Category: Cartooning

King Kirby’s family loses claim to legacy

Well, this is disappointing. The family of Jack Kirby, the most powerful single creative force comic books will ever have, has lost their suit to obtain the copyrights of the characters that populate the Marvel Entertainment empire.

It’s a sad state of affairs that a settlement couldn’t be reached, where Kirby’s estate gets a share of the proceeds from the movies that are doing so well. It’s saddens me there’s so much bad blood between the Kirbys and Stan Lee, and also between Lee and Steve Ditko. I love everything these guys did, and I’m not comfortable taking sides, but the anti-Stan sentiment that has developed bothers me. Just as the Beatles did their best work together, so did Jack and Steve when working with Stan. Kirby saw the possibilities of his creations as major media entertainment, but Stan deserves credit for making it happen. I just wish the Kirbys could cash in the success of the franchise. Even better would be an alternate reality fantasy where Jack and Stan sued together as co-creators, as Siegel and Shuster did for Superman.

P.S. I haven’t seen the Captain America movie yet, so I don’t know who gets credit for the character. With Jack Kirby, Joe Simon co-created Cap, and he had his own lawsuit. Simon says (sorry, couldn’t resist), “I’ve been happy with the results of our various legal entanglements, and my relationship with Marvel is very good these days.”

P.P.S. Joe Sinnott submitted a statement to the court in March. It’s at this link.

Saugerties salutes native son Joe Sinnott

The 4th of July parade in Saugerties, NY featured grand marshall Joe Sinnott. Joe served in WWII, enlisting in the Navy after his brother Jack was killed in France.

Joe is 84, and take a look at his perfect-as-ever finished ink art over Alex Saviuk’s pencils for yesterday’s Spider-Man comic strip. Joe has said that he thinks he hit his peak about 50 years ago, and he’s just stayed there. It’s no brag, it’s just fact!

Here’s an example of Joe’s supremely masterful and clean inking over Jack Kirby’s pencils for Fantastic Four #63, in 1967 (borrowed from Rob Steibel’s Kirby Dynamics blog). The notes in the margins were written by Jack, and those notes get into the extremely contentious subject, that’s currently being litigated, of who created the characters of the Marvel Comics universe.

United they fall

The house that Sparky built is no more. United Media, home of UFS and NEA, has closed. Peanuts had been syndicated by United Feature Syndicate, but is now handled by Universal. From Peanuts to Garfield to Dilbert, United Feature Syndicate was a marketing powerhouse for decades, with NEA carrying a stalwart selection of comics, including its leading strip, Arlo and Janis. But now, Universal has them all.

Technically, King Features was the first syndicate to publish a drawing by Charles M. Schulz. It appeared on February 22, 1937. It was a submission Sparky made to the popular feature Ripley’s Believe it or Not!, about his dog Spike, who wasn’t a picky eater.

The caption reads, “A hunting dog that eats pins, tacks and razor blades is owned by C. F. Schulz, St. Paul, MN.” I don’t know where the “F” came from — his middle name was Monroe — and I doubt any dog would survive eating razor blades. Schulz’s original submission supposedly was, “eats pins, tacks and screws.” The word “screws” was changed to avoid it being taken as a verb.

Author Monte Schulz has a humorous reference to his dad and Spike on page 231 of his novel, This Side of Jordan.

“Jeepers, it must be swell to ride all over in a circus wagon. You ain’t got a sideshow for a kid whose dog eats tacks and razor blades, do you?”
“Naw, we ain’t got nothing like that.”
The newspaper boy lowered his head and kicked at the dirty pavement. “Aw, gee whiz, me and Spike never get a break.”
“Tacks and razor blades?”
The newspaper boy nodded. “Pins, too!”
“Kid, you’re almost as big a fibber as someone else I know.”
The boy’s face reddened. “If you got any tacks or pins on you, we can prove it. He rubbed his dog’s neck. And how!”