The ruling comes as the result of comics historian Denis Kitchen providing evidence (first mentioned as a comment in response to a blog post at comic site Newsarama.com) that more work than just the original Superman story was created prior to DC's purchase of publication rights to the character. While Judge Stephen Larson didn't award the Siegel heirs everything they were hoping for, a significant chunk of the character's initial appearances have now shifted to their favor:

At the conclusion of this final installment regarding the publication history of and the rights to the iconic comic book superhero Superman, the Court finds that plaintiffs have successfully recaptured (and are co-owners of) the rights to the following works: (1) Action Comics No. 1 (subject to the limitations set forth in the Court's previous Order); (2) Action Comics No. 4; (3) Superman No. 1, pages three through six, and (4) the initial two weeks' worth of Superman daily newspaper strips. Ownership in the remainder of the Superman material at issue that was published from 1938 to 1943 remains solely with defendants.

Whether this impacts any other cases surrounding the rights to the Man of Steel and his universe remains to be seen.

Blog@ post gets Siegels more Superman [Blog@Newsarama.com]

In an announcement, the California Court presiding over the ongoing Siegel/DC/Warners Superman case declared that both parties come to an agreement of an impartial expert who can help explain the complicated issues surrounding the case following concerns over the arguments put forward by both sides in the recent trial:

The Court envisions that the Court-appointed special master/expert will not only submit a report in advance of trial, be subject to being deposed prior to trial, and proffer testimony at trial on the issues in question, but will also, in preparing for such tasks, be afforded the authority to appoint experts and other specials to assist him or her in performing those duties.

One of the reasons said expert is needed? Probably to help control such comments as those offered by Siegel family attorney Marc Toberoff, who yesterday unequivocally said

...in 2013, the Siegels, along with the estate of Joe Shuster, will own the entire original copyright to Superman...

The problem being, according to the very legal decision Toberoff was responding to with those comments, that's not necessarily the case:

Although it is true that, should the Shuster estate be successful in terminating the grant to the copyright in Action Comics No. 1, then at that point in time plaintiffs and the Shuster estate, not DC Comics, would hold the entirity of the copyright published in that comic book and would sit, assuming common representation, in much the same position Warner Bros. was said to have sat at the beginning of the negotiations over the Superman film agreement... The problem with this line of reasoning, however, lies in its speculative nature... It is by no means a foregone conclusion that the Shuster estate will be successful in terminating the grant to the Superman material published in Action Comics No. 1.

Never mind the court. We need our own Superman legal expert just to understand who owns what part of the character. Can't we all just agree that Kal-El would want everyone to sort this out without needing to get lawyers involved, anyway?

Judge calls for special master in Superman case [Blog@Newsarama.com]

Superman v. Wonderman: Hoping to capitalize on the success of Superman, Fox Publications commissioned Will Eisner to create a similar hero. Thus, both Wonderman and a lawsuit were born.
Wonderman’s Story: Fred Carson was a mild-mannered engineer who met a yogi while visiting Tibet. The yogi gave Carson a magic ring, which endowed him with super strength, super speed, invulnerability, and the ability to leap tall buildings in a single… well, you get it.
Outcome: The case found its way to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The opinion, written by August Hand, carefully compared the panels in Wonder Man’s first issue to those in Action Comics #1-11. Fox Publishing tried to get around the comics’ obvious similarities by arguing that proto-Supermen went all the way back to the legends of Hercules, but the court didn’t buy it. They ruled that Eisner’s comic went beyond use of the same archetype and enjoined Wonderman after only a single issue.

Superman v. Master Man: Following its vanquish of Wonderman, National Comics (which would later become DC), went after Master Man, the superpowered lead of Fawcett’s Master Comics.
Master Man’s Story: A weak young boy receives special vitamins from a wise doctor. These vitamins make the boy “Stronger than untamed horses! Swifter than raging winds! Braver than mighty lions! Wiser than wisdom, kind as Galahad is Master Man, the wonder of the world!” This strongest man in the world had no secret identity and couldn’t fly, but did have a fortress on the highest peak on Earth, where he looked for trouble through his giant telescope.
Outcome: Fawcett didn’t bother to take Master Man to court. Under the threat of a lawsuit, it pulled Master Man, who had appeared in six issues.

Superman v. Captain Marvel: When Captain Marvel’s books began outselling Superman’s, National Comics took aim at Fawcett once more.
Captain Marvel’s Story: Twelve-year-old Billy Batson is taken to the wizard Shazam, who gives him the ability to turn into Captain Marvel. Marvel has the powers of wisdom, strength, stamina, invulnerability, and speed. But some similarities between Marvel and Superman, such as the power of flight and a bald nemesis, appeared in Fawcett’s Whiz Comics before appearing in National’s Action Comics.
Outcome: Since Captain Marvel was Fawcett’s flagship comic, the publisher decided to fight National this time around. This suit also made it to the Second Circuit where Learned Hand (Augustus’ more famous cousin) ruled that Fawcett’s plagiarism of the Superman comics was “deliberate and unabashed.” Fawcett stopped publishing Captain Marvel, and soon dropped all its superhero properties. Captain Marvel would eventually be resurrected in DC’s Shazam!, finding a home with the same publisher who’d gotten him shelved decades before. This didn’t mend fences between the two heroes, who have continued to battle each other in the DC Universe.

Superman v. The Greatest American Hero: After the success of Superman: The Movie and Superman II, the vision of William Katt sailing through the skies in a red suit and cape proved too much for Warner Bros. and DC, who quickly filed an injunction against ABC’s klutzy superhero.
The Greatest American Hero’s Story: An alien gives schoolteacher Ralph Hinkley a superpowered suit in order to protect the people of Earth. The suit gives Ralph a mess of powers — flight, super strength, invisibility, telekinesis, super speed — but not the knowledge to use them properly.
Outcome: In 1983, another Second Circuit decision found that the TV hero didn’t infringe on the Superman story. Though depictions of Superman and Hinckley bore some similarities, the reluctant and inept hero with powers thrust upon him was a far cry from the bold and confident Kryptonian. And though many of the show’s special effects echoed those in the Superman films, they did so in parody rather than plagiarism. By the time of the ruling, the show had run its course, but it left ABC free to sell the character’s comic book and movie rights.

Superman v. Superboy: Superman creator Jerry Siegel submitted a proposal to DC Comics for a series of adventures about Clark Kent’s youth. DC rejected the proposal, but later printed Superboy while Siegel was serving in the US Army. When Siegel’s heirs attempted to terminate Superboy’s copyright, DC and Time Warner claimed that Superboy was merely Superman as a young man, and not a distinct character (and thus not copyrightable as distinct from Superman), giving DC the legal right to publish books featuring Superboy with or without Siegel’s permission.
Superboy’s Story: The original Superboy follows the adventures of the young Superman growing up in Smallville. He wears glasses as his alter ego Clark Kent and the iconic suit as Superman. Like his grownup self, he has superpowers and battles Lex Luthor, and he eventually travels to the 30th century to join the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Outcome: In 1948, a referee in a dispute between Siegel and DC found that Superboy was a distinct entity from Superman, and that DC had published the comic illegally. The findings were vacated in a settlement between DC and Siegel, but in 2006, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the referee, granting termination rights to Siegel’s heirs. However, the court later vacated that ruling, granting Warner and DC’s motion for reconsideration. Although Siegel’s family has recaptured some rights to Superman, the Superboy question remains undecided.

Gladiator v. Superman: Superman was nearly the victim of a lawsuit himself. In 1930, eight years before the first appearance of Superman, author Philip Wylie published Gladiator, a novel about a man cursed with superhuman strength.
Gladiator’s Story: Scientist Abednego Danner discovers a formula that cures the innate weakness in animals. He injects his pregnant wife with the serum, producing Hugo, a super strong and bulletproof child. Like Superman, Hugo grows up in rural America and his strength is explained in insectoid terms: he has the strength of the ant and a grasshopper’s ability to leap great distances. But unlike Superman, Hugo Danner has trouble finding an outlet for his inhuman abilities, leaving him in a state of perpetual frustration.
Outcome: In 1940, Wylie threatened to sue Siegel and National comics for plagiarism of his work. Although nothing ever came of the suit, Siegel did sign an affidavit claiming that Gladiator was not an inspiration for Superman, although Siegel had reviewed Wylie’s novel in a 1932 issue of his fanzine, Science Fiction.

The Greatest American Hero video via Reddit.

Marc Tyler Nobleman, author of Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman, sheds light on what really happened to Siegel:

[Gerard Jones' non-fiction history of comics] Men of Tomorrow was the first published source to address the tragic end of Michael Siegel — but the book got a crucial detail wrong. Siegel did die during a robbery of his store, but not by gunshot. His heart failed. No wounds were on his body. A key plot device in Brad Meltzer's novel The Book of Lies (which I have not read) is the missing gun that allegedly killed Michael Siegel — but none of the four reports invoke the possibility of murder. According to the police report, "At no time were any blows struck or any weapons used."

And if you don't believe him, he's got the reports to prove it. While this doesn't change the heart of the creation story (Siegel still created a character who could have saved his father, after all), it does ruin the "torn from the headlines" aspect of Meltzer's new novel that, in part, centers around a search for the gun that killed Jerry Siegel's father. But then again, the novel is called The Book Of Lies.

The First Boys Of Steel Tour [Noblemania]

The discovery of this alternate Superman was made by Jeff Trexler as he worked his way through the masses of documents made public by the current lawsuit between Siegel's heirs and DC Comics over who owns Superman:

As Jerry Siegel would later explain, in 1934 Joe Shuster had become discouraged with the Superman newspaper strip and decided to let it go. His departure prompted Siegel to look for a replacement, so he sent an inquiry to [then Buck Rogers artist, Russell] Keaton. Which we have in these rediscovered documents in Siegel’s follow-up letter outlining the origin story and touting the prospect of selling the strip to the Bell Syndicate.

Siegel's letter to Keaton allows us to see the Superman that could have been. From his introductory notes:

We begin with "Superman" as a child and follow his history all the way up to maturity when the real story begins: of his adventures in helping those in need... The story of his youth will run at great length before we detail his adventures as an adult. Early, he will find that his great strength, instead of making friends for him, cause people to fear him. Mothers will not permit their children to associate with him, he will be hated in school sports because he never loses, etc. We can weave a very human story about him.

Perhaps most interesting is the entirely different origin for the character:

In his laboratory, the last man on earth worked furiously. He had only a few moments left. Giant cataclysms were shaking the reeling planet, destroying making. It was in its last days, dying... The last man placed his infant babe within a small time-machine he had completed, launching it as the laboratory walls caved-in upon him. The time vehicle flashed back thru the centuries, alighting in the primitive year, 1935AD.

So much for "strange visitor from another planet." If this version of the character had been the first to see print - and in a newspaper, as opposed to a comic book - you have to wonder if he would have been so successful, and whether we would've had more time travel stories as a result. What if, as they say...

Superman's Hidden History: The Other "First" Artist [Newsarama]

Going through the correspondence between DC (then called Detective Comics, Inc.) and Superman creator Jerry Siegel from 1939 to 1947 - made public as part of the ongoing lawsuit between Siegel's heirs and DC over the ownership of the character - comics historian Jeff Trexler uncovered some eye-opening remarks from the editors in charge of the Man of Tomorrow:

As the papers reveal, early in the history of Superman, co-creator and artist Joe Shuster was warned to tone down his depiction of Lois Lane by his editor Whitney Ellsworth, and make her less sexy. It was a warning that the artist chose to ignore for months, apparently, causing Ellsworth made an argument that seems shocking even almost seventy years later. Shuster’s Lois was so “unpleasantly sexy” that her pulchritude made her seem a bit too heavy–a problem for which Ellsworth and Murray Boltinoff had an easy solution:
"[W]hy it is necessary to shade Lois’ breasts and the underside of her tummy with vertical pen-lines we can’t understand. She looks pregnant. Murray suggests that you arrange for her to have an abortion or the baby and get it over with so that her figure can return to something a little more like the tasty dish she is supposed to be."

Perhaps more surprising was their take on Superman himself:

Another alleged problem with Shuster’s artwork is that it made Superman look gay — or in the period slang of Ellsworth’s January 22, 1940, letter, “lah-de-dah” with a “nice fat bottom.”

(The letter in question is worth checking out for yourself in Trexler's online archive of the documents; Ellsworth doesn't just mention Superman's "nice fat bottom," but makes a point of saying that he likes it, even though the artwork in general isn't up to standard.)

Whether the documents actually prove either side's case in the ongoing ownership battle is unclear - certainly, the creators' bending to DC's numerous editorial complaints show that the authorship of the characters as we've come to know them wasn't solely Siegel and Shuster's - they definitely show a previously unknown history for one of the most famous fictional characters in the world. And maybe a more interesting one, as well.

Hidden History: Lois' 'Abortion' and Superman too Gay? [Newsarama]

The story, entitled "The Reign Of The Superman", is reprinted from the third issue of the wonderfully-named Science Fiction: The Vanguard of Future Civilization, a zine self-produced by the future creators of the Man of Steel (Interestingly enough, when DC's Superman returned from his "death" in the early '90s, he did so in a storyline titled "Reign Of The Supermen"; unusual coincidence or knowing reference?) five years before the more familiar version of the character appeared in the first issue of Action Comics. This Superman, however, is somewhat less humble than the one we all know and love, as he proves with this expositionary introduction:

I can do four things that no one else on the planet can emulate. They are: intercept interplanetary messages, read the mind of anyone I desire, by sheer mental concentration force ideas into people's heads, and throw my vision to any spot in the universe.

While the story itself has little to do with the character that has come to be known by the same name, it's a fascinating view into a different course for popular culture's favorite alien son.

Reign Of The Superman via SF Signal