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As a follow-up to yesterday’s post concerning the partial reversion of copyright pertaining to Superman to the family of Jerome Siegel, I strongly recommend these excellent articles (well, one’s actually an FAQ) on the legal ramifications of the decision, courtesy of lawyer Jeff Trexler, who discusses the many complications arising from the ruling:

Even in regard to the Siegels' interest in Action Comics #1 and works derived from it, the Siegel heirs are at best co-owners with DC (the Shuster situation is explained in brief here). Each holder of copyright interest must account to any others for any profits gained from exploiting the copyright, and no partial copyright holder can transfer exclusive rights without consent of the others holding a copyright interest. In addition, as the court rules (pp. 63-66), under the law the Siegel heirs regain an interest only in domestic—not foreign—profits.

But wait, there's more! A number of elements in the Superman "universe" (see pp. 13-14) did not appear in the first issue of Action Comics. Kryptonite, Lex Luthor, Metropolis, Beppo the Super-Monkey—none of these appear in the issue. Superman could not fly, nor does he have super-breath, heat vision or a Fortress of Solitude with an interplanetary zoo and the Bottle City of Kandor. The extent to which the Siegels' profit distribution will be affected by subsequent additions to the original material is yet unresolved.

(Also, if you scroll down, the following link provides an answer to another question I’d been wondering about- namely, what about Joe Shuster?)

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The bad: For the last couple of days, my stomach has felt as though I'd swallowed a clenched fist. I suspect that this is largely due to worrying about a friend of mine (who I'll be seeing tonight, with any luck); please GODS, let it not be food poisoning again. As it is, I've had to cancel plans with two people (one of whom I wasn't able to contact in advance), which sucks.

The good: kittens! Boogie's fostering a young mother cat again: this one is small and black, with four two-week-old kittens in tow. We've tentatively named them Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, and Io (names to be assigned to specific individuals as personality traits emerge; they're barely at the eye-opening stage so far); the mother's name is Juno- an apropos choice, as the puncture marks on my apartment mate's hand can attest. (Juno's still a bit gunshy about letting humans near her children.)

Elfquest online

To my great surprise and pleasure, Wendy and Richard Pini are making the entire run of Elfquest available online. If you haven't come across Elfquest before, I highly recommend it; gorgeous art, a fascinating story, and a rivalry (Cutter/Rayek) that's one of the slashiest potential pairings of all time.

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Some days, you just need to wear the Melancholy Ninja T-shirt.