Second Circuit Court Overturns Marvel's "Ghost Rider" Legal Victory

Greg

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=46001

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/06/11/ghost-rider-decision-overturned-gary-friedrich-vs-marvel-comics-could-go-to-trial/

" In 2011, a federal judge rejected the four-year-old lawsuit filed by Ghost Rider co-creator Gary Friedrich, who claimed the rights to the Marvel Comics character reverted to him in 2001. Friedrich appealed the ruling and according to The Hollywood Reporter, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the initial decision, causing the suit to go back to trial."

SolitaireRose

This is one of those cases where, while I am a HUGE advocate for creator's rights, I want Marvel to win. Why? Friedrich didn't create Ghost Rider, at least not alone. Marvel already had the name and a western character, Goodman said they should update it, Roy Thomas and Mike Ploog laid out the visual and the general theme of the book and Friedrich wrote the first issue "Marvel style", which meant he have Ploog a rough outline plot, Ploog did the page by page work and then Friedrich dialogued based on the art.

It was a collaboration. It would be like giving the rights to Captain America and ignoring Kirby.

David_D

SolitaireRose said:

This is one of those cases where, while I am a HUGE advocate for creator's rights, I want Marvel to win. Why? Friedrich didn't create Ghost Rider, at least not alone. Marvel already had the name and a western character, Goodman said they should update it, Roy Thomas and Mike Ploog laid out the visual and the general theme of the book and Friedrich wrote the first issue "Marvel style", which meant he have Ploog a rough outline plot, Ploog did the page by page work and then Friedrich dialogued based on the art.

It was a collaboration. It would be like giving the rights to Captain America and ignoring Kirby.

That's always been my feeling with this case as well. I believe that no writer who does not draw can create a comic character on their own.

WetRats

David_D said:

That's always been my feeling with this case as well. I believe that no writer who does not draw can create a comic character on their own.

Gotta quibble.

Michael Chabon definitely created The Escapist.

nweathington

SolitaireRose said:

This is one of those cases where, while I am a HUGE advocate for creator's rights, I want Marvel to win. Why? Friedrich didn't create Ghost Rider, at least not alone. Marvel already had the name and a western character, Goodman said they should update it, Roy Thomas and Mike Ploog laid out the visual and the general theme of the book and Friedrich wrote the first issue "Marvel style", which meant he have Ploog a rough outline plot, Ploog did the page by page work and then Friedrich dialogued based on the art.

It was a collaboration. It would be like giving the rights to Captain America and ignoring Kirby.

I'm right there with you.

Here’s what Mike Ploog said about it in the Modern Masters book: “The flaming skull. That was the big area of dispute. Who thought of the flaming skull? To be honest with you, I can’t remember. What else were you going to do with him? You couldn’t put a helmet on him, so it had to be a flaming skull. As far as his costume went, it was part of the old Ghost Rider’s costume with the western panel front. The stripes down the arms and legs were mostly so I could make the character as black as I possibly could and still keep track of his body. It was the easiest way to design him.

“I just love Gary as a person. He drove me nuts sometimes because he’d send me the outline of the story, and I’d do the story. When it came back, it would be a totally different story! He must sit down and have everything laid out in front of him and just start writing. He’d fill the panels full of descriptions. I would read it later and I’d think, “Where the hell did that come from?” But it all worked.”

David_D

WetRats said:

David_D said:

That's always been my feeling with this case as well. I believe that no writer who does not draw can create a comic character on their own.

Gotta quibble.

Michael Chabon definitely created The Escapist.

Sure. But he was a prose character that later got adapted into comics. But the origin of the character was in prose. Just as Stevenson created the prose characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even if they later have appeared in many comics.

Ghost Rider was introduced to the world in comics, and thus had (at least) two daddies. Had Friedrich introduced Ghost Rider to us as a fully realized character in prose, with vivid descriptions of his look, then I would consider him the sole creator, and the later artists adaptors of his creation.

Torchsong

David_D said:

That's always been my feeling with this case as well. I believe that no writer who does not draw can create a comic character on their own.

They can, but like you said in your post just above - there has to be two daddies. I communicate to Steve (the artist on Thugs) what I have in mind for a character - how they look, how they behave, what they're motivated by, dialogue, etc. We're both creators of these characters.

On my current project, I paid for the rights from the artist to avoid this very conundrum. Because we're friends, I won't stop him from promoting himself as the person who drew the originals of these characters, but ultimately I created them and I have the paper (and cashed check stubs) to prove it.

I'll need to go back and read my Titans Companion (unless Mr. Weathington has his handy!) but I seem to recall a page or two talking about the three unique characters Wolfman and Perez dreamed up for New Teen Titans (Starfire, Raven and Cyborg). Goes back to the "two daddies" case - Wolfman dreamed them up (IIRC) but it was Perez who truly brought them to life on the page, so who do you credit?

nweathington

David_D said:

WetRats said:

David_D said:

That's always been my feeling with this case as well. I believe that no writer who does not draw can create a comic character on their own.

Gotta quibble.

Michael Chabon definitely created The Escapist.

Sure. But he was a prose character that later got adapted into comics. But the origin of the character was in prose. Just as Stevenson created the prose characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even if they later have appeared in many comics.

Ghost Rider was introduced to the world in comics, and thus had (at least) two daddies. Had Friedrich introduced Ghost Rider to us as a fully realized character in prose, with vivid descriptions of his look, then I would consider him the sole creator, and the later artists adaptors of his creation.

There are cases where the writer does actually design the characters before an artist is brought in. Grant Morrison has done that on more than one occasion. Arnold Drake supposedly did that once or twice as well.

WetRats

David_D said:

WetRats said:

David_D said:

That's always been my feeling with this case as well. I believe that no writer who does not draw can create a comic character on their own.

Gotta quibble.

Michael Chabon definitely created The Escapist.

Sure. But he was a prose character that later got adapted into comics. But the origin of the character was in prose. Just as Stevenson created the prose characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even if they later have appeared in many comics.

Ghost Rider was introduced to the world in comics, and thus had (at least) two daddies. Had Friedrich introduced Ghost Rider to us as a fully realized character in prose, with vivid descriptions of his look, then I would consider him the sole creator, and the later artists adaptors of his creation.

I was mostly having fun challenging your statement.

The Escapist is a comics character who was created by prose characters who were created by a living author.

He does have two daddies, Kavalier & Clay, though both of them have a single daddy.

David_D

Good points being made all around.

For clarity- I am not talking about ownership of the IP, or what the negotiated ahead of time (or litigated after the fact) 'created by' credit is. I mean who *I* consider the creator of the character. And personally, I feel that no matter who much you can describe something, if it is comics and if you can't draw it yourself or make the art that introduces that character, then to me, that character will always be co-created by the person who was able to 'bring it to life'. For better and worse, comics will always be a medium of collaboration for a script writer. They will always be one of the parents, not a sole parent.

David_D

WetRats said:

David_D said:

WetRats said:

David_D said:

That's always been my feeling with this case as well. I believe that no writer who does not draw can create a comic character on their own.

Gotta quibble.

Michael Chabon definitely created The Escapist.

Sure. But he was a prose character that later got adapted into comics. But the origin of the character was in prose. Just as Stevenson created the prose characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even if they later have appeared in many comics.

Ghost Rider was introduced to the world in comics, and thus had (at least) two daddies. Had Friedrich introduced Ghost Rider to us as a fully realized character in prose, with vivid descriptions of his look, then I would consider him the sole creator, and the later artists adaptors of his creation.

I was mostly having fun challenging your statement.

The Escapist is a comics character who was created by prose characters who were created by a living author.

He does have two daddies, Kavalier & Clay, though both of them have a single daddy.

And to double-dog-quibble, I would say Escapist is not actually a comics character, even though that is what he was described to be in the novel. He's still a character in the novel.

In the same way that, say, the character that Barton Fink is writing about is not a character in a novel. Rather, it's a character in a movie about a guy writing a novel.

(And so am I)

nweathington

David_D said:

Good points being made all around.

For clarity- I am not talking about ownership of the IP, or what the negotiated ahead of time (or litigated after the fact) 'created by' credit is. I mean who *I* consider the creator of the character. And personally, I feel that no matter who much you can describe something, if it is comics and if you can't draw it yourself or make the art that introduces that character, then to me, that character will always be co-created by the person who was able to 'bring it to life'. For better and worse, comics will always be a medium of collaboration for a script writer. They will always be one of the parents, not a sole parent.

That’s the tricky part about creatorship in comics. In the case of Morrison creating The Invisibles, where he had not just an authorial vision, but a visual definition of those characters set down, it's very hard to say just how much the penciler actually contributed to the creation of those characters.

Or how about something like Fables? Lan Medina’s work on the first arc was published before Mark Buckingham’s work on the second arc, but they were working on their respective stories simultaneously based off of Bill’s (a fine artist himself) character sketches, maps, and building designs. Does anyone really consider Lan Medina a co-creator of Fables? Bucky has since gone on to contribute a great deal to the series, not just in designs, but in plotting. But he didn’t draw the first arc. Is he still a co-creator of the series? I think he certainly has more claim to the title than Medina. How many times have you heard, “I tried the first collection of Fables, but I didn’t really get into it. Then I read the second collection and I was hooked.” Is the second arc where the characters are really “brought to life”?

Then you look at many of the Golden Age characters, where very few of them had any kind of distinguishable personality. Only their costumes and powers set them apart from one another. Take Aquaman, for instance. Mort Weisinger came up with the name Aquaman and told Paul Norris to come back with a story. Weisinger then scripted the story, but he didn’t give Aquaman any real personality. Everything in that story that distinguished the character came from Paul Norris. It wasn’t until Bob Haney took over the writing in the ’50s that Aquaman was given any kind of personality quirks that set him apart from other heroes of the time and which made him the character we recognize today. Personally, I think Bob Haney has a greater claim to co-creatorship of Aquaman than Weisinger. Weisinger may have written the first few stories, but Haney “brought Aquaman to life.”

So where do you draw the line?

WetRats

David_D said:

WetRats said:

David_D said:

WetRats said:

David_D said:

That's always been my feeling with this case as well. I believe that no writer who does not draw can create a comic character on their own.

Gotta quibble.

Michael Chabon definitely created The Escapist.

Sure. But he was a prose character that later got adapted into comics. But the origin of the character was in prose. Just as Stevenson created the prose characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even if they later have appeared in many comics.

Ghost Rider was introduced to the world in comics, and thus had (at least) two daddies. Had Friedrich introduced Ghost Rider to us as a fully realized character in prose, with vivid descriptions of his look, then I would consider him the sole creator, and the later artists adaptors of his creation.

I was mostly having fun challenging your statement.

The Escapist is a comics character who was created by prose characters who were created by a living author.

He does have two daddies, Kavalier & Clay, though both of them have a single daddy.

And to double-dog-quibble, I would say Escapist is not actually a comics character, even though that is what he was described to be in the novel. He's still a character in the novel.

In the same way that, say, the character that Barton Fink is writing about is not a character in a novel. Rather, it's a character in a movie about a guy writing a novel.

(And so am I)

Escapist wasn't a character in the novel, he was an Intellectual Property.

But in the big stack of Escapist comics, he is a character. (And sometimes an IP as well)

SolitaireRose

nweathington said:

So where do you draw the line?

In the case of Fables and the Invisibles, there are clear creator ownerships agreed to by all parties. For a LOT of Golden Age stuff after the initial bloom, editors would tell people to do certain things. "Give me a knock off of the Sub Marine, only not so weird and angry" and you get Aquaman. Or "We need a new patriotic hero" and you get Spirit of 76, and so on.

I'll use Spider-Man: The Company owns it. Why? Stan asked for new super-heroes. Kirby brought a rejected idea he and Joe Simon had pitched a few places. Stan changed a bunch of stuff about it, sent Kirby to draw it, didn't like what Kirby did, brought in Ditko, made it the "Twist ending" type story they did together and went from there. It was an assignment from an editor, who made so many changes that it didn't resemble the original idea any more.

On the other hand, Marv Wolfman did Nova stories in fanzines, brought the idea to Marvel, pitched it, wrote it and should be considered the creator. Of Marvel's knockoff of Green Lantern.

I KEED, I KEED.

Is Kirby the creator of the Fantastic Four? Is Stan Lee? Is Martin Goodman, who wanted a super-hero team, and told them to have Golden Age characters in it to keep those odl copyrights?

How about the Marvel version of Captain Marvel? Goodman knew the copyright of the name was up for grabs, told Stan to rush it into print, Stan assigned it to Roy Thomas and Gene Colon, and Thomas used the Kree, which were created by Lee and Kirby...

That's why it's so messy. Unless you have clear creator ownership, you'll get things like this. That's why most comics creators "hold back" new creations until they are working for themselves.

Chuck_Melville

SolitaireRose said:

How about the Marvel version of Captain Marvel? Goodman knew the copyright of the name was up for grabs, told Stan to rush it into print, Stan assigned it to Roy Thomas and Gene Colon, and Thomas used the Kree, which were created by Lee and Kirby...

Little correction here -- Roy Thomas didn't have much to do with Captain Marvel until about issue 17 (except, perhaps, in an assistant-editorial capacity). The first few stories were written by Stan himself before he handed it off to Gary Friedrich and Arnold Drake. And it was Gene Colan, not Colon; you might have been thinking of Ernie Colon.

nweathington

SolitaireRose said:

nweathington said:

So where do you draw the line?

In the case of Fables and the Invisibles, there are clear creator ownerships agreed to by all parties. For a LOT of Golden Age stuff after the initial bloom, editors would tell people to do certain things. "Give me a knock off of the Sub Marine, only not so weird and angry" and you get Aquaman. Or "We need a new patriotic hero" and you get Spirit of 76, and so on.

I'll use Spider-Man: The Company owns it. Why? Stan asked for new super-heroes. Kirby brought a rejected idea he and Joe Simon had pitched a few places. Stan changed a bunch of stuff about it, sent Kirby to draw it, didn't like what Kirby did, brought in Ditko, made it the "Twist ending" type story they did together and went from there. It was an assignment from an editor, who made so many changes that it didn't resemble the original idea any more.

On the other hand, Marv Wolfman did Nova stories in fanzines, brought the idea to Marvel, pitched it, wrote it and should be considered the creator. Of Marvel's knockoff of Green Lantern.

I KEED, I KEED.

Is Kirby the creator of the Fantastic Four? Is Stan Lee? Is Martin Goodman, who wanted a super-hero team, and told them to have Golden Age characters in it to keep those odl copyrights?

How about the Marvel version of Captain Marvel? Goodman knew the copyright of the name was up for grabs, told Stan to rush it into print, Stan assigned it to Roy Thomas and Gene Colon, and Thomas used the Kree, which were created by Lee and Kirby...

That's why it's so messy. Unless you have clear creator ownership, you'll get things like this. That's why most comics creators "hold back" new creations until they are working for themselves.

I wasn't speaking to legal ownership—which can be messy enough to determine at times, but which is defined for good or ill in whatever legal contracts are signed—or even credit lines necessarily, but rather addressing David’s definition of creator, which is I think a more interesting question. Who is responsible for bringing a character to life? Not physical being (or in this case a two-dimensional representation of a physical being), but life.

I’ve gotten into Prophet fairly recently, the Brandon Graham-written run. We all know Rob Liefeld created the character, but I have no interest at all in that character. I have no interest in reading any issues of Prophet prior to issue #21 of the current run. Perhaps I’m taking this a bit more metaphorically than David meant it to be, but going by his idea of who the creator(s) is/are, Brandon Graham, Simon Roy, and Farel Dalrymple are the creators of the Prophet character that I care about, not Rob Liefeld. Liefeld gave them free rein to do pretty much whatever they want. There’s little to no oversight on Liefeld’s part. It’s still his character in terms of the law, but in every creative sense this version of the character “belongs”—at least temporarily—to Graham and company.

So the discussion I’d really like to have isn’t, “Who legally owns Ghost Rider, Marvel or Mike Friedrich?” The answer to that is a simple “Marvel.” The discussion I’d prefer to have is, “Who brought Ghost Rider to life?”

Torchsong

nweathington said:

So the discussion I’d really like to have isn’t, “Who legally owns Ghost Rider, Marvel or Mike Friedrich?” The answer to that is a simple “Marvel.” The discussion I’d prefer to have is, “Who brought Ghost Rider to life?”

And here there be crazy discussions! :)

Examples:
- Lobo. First appearance in Omega Men, created by Marv Wolfman. Fans of the current Lobo - the main man, the bastich from beyond, etc. - would spit out their coffee if they saw what he originally looked like, and how he behaved. So while Wolfman created the character, did he truly "bring him to life?"

- Batman. Yes, Bob Kane created him. But my cockamamie theory on Batman (mainly due to his longevity) is that the creator who brought him to life is the creator who was on the book when you first started reading him. To some its Neal Adams. To me it's Jim Aparo. To others it's Frank Miller.

Just a couple off the top of my head.

mwhitt80

Torchsong said:

Examples:
- Lobo. First appearance in Omega Men, created by Marv Wolfman. Fans of the current Lobo - the main man, the bastich from beyond, etc. - would spit out their coffee if they saw what he originally looked like, and how he behaved. So while Wolfman created the character, did he truly "bring him to life?"

You mean the clown suit doesn't do it for you? Omega Men Lobo really has nothing in common with the Grant/Giffen Lobo, our main man.

Chuck_Melville

Torchsong said:

nweathington said:

So the discussion I’d really like to have isn’t, “Who legally owns Ghost Rider, Marvel or Mike Friedrich?” The answer to that is a simple “Marvel.” The discussion I’d prefer to have is, “Who brought Ghost Rider to life?”

And here there be crazy discussions! :)

Examples:
- Lobo. First appearance in Omega Men, created by Marv Wolfman. Fans of the current Lobo - the main man, the bastich from beyond, etc. - would spit out their coffee if they saw what he originally looked like, and how he behaved. So while Wolfman created the character, did he truly "bring him to life?"

- Batman. Yes, Bob Kane created him. But my cockamamie theory on Batman (mainly due to his longevity) is that the creator who brought him to life is the creator who was on the book when you first started reading him. To some its Neal Adams. To me it's Jim Aparo. To others it's Frank Miller.

Just a couple off the top of my head.

And, actually, neither of those are quite right -- Lobo was co-created by Wolfman and Keith Giffen together... and Batman, as many have already noted, was co-created by Bob Kane and the officially uncredited Bill Finger. (And to me, it was Finger who actually gave the character his basic 'character'; Kane only gave him a design.)

Torchsong

Aaand...we're both wrong...Lobo was created by Roger Slifer and Giffen. Apparently Wolvie had nothing to do with it.

Chuck_Melville

Torchsong said:

Aaand...we're both wrong...Lobo was created by Roger Slifer and Giffen. Apparently Wolvie had nothing to do with it.

D'oh!! You're right -- and I knew that!! I hang my head in shame.

nweathington

And here I thought Lobo was created by Don Arneson and Tony Tallarico. ;)


BTW, Lobo was the first black character to have his own comic.

nweathington

Seriously though, the Lobo that appeared in Omega Men was somewhat forgetable. It wasn't until his guest-appearance in JLI where he was treated more humorously that he took off. The Lobo in JLI and LEGION/REBELS was much closer to the completely over the top version that was brought out in his mini-series.

So at what point was he brought to life? The core concept of the character was there from the beginning. Yes, he was a bit more evil and a bit less barroom brawler than he would later become, but he wasn’t all that far removed from where he is now. Silfer scripted those early issues, but Giffen plotted and penciled them, and Lobo originated as his idea. And Giffen is the one who brought him into JLI. Giffen gave him that terrible costume he wore at first, but he also gave him the biker look which Simon Bisley later expanded on. And Alan Grant scripted the mini-series that brought Lobo to über-popularity.

So while Lobo is credited to Roger Silfer and Keith Giffen, for me the credit should be more like, “Lobo created by Keith Giffen (with Alan Grant, Roger Silfer, and Simon Bisley).”