Only a few weeks after Disney announced that they were planning to buy comics giant Marvel, a series of new lawsuits is threatening to make the deal look far less sweet. The estate of comic artist Jack Kirby has sent out notices to Marvel, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Fox, Universal and others who hold film rights to Marvel comic book characters, saying that they are seeking to regain copyright over some of Jack Kirby’s Marvel creations.
As Kirby helped create all sorts of characters for Marvel, ranging from the Hulk to Fantastic Four and X-Men, if successful the suit could cause all manner of problems for the comic company and its new owner. Kirby’s lawyers have apparently been galvanised by their success regaining some of the copyright over Superman for the estate of Jerome Siegel and so now they’re trying to do similar for Kirby.
The silver lining is that the notices that were sent out are for claims that won’t become valid for seven to ten years, and that even if the Kirby estate does get the rights it wants, Marvel probably won’t actually lose control over the characters, but they will have to negotiate a new deal giving Kirby’s heirs a large chunk of cash from deals involving affected characters, making things a lot less profitable for them.