Superman flies on his merry way as he has for more than 65 years -- anchoring the DC universe, hanging out with Jerry Seinfeld in Web and broadcast commercials for American Express, inspiring legions of Hollywood rewrites -- but behind the scenes, a struggle continues over who owns what may be the most famous intellectual property in the world.

The Journal has confirmed that Mark Peary filed notice in January of his intent to reclaim the copyrights for the Superman concept and cast of characters on behalf of the estate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster. According to documents filed with the United States Copyright Office, Mark Warren Peary and the Shuster estate plan to terminate the assignment of Superman copyrights to DC as of 2013. Peary, who was born Warren Peavy but changed his name, is the son of Shuster's sister Jean Peavy. As executor of the Shuster estate, Peary is entitled under federal copyright law to make the same claims on Superman that Shuster would be entitled to if he were alive.

This claim is not the first challenge to DC's ownership of Superman. In 1999, Joanne Siegel and Laura Siegel Larson, Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel's widow and daughter, respectively, filed to terminate assignment of Siegel's share of the Superman copyrights to DC. Indeed, as of that 1999 filing, Superman could legally be regarded as no longer belonging entirely to DC.

DC has steadfastly declined to comment on the matter, carrying on Superman business as usual. "Sorry no comment from us," was DC spokespersons' only reply to the Journal's questions. Meanwhile, the Siegels followed the Superman termination with a 2002 notice that they were terminating Jerry Siegel's copyright assignment to DC of Superboy and related comics and stories as of November 2004.

Right now, the struggle between the Siegels, Peary and DC is being fought in private. Joanne Siegel told the Journal in 2003 that little progress had been made in negotiations between DC and the Siegels, but none of the copyright terminations have yet gone to court. For that to happen, either the Siegels or DC would have to file a motion for the courts to enjoin the other side from exercising the Superman copyrights.

Two Davids and a Goliath

Siegel and Shuster did have their day in court while still alive. In 1947, nine years after bringing National Periodicals the character that put DC Comics on the map (for which they were famously paid $130), Siegel and Shuster sued to have their contract with National annulled and asked for a declaration of their rights in Superman. The case did not go well for them, however. In 1948, the New York Supreme Court upheld the original agreement between the creators and DC, saying, "...plaintiffs transferred to Detective Comics, Inc., all of their rights in and to the comic strip Superman, including the title, names, characters and conception and by virtue of [the agreement], Detective Comics, Inc., became the absolute owner of the comic strip Superman."

Superboy, however, was another matter. Siegel had come up with the idea for a Superboy series and submitted it to DC, but it didn't see print until after the writer had been drafted into the Army in 1943. According to a statement made by Siegel, "Detective and [DC Publisher Jack] Liebowitz published Superboy without any notification or compensation to me." In a 1948 interlocutory judgment, Justice J. Addison Young agreed with Siegel, stating, "It is quite clear to me, however, that in publishing Superboy, the Detective Comics, Inc., acted illegally. I cannot accept defendant's view that Superboy was in reality Superman. I think Superboy was a separate and distinct entity. In having published Superboy without right, plaintiffs are entitled to an injunction preventing such publication and under the circumstances, I believe the defendants should account as to the income received from such publication and that plaintiffs should be given an opportunity to prove any damages they have sustained on account thereof."

A month later, DC further cemented its ownership of the Superman family of characters by reaching a settlement with Siegel and Shuster, in which the two creators would be paid a total of $94,000, ostensibly for the rights to Superboy and related characters. In return, Siegel and Shuster acknowledged DC in writing as the sole owner of all rights to Superman, not only for publishing, but also for "all other forms of reproduction and presentation, whether now in existence or that may hereafter be created, together with the absolute right to license, sell, transfer or other wise dispose of said rights." Siegel and Shuster had effectively signed away the rights to license Superman DVDs more than 50 years before the existence of DVDs.

But 26 years later, Siegel and Shuster had their day in court again in a case that was heavily covered by the media. Siegel had worked again on Superman as an uncredited writer from 1959 until the mid '60s, but in a 1962 letter to Shuster he complained that he was being paid a fraction of his former page rate and had to endure "scorn, belittlement and hot-tempered abuse" from DC editor Mort Weisinger. By 1973, both creators were 59. Shuster was legally blind and Siegel, who had sold off his comics collection in desperation, was earning $7,000 a year as a mail clerk. Meanwhile, plans were already under way for DC parent company Warner Communications to develop Superman: The Movie.

At the time, copyright law provided for a term of 28 years with the possibility of renewal for another 28 years. The Superman copyright had been renewed and was in its second 28 years when Siegel and Shuster filed suit again, this time in federal court, arguing that only the original copyright term had been granted to DC in the 1947 agreement.

Siegel sent out a press release that was reminiscent of the way his Superman used to verbally chastise hoodlums and fat-cat swindlers in the early comics. Calling Liebowitz a "cheapskate" and a "backstabber," Siegel wrote, "Superman's publishers have mercilessly gouged Joe and I for their selfish enrichment, stealing our incomes and careers from us derived from Superman, because of their greedy desire to monopolize the fruits of the Superman creation. I can't flex super-human muscles and rip apart the massive buildings in which these greedy people count the immense profits from the misery they have inflicted on Joe and me and our families. I wish I could. But I can write this press release and ask my fellow Americans to please help us by refusing to buy Superman comic books, refusing to patronize the new Superman movie, or watch Superman on TV until this great injustice against Joe and me is remedied by the callous men who pocket the profits from OUR creation."

The courts were unmoved by Siegel and Shuster's hard-luck stories. On Oct. 18, 1973, U.S. District Court Judge Morris Lasker ruled, "...agreements between the artists and [DC] had transferred the artists' rights to [DC] including copyright renewal rights though the copyright renewal was not specifically mentioned in the agreement.... [Siegel and Shuster] assert that the renewal term exists to give the creator a second chance to exploit a property whose marketability was uncertain at the time it was created. They point out that Detective was staffed by thoroughly experienced businessmen who surely would have explicitly referred to the renewal term in the various agreements between the parties had it actually been bargained for. But these arguments prove too much. Plaintiffs certainly knew by 1947, if not before, that Superman was an extraordinarily marketable man, as well as one of unusual powers. Both parties were represented by distinguished counsel in the 1947 proceedings, which resulted in a stipulation worded in all-inclusive language. The fact that this language makes no specific reference to renewal rights militates as much as if not more strongly against plaintiffs than defendants, in whose favor all rights to Superman were confirmed on the face of the various agreements."

Furthermore, Lasker concluded that Siegel and Shuster were employees of DC and their creation of Superman was therefore work for hire even though they had conceived and executed the character as a proposed comic strip some five years before coming to work for DC.

Siegel and Shuster immediately appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, again without success. On Dec. 5, 1974, Circuit Judge William Mulligan ruled, "...a reading of the judgment and the findings [of the state court] inescapably leads to the conclusion that the decree settled for once and for all that the defendants had all right and title to Superman for all time." The plaintiffs attorneys advised them not to carry the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The one ray of good fortune for Siegel and Shuster was the appellate court's finding that the district court was wrong to declare the creation of Superman to be work for hire. "In the case before us," Mulligan wrote, "Superman and his miraculous powers were completely developed long before the employment relationship was instituted. The record indicates that the revisions directed by the defendants were simply to accommodate Superman to a magazine format. We do not consider this sufficient to create the presumption that the strip was a work for hire." Even the state court had accepted as a "finding of fact" that Siegel and Shuster were "the originators and authors of the cartoon character Superman and of the title Superman and first created cartoon material in which the said character and title first appeared in 1934."

But while the two former creators were being slapped down again and again in courts of law, they were making a much more successful case in the court of public opinion. Both comics-industry and mainstream press were picking up on Siegel's press release, and two comics pros, Jerry Robinson and Neal Adams, made drawing attention to the plight of Siegel and Shuster a crusade. Adams told the Journal's Mike Catron, "I was speaking to newsmen every day, four or five a day, some days more, because it got to be hot and heavy. It was a battle for three, three-and-a-half months."

A story by Mary Breasted in the Nov. 22, 1975 New York Times began "Two 61-year-old men, nearly destitute and worried about how they will support themselves in their old age, are invoking the spirit of Superman for help. Joseph Shuster, who sits amidst his threadbare furniture in Queens, and Jerry Siegel, who waits in his cramped apartment in Los Angeles, share the hope that they each will get pensions from the Man of Steel." The two were even interviewed by Tom Snyder of NBC's Tomorrow Show.

An editorial in Joe Brancatelli's Inside Comics decried the fact that "The little guys, the writers, the artists, have been taken advantage of since the inauguration of the comic field. Their brains have been picked, their talents prostituted, for the sole cause of gaining more money and power to the big conglomerate corporations. One man is fighting back. One man, Jerry Siegel, creator of Superman [--] the biggest , most important, most influential character in the history of comics [--] is taking the fight to the big companies." Inside Comics ran a statement from Siegel urging readers to boycott DC.

As David-and-Goliath stories go, it's questionable how easily Siegel or Shuster can be squeezed into the shoes of The Little Guy, considering that, at a time when a huge percentage of the population was unemployed, the two Superman creators already owned a shop full of comics creators (which supplied Superman and other comics material to DC) and were pulling in large sums of money. In 1940, the Saturday Evening Post reported Siegel and Shuster's gross earnings as $75,000. Adjusted for inflation, $75,000 in 1940 would be the equivalent of exactly $1 million today. According to papers filed during various litigations between DC and the two creators, total compensation to Siegel and Shuster for their work on the Superman comics exceeded $400,000 by the time DC paid them off for Superboy with another $94,000. Shuster was hindered by a growing blindness in one eye. Siegel claimed that DC had blackballed him in the comics industry after 1947. But even considering such obstacles, one of the still unsolved mysteries of the Siegel and Shuster story is how the two managed to go from such relative wealth to dissolute poverty in such a short time. By the mid 1950s, Siegel was already describing himself in a letter as "destitute and about to be extradited and prosecuted for nonsupport of my child."

[To read the rest of this article, please see The Comics Journal #263.]

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