Captain America - Free At Last!
In 1941, a young pair of comic book creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, hit on a winning formula: a patriotic costumed hero they called Captain America. Published a few months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 by Marvel Comics (then called "Timely Comics"), Captain America proved to be a lucrative and long-lived property. If this story seems somewhat familiar, it was part of the basis for Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Cap was absent from comic books during the 1950s, but he was revived by Stan Lee and Kirby in the 1960s and has been a mainstay of the Marvel pantheon ever since.
The problem is, having served his 60 years' enlistment in Marvel's army, the terms of the original work-for-hire agreement, always in dispute, have expired. Ownership of the character now returns to the surviving creator, Joe Simon. It wasn't an easy transition. Surprise, surprise: Simon had to go to court and get a ruling from the Second Circuit restoring his rights, at least for the time-being.
Thanks to ampersand at Alas, a Blog for the detail and the pointer, and to Neil Gaiman for referring me there.
4:45:21 PM 
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