, became the first [...]
Posted on 9/10/2012
No spoilers, because I know some of my Whovian friends haven't yet had the chance to watch the first two episodes of the latest season of Doctor Who, but I'm so impressed with the quality of writing from Steven Moffat (who also writes Sherlock, another must-see TV show).
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 9/3/2012
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By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/20/2012
Ticketfails have become as much a part of fandom as slashfic and cosplay. While PR flubs and angry complaints get a fair bit of attention, the crash of ticket sales for last week’s promotion of a Doctor Who premiere in New York also illustrates the potential for legal problems.
A few thoughts on the legal dimension of online event ticketing — and why it matters — after the jump.The past few years have given rise to several interesting examples of how online event registration has made ticketing both more simple and complex. The iconic example of ticketing problems in the pop-culture world is probably that of Comic-Con International, where enduring a server crash became an annual ritual as the charity grew into the Woodstock of the entertainment world.
Like Comic-Con, BBC America is a charitable enterprise adapting to pop culture fandom’s transition from the cultural margins to the mainstream. (BBCA is part of a network of ventures operated for the benefit of the public-purpose BBC Trust.) The good Doctor’s spike in popularity since the first New York screening two years ago made tickets inevitable, not just to avoid turning away fans at the end of a long line but to forestall liability from an accident, health problem or other incident camping out by a busy city thoroughfare.
In its basic structure BBCA’s event management was relatively typical. The company scheduled the upcoming August 25 premier at a large theater, the Ziegfeld, and it outsourced the distribution to MovieTickets.com. handling the BBCA’s marketing team also took the opportunity to leverage public interest in its most popular program by directing people to follow its Twitter feed in order to be first to get the link to buy tickets.
This is where things got interesting. The price for each tickets was just eleven cents—a penny for each of the Doctor’s eleven incarnations. As a result, amplifying the series’ growing popularity was a lack of any of price discrimination, which would have tempered, say, more expensive pricing for a premiere at the Paley Center. Once the BBCA Twitter feed posted the link, thousands of people hit MovieTickets.com and the site crashed.
If all that had happened was a server crash precipitated by a massive amount of traffic, the basis for legal action would be weak at best. The mere inability to get tickets is not a viable basis for a lawsuit—although stranger things have happened in tort-friendly jurisdictions, a New York court would not likely be your friend. Disappointed fans could try to seek compensation for lost time and event access due to BBCA’s decision to patch around the crash by posting a backdoor link on tumblr instead of Twitter, but the minimal damages and excessive cost of litigation would make for at best a pyrrhic victory. Moreover, BBCA has already taken remedial measures to
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By: Keith Mansfield,
on 8/5/2012
This morning at 6.31 am (British Summer Time), Johnny and Clara Mackintosh (and their Old English sheepdog, Bentley) made history: thanks to NASA and its Mars Curiosity rover, they became the first literary heroes to literally land on another world. And all broadcast live in Times Square – wow!
Johnny, Clara and Bentley, lowered to the Martian surface on the back of Curiosity (courtesy JPL)
The descent was scary (I wrote a piece about it for Bookzone4Boys) – even NASA had described it as “seven minutes of terror”. Eventually the Mars Science Laboratory landed by “skycrane” in Gale Crater, a perfect location to examine millions of years of Martian geology in one go. Onboard was a microchip onto which had been etched the names of some of the people of Earth, the very first ambassadors to land on another planet. And among those names were:
I confess I’m delighted to say “Keith Mansfield” was also included. 
Some great fictional stories have been set on Mars, but the paper or celluloid that tells them remains firmly grounded here on our island Earth. John Carter may have disappointed in cinemas lately, but Edgar Rice Burroughs’ series of “Barsoom” books are classics. A film that brought the red planet properly to life saw the now-Governator of California star as Doug Quaid in Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 masterpiece, Total Recall. Why anyone feels the need to remake a movie that was originally so stunning is a mystery, but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen Len Wiseman’s remake.
As a child I grew up reading the late, great Ray Bradbury, whose thoughtful Martian Chronicles helped inspire the stories I’ve written. In the first two Johnny Mackintosh books there are mentions of Mars and Johnny and Clara always intend to go there, yet somehow they never quite get round to it. In Battle for Earth they finally make the trip (I won’t spoil it for future readers by saying whether or not they find Martians).
David Bowie famously sang “Is there life on Mars?” and in a fun Doctor Who tribute, Steven Moffat christened the first fictional human settlement “Bowie Base One”. I’ve written a few pieces on whether or not there’s life of some kind on the red planet over at my Keith Mansfield website.
We’ve always found Martian exploration difficult. On page 3 of Johnny Mackintosh: Battle for Earth we read:
“Johnny and Clara had been planing their first ever visit to Mars, with Johnny telling his sister about all the probes scientists had sent to the red planet, but which had mysteriously failed to arrive.”
and then, a little later on page 61:
“Early space probes had taken intriguing but inconclusive photographs of the Martian surface, showing what were called the Pyramids of Elysium, next to what appeared to be a gigantic human face gazing upward. Johnny had always meant to visit and see for himself. For his part, Alf was curious to hear about the probes that had gone missing, so Johnny repeated the conversation he’d had with Clara, in a little more detail. Given the great expense of space exploration, the failure rate for Mars was unusually high. It wasn’t only Beagle 2 that had bitten the dust as it neared the planet. Over the years, around half the missions launched had failed for one reason or another.”
Of course the “giant face” is no more than an optical illusion, but sometimes you can’t let details like that get in the way of a good story. I first came across the pyramids through Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and these don’t only feature in Johnny Mackintosh – Total Recall also centred around the mysterious “pyramid mine”.
Nowadays we know a huge amount about this near neighbour, not least because there are actually three satellites in permanent orbit around the red planet. In the 1970s we sent the twin Viking landers to search for life (you can see a third in the Smithsonain Air and Space Museum in Washington DC). These tantalized, but also frustrated. Given the track record of previous Mars missions, this one played it relatively safe so the spacecraft set down in what proved rather dull areas – and that’s where they remained. The great thing about Curiosity is that it’s mobile.
Mars rover family portrait showing Sojourner, one of Spirit/Opportunity and then Curiosity (courtesy NASA)
We’ve come a long way in a short space of time with Mars rovers. The first was Sojourner, a little add on to the Pathfinder mission that landed in 1997. It was the size of a remote-controlled child’s toy and could only travel a few metres from the main landing station, getting up close and personal with a few interesting nearby rocks. Sojourner started the ball rolling, and the momentum was magnificently maintained by another pair of twin landers, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which set down early in 2004.
Mars panorama using composite images from Opportunity, showing the rover’s own tyre tracks (courtesy NASA)
Larger, more independent and mobile, it was hoped these two would function for around 90 days. Spirit lasted fully five years, becoming immobile on 2009 and finally ceasing communication in 2010. Opportunity is still going! These two have shown that we are more than capable, not just of landing on Mars, but traversing its surface.
Curiosity being put through its paces on Earth (courtesy of JPL)
Curiosity is in a different league altogether. Weighing nearly a tonne, it’s around the size of a small car. It doesn’t move quite as fast, travelling at what’s almost literally a snail’s pace, but wherever it goes, Johnny, Clara and Bentley will go with it. I hope they and I are able to move across the surface of this faraway world for many years to come.
Buy the first book in the series, Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London.
Buy the third book in the series, Johnny Mackintosh: Battle for Earth in which Johnny and Clara visit Mars.
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By: Cate Gardner,
on 6/8/2012
(Because even when you have Freedom switched on there are always ways to procrastinate)
- The David Tennant Doctor Who figure is taller than the Matt Smith figure and for some reason I thought it would be the other way around. I should Google who is tallest. (To which the answer is a) yes David Tennant is taller and b) what an odd site and c) my Google-Fu found that in one click).
- Why have trays on your desk if you're not going to use them for anything sensible? And yes, labelling them WIP / Ideas / Guidelines / Writing Tips isn't much good if you're just going to throw everything into whatever tray you feel like.
- Making graphs is an awesome way to track your progress even if you're not making any progress because you're busy making graphs.
- Scribbling short story titles and throwing them into the trays would be awesome if you used the right trays or maybe had a short story title tray. Ooh, see now I have another reason to procrastinate and then later on I could blog* about all the silly things I write short story titles on like fruit pastille wrappers and gift tags and whatnot. You'd think there were no notebooks in this room.
- If you count all the unused notebooks in your office, you may find they total 30 (at least).
*I won't really blog about that... Although, in the words of James Bond, never say never.
I wonder which James Bond figure is the tallest?
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/16/2012
Now normally, I’m one to eat food, not stare at it. This is where I might make an exception. You may have seen a Dalek Wedding Cake image floating around Twitter over the weekend. If not, guide left. Turns out that was just one of a sequence of several science fiction/robot themed cakes, including:
Dammit! Now I’m getting hungry. Go have a look.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/2/2012
Doctor Who is filming in England, but what have the Daleks been up to since last they were seen. Hit play, if you dare.
Posted on 3/18/2012
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 12/11/2011
This is going to sound silly, but up until 1978, the BBC didn’t put a high priority on keeping archives of their old TV series. As a result, a _lot_ of TV shows from the dawn of British television through the mid-1970s have been erased and gone missing. Roughly speaking, about 40% of the first six seasons of Doctor Who have gone missing. It’s so bad, only 6 of the 21 storylines with second Doctor Patrick Troughton have all their episodes in possession of the BBC.
Today, the BBC announced 2 previously missing episodes have surfaced:
Episode 3 of the William Hartnell adventure “Galaxy 4″ and Episode 2 of Patrick Troughton’s “The Underwater Menace” were purchased by film collector Terry Burnett at a village fete near Southampton in the early 80s. He had been unaware that the canisters contained material missing from the BBC.
Typically, these lost episodes are either found in the form of film prints sent overseas for syndication to countries like Australia or have been floating around in the hands of collectors for years. In fact, where did the BBC decide these episodes came from?
Research has shown that the returned episodes originated from the ABC channel in Australia. In fact, the copy of The Underwater Menace is still missing a few short sections which were removed by the Australian censors upon its original transmission Down Under. Fresh scans of the missing material have been made by the National Archives of Australia and will be incorporated into the restored episodes ahead of a DVD release.
This is the only known episode in the Galaxy 4 story to be recovered.
By: Ella Press,
on 8/30/2011
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| Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler |
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| Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler |
Posted on 7/26/2011
British Science Fiction award-winner Alastair Reynolds is the latest author to try his hand writing a Doctor Who novel, after signing a deal with BBC Books.
Editorial director Albert DePetrillo bought world rights from Robert Kirby at United Agents for an undisclosed sum. Harvest of Time will be published as a £16.99 hardback in 2013. It features the third Doctor, who was played by Jon Pertwee in the BBC series.
The book is about the Doctor battling his arch-nemesis The Master on 20th-century earth and far into the future.
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By: Monica Zepeda,
on 5/13/2011
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By: Cate Gardner,
on 4/24/2011
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/14/2011
BY JEN VAUGHN The word adult has an ever-evolving meaning as pop culture is influenced by those who hold the disposable cash and we figure out new ways to wear jeans to work pajamas to work.
Tonight at the Barrientos Mexican-American Cultural Center there is a SXSW Interactive evening event called Plutopia 2011: The Future of Play that anyone can attend. Various speakers will focus on the converging technologies of the science field with arts and entertainment via film, demonstrations, performance art.
As an avid Doctor Who fan, I’m none too pleased to announce I will be building a TARDIS on location with writer Stacey Brook. For those not in the Who know, TARDIS represents Time And Relative Dimension In Space and is indeed the Doctor’s time machine. Shariar Shadab, an Australian animator and illustrator, let me in on his TARDIS creation the other night. BBC America is conducting Where is the TARDIS? a ”TARDIS-building contest” in anticipation of the April 23 launch of the new Doctor Who season on BBC America.
You can bet your bippy that Shad’s TARDIS will appear at some point during the Plutopia: The Power of Play again.
See you there!
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By: Sara O'Leary,
on 10/27/2010
Last night we watched the Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who again and I think it may be one of my all-time favourites (Richard Curtis! Bill Nighy! Sets that look like paintings!)
It reminded me that I'd meant to show this picture (stolen from Crooked House) to our little Vincent fan.
By: Sara O'Leary,
on 9/20/2010
The trailer for the next installation in the Narnia series - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - is now up.
We've been re-watching the old BBC versions of the books. The special effects and costumes are pretty dire, but (some of) the performances are really very good and overall I'd still rather watch the old films even when it's for the 8th or 9th time.
We're anxious to see who will be cast as Puddleglum in The Silver Chair as Tom Baker* absolutely owns that part. You can catch a little bit here.
And if you're looking for copies of the C.S. Lewis Narnia novels, there is an excellent set of re-issues featuring the original Pauline Baynes illustrations.
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 9/16/2010
By: Sara O'Leary,
on 9/1/2010
Funny conversation with young son who is awaiting Christmas even more anxiously than ever this year, because that's when the new Doctor Who will be on. We'd been talking about the fact that Neil Gaiman was writing an episode for series two and I showed him the photo just posted on Gaiman's blog which shows Matt Smith standing between Neil Gaiman and Steven Moffat right after they'd done the table reading for the new script.
"So that means because I've met Neil Gaiman, I've met someone who has met Matt Smith," I told Euan.
He did an exaggerated jaw dropping and wandered off. Half a moment later he was back with his jaw dropped even further. "You've met Neil Gaiman?" he exclaimed.
Lately, there seem to be fewer than six degrees of separation between nearly anything and Doctor Who. I picked up a novel by Esther Freud called The Sea House for a lovely spate of grown-up reading, and told my young son that I thought she was the daughter of Clement Freud, who, of course, wrote Grimble. When I googled this, I realised that it was Emma Freud I was thinking of (and that Esther's father was Lucian Freud), but I also learned that when Esther Freud was an actress one of her roles had been in Attack of the Cybermen. And that she is married to the "Other Doctor," David Morrisey.
We are looking forward to seeing what ilk of monster Gaiman chooses to deploy in his episode. And in the meantime, we are thinking we might need this new set of figures: The Eleven Doctors.
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 8/31/2010
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 8/27/2010
0 Comments on A Spectrum of Stuff as of 1/1/1900
Oh Jeff, Jeff, Jeff….
What will you get to write about now?
You don’t have to be a procedural wonk to understand the importance of the admittedly complex issue of civil procedure. That’s because, as far as I understand it, there is still some bargaining to be done. And every DC claim that can be dismissed improves the Siegel’s bargaining position. I think the 9th Circuit’s decision is horrible. It chills the bargaining process by putting in land mines, it also seems to directly contradict one of the cardinal rules of evidence in civil matters – statements made in conjunction with an offer of settlement are not admissible as evidence. And if a term sheet doesn’t fit that description, I don’t know what does. Maybe that’s why the 9th Circuit didn’t want the case to establish a precedent.
@Jonboy Just you wait. Been holding back. Always open to questions too.
@Mitchell Berger The state of the law regarding term sheets would surprise a lot of people who agree to them. It’s in many ways counterintuitive. My take on the 9th Circuit’s use of a memo dispo is that the legal principles for finding a term sheet binding have already been established. This was just an application of established law to a particular fact pattern – no need to offer additional guidance in binding precedent.
Re bargaining to be done: yep, that’s how these things often get wound up after one side wins a huge victory. Thing is, though, DC is now in the stronger position, a reversal of the situation in 2008 and the subsequent expansion of the Siegels’ ownership stake. The filing described in this post is primarily about Toberoff not getting hit with owing damages & attorney fees to DC.
Now can we get Superman back in his original costume instead of Jim Lee’s nightmare?
Jeff, I can’t wait for the book you write on this. You know — the book that I decided in my head will be on sale around this time next year.
Seriously, these as-we-go-along posts are stirring and wrenching and eye-opening. Putting it all in one place in the proper context (and in the right narrative order) would be a must-read.
The human “point” that stands out to me here is the aggressive attempt to strip an author of his right to be considered an author while we here in the 21st century are enjoying a renaissance of author recognition; even corporate authors! “Monsters, Inc.” isn’t just a Pixar film, but a Pete Doctor film, and it’s marketed that way. Kevin Feige, Jon Favreau, and Joss Whedon are given more credit for the Marvel film explosion than the corporation itself is. Today, corporate art producers promote their employed or freelance individual humans as the secret to their success, yet we just have a block preventing us from affording the same recognition to those who built the foundations. It’s because the working relationships then were so fuzzy and disputed that any “give” in those relationships today becomes dangerous to the financial health of the companies. Understood. But it doesn’t make it any less outrageous.
I second Jeff’s book — he is literally the only person who is getting the analysis of this right. Otherwise, facts like these get buried behind single news leads and small paragraphs. No one is simply willing to do the homework anymore.
Something new that struck me was the use of “Jack Kirby’s Fourth World” in a few places in the settlement. I don’t know the exact reason they were putting it in (help?) but just the way it is worded — as his, but emphatically theirs — very ironic and sad.
@Jesse Many lawyers today are domo arigato Mr. Roberto when it comes to preventing future harm to a corporate client. It doesn’t occur to them that treating folks as less than human is offensive in ways that can lead to much more substantial harm down the line.
For instance, the Siegel case has cost Time Warner millions in legal fees–probably more than they would have paid the Siegels under the settlement during the same period of time. The likelihood that Time Warner would have taken the same financial hit if Joanne Siegel had gone off the reservation after transferring DC all the rights in the settlement falls somewhere on the spectrum from slim to none. But all the lawyer can think is control, control, control without any sense of nuance or a strategy informed by human nature.
@Brad Based on the context, my initial sense is that Kirby’s Fourth World + related material are there to forestall on claim to revenue from post-termination versions of Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen/Fourth World/Kamandi material with an arguable or actual Superman connection. (Definition 9, “Superman Property,” is key here.) At the time profits from Darkseid material may have been the main concern, but who knows? Perhaps the original plan for the New 52 was to build it around Goody Rickles.
On a broader level, yes, the phrase “Jack Kirby’s Fourth World” has branding value in the comics community, but in a document designed to deny an original creator the possibility of any credit or financial interest it takes on a wholly different valence.
Jeff,
Aren’t the royalties retroactive? Meaning, isn’t DC paying the royalties from the date the agreement was signed to today, as well as going forward? DC didn’t pursue this case to stop those royalties, or even reduce them, they reacted to Toberoff’s claims.
So saying “the Siegel case has cost Time Warner millions in legal fees–probably more than they would have paid the Siegels under the settlement during the same period of time” isn’t really accurate, is it?
Did the lawsuit cost TW money? Yes. But they were willing to pay the Siegel heirs significant money, and had an agreement to do so. It was the Siegels and Toberoff who decided to try to void that agreement.
What was TW to do? Renegotiate for more? Siegel didn’t want more. Apparently she wanted to stick it to the man. So TW had to defend their property.
@jonboy There was a way to write certain clauses – particularly anything pertinent to non-defamation and other stuff beyond finances – that likely could have kept the settlement process from breaking down into the long-ongoing lawsuit.
When you’re negotiating a settlement, particularly a one involving a situation w/ decades of hard feelings, you don’t stop with cash if you want the settlement to get the folks on the opposite side of the table to sign on the final dotted line. Many disputes aren’t really just about money–and if you pretend they are, you could end up losing more of it than is necessary.
In the Siegel deal, when the dollars were more or less set would have been a great to time to think about how to get the Siegels to see this a good thing, as a form of vindication for Jerry and a means of securing his legacy. Without that, there was always a serious chance it could revert to the mean–a fractious, costly legal dispute.
Now DC is on the hook for the past royalties *and* the decade or so of lost time, extra staff, $ spent massaging it for SEC filings and fees for outside counsel. A bit of strategic humanity in 2002 could have saved all that extra cash for creative projects to further corporation growth–or, more likely, tripling bonuses for C-level executives.
This deserves a book all to its own. But I’d also be interested in an indepth detailed history of the larger universe of notable comic/ fandom trademark and copyright disputes including Superman (Siegel/Shuster), Natl vs Fawcett / Marvel vs DC (Shazam/Capt Marvel), DC vs Bruns, Gerber/ Wolfman/ Friedrich vs Marvel, Warren vs Harris, Gaiman vs McFarlane (Medieval Spawn, Angella, Cogliostro, and Miracleman/Man-of-Miracles), Miracle(Marvel)man, Stan Lee vs Marvel (2002 not Stan Lee Media), Jack Kirby vs Marvel, and hell, let’s even toss in Lucasfilm vs Battlestar Galactica.
My overall understanding of things is that the (admittedly different) courts have been schizophrenic at best over the nearly century of time they’ve been looking at the sausage-making of my beloved hobbies.
Jeff,
So are you thinking that if DC/TW had been “nicer” to the Siegels in 2002, all the subsequent legal wranglings wouldn’t have occurred?
That, I can understand.
BUT, if the Siegels had made up their minds to fight prior to the 2002 settlement regardless of the $ offered (in which case why would they have agreed to it), then no amount of nicety would have fixed it.
All in all, yes, I agree being ‘nice’ solves a heckuva lot more problems than it creates, but at the same time, sometimes you just gotta be a dick in order to get what you want.
JT:
Thanks for your detailed reporting/analysis + I look forward to a book.
JT: I do as well, hopefully it’s not just on this case, but all previous legal cases. Preferably written from the Siegel family POV and explains what they were going through and why they came to that POV, if possible. That’s a book I really want to read.
Yeah, just shocked by how much DC insisted on controlling the narrative of the actual story. It’s the ultimate version of Editorial — making the Siegel life story itself part of approved DC canon. How do you make something work? Fit it in continuity. Really surreal.
[...] More last words on the lawsuit by Jeff Trexler at The Beat. [...]