Razorback0z said:
Well you know what I wonder.... ?
How it is that fans are just not included in the calculations for these things at all.
What I mean is, fans have a tremendous amount of ownership in a franchise like Superman.
Lets say for example Superman never became popular. No one would be fighting over who owns the rights. So the actual debate is about income, not the character.
The income is provided by the fans, not Time Warner, or DC or the original artist and writer.
Fans have as much, if not more right to decide the fate of Superman as anyone does. These people and these companies put this character out there for us to embrace. We have embraced the character and loved it, just like the creators wanted us to. So now they are going to fight over this character's future without so much as a by your leave ?
So if it turned out that Superman could no longer wear the same outfit and had to have, say.... blond hair and makeup.... They would no doubt still expect us to provide the same enthusiastic support to movies, comics, merchandise etc....
Its rich..... thats all I can say...
Personally I think everyone should just ignore anything to do with Superman and demonstrate to these people who is actually in charge here.
This was well written, and sounds great. Dang shame it's as wrong as it is cool.
We have zero ownership in Superman (unless DC's on the stock exchange, and you happen to have some $$ in it). We can't sell the property. We can't license it. Only DC can. Not the fans.
We don't get to decide Superman's fate. The courts do. It's not up to us if the heirs to Seigal/Shuster get the rights to Superman's backstory. I wish it were up to us. I'd love to be able to call those heirs and tell them Jerry and Joe signed off on that settlement, that was the last word, maybe you can be in the next documentry on Superman or go to conventions and get a feww dollars there. That would be great. But that's not how it is. The courts decide.
Now, as for this idea of DC expecting us to accept Superman changing costume, appearance, new backstory, I don't think that will be the case. DC would pray hard we'd stomach any changes they had to make, but I doubt they'd expect much.
All this is probably moot. I'm convinced DC will make whatever arrangement they have to make in order to get permanent irrevokable copyright to every single aspect of Superman, up to and including the curl in his hair and the color of Laura-El's underwear. Supes is the cornerstone of DC Comics, and DC Comics is the source of a ton of material that gnerate mega bucks for Warner Brothers. Don't count the Big S out just yet.
