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Over at BC Mark Seifert has linked to a copy of the check which DC Comics gave to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in payment for the rights to Superman. Mark also mentions the first legal case involving Superman where DC sued Fox Comics over a character called Wonder Man. The wonderfully named judge August Hand (in the comics he would be a super villain) wrote in his judgement that:
Defendants attempt to avoid the copyright by the old argument that various attributes of “Superman” find prototypes or analogues among the heroes of literature and mythology. But if the author of “Superman” has portrayed a comic Hercules, yet if his production involves more than the presentation of a general type he may copyright it and say of it: “A poor thing but mine own.” Perhaps the periodicals of the complainant are foolish rather than comic, but they embody an original arrangement of incidents and a pictorial and literary form which preclude the contention that Bruns was not copying the antics of “superman” portrayed in “Action Comics”. We think it plain that the defendants have used more than general types and ideas and have appropriated the pictorial and literary details embodied in the complainant’s copyrights.
Which is rather nice description of Superman’s originality, even if the judge felt his comics were “foolish rather than comic”.
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