Speaking of the Siegel litigation and Judge Larson’s decision to resign his judgeship, more details are out on the Superman case calendar between now and November 2nd.

• The judge has offered to help mediate the case. The Siegels have agreed to go forward with that; the lawyers for DC, Time Warner & Warner Bros. are consulting with their clients.
• Certain issues will be reviewed in connect with motions for reconsideration, with that hearing date scheduled for October 19.
• The parties could not agree on a special master, so the judge is providing a list of approved individuals, along with a description of the special master’s duties and responsibilities should one be appointed.

Yesterday the first issue of Superman: Secret Origin appeared in comic shops, and I’ve been asked whether about its legal ramifications in regard to DC’s claim on the ownership of Superboy.

As I describe in more detail in these two posts, the question of who owns Superboy has undergone some interesting twists and turns. At one point a judge ruled that the Siegels owned the character, but then Judge Stephen Larson came on the case and granted DC’s motion to reconsider the earlier judgment.

For reasons I explain in more detail here, Judge Larson’s opinion could have led DC to conclude that the worst it could end up with is co-ownership of the Superboy character. That changes the copyright landscape considerably. If the Siegels owned the character, DC arguably couldn’t publish new Superboy stories without the Siegels’ approval, but if Superboy is a joint work now co-owned by the Siegels and DC, both sides would have the right to publish new Superboy stories–though they’d have the share the profits and the Siegels would have to be mindful of trademark concerns.

There’s actually a fun historic precedent in this regard. As Michael Patrick Hearn relates in The Annotated Wizard of Oz, the original publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was registered as a joint work co-owned by its author, L. Frank Baum, and illustrator, W.W. Denslow. After the pair had a falling out, Baum and Denslow went on to publish their own separate individual Oz stories. These competing versions of Oz even extended to the Sunday comics section, with “Denslow’s Scarecrow and Tin-Man” a rival to Baum’s “Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz.”

Precisely who owns what percentage of Superboy has yet to be determined. Judge Larson had prioritized the Superman litigation, with the Superboy trial scheduled to follow the resolution of the Superman case. Now that Judge Larson has decided to leave the bench to tend to his seven children, we’ll have to wait to see if Superboy gets another legal retcon.

While the Kirby estate’s copyright termination filing is justifiably making headlines, the Superman case has some news of its own.

First, the parties have reported the results of their latest court-ordered mediation. In short, the case goes on:

In response to the Court’s Order of August 20,2009, the parties scheduled and conducted a day-long mediation in front of Hon. Daniel Weinstein (Ret.) on September 11,2009, which was the only date Judge Weinstein had available for in-person mediation within the Court-ordered period. The parties exchanged written settlement proposals prior to that mediation, and continued their settlement discussions in the week following the mediation, but were unable to settle these cases.

The fact that the case is continuing makes the next bit of legal news truly significant. The Hon. Stephen Larson, the judge in the Superman case, shocked the legal world by announcing his resignation, effective as of November 2, 2009. His stated reason: the judicial salary of $169,300 a year is not enough to support his seven children.

Larson had been pushing the case toward a settlement, and key issues remain unresolved. What Larson’s departure means for the case remains to be seen, but it could have a decided impact.

As I’ve noted before, the judge in the ongoing Superman and Superboy lawsuits has been using his decisions to push the parties toward a settlement. The decision awarding addition material to the Siegels was no exception–Judge Larson may have pushed DC by giving the Siegels Krypton, but he also pulled back from a broader ruling that would have given the Siegels the copyright in Luthor and other key material.

Whatever the implications for copyright and comics history, Judge Larson’s opinions serve as paradigmatic example of judging as case management, as each new major ruling reminds the parties that the court is likely to issue a verdict that will satisfy neither side.

Accordingly, Judge Larson’s latest order should not come as a surprise. Here’s the text of that August 20, 2009 order, including the name of the court-appointed mediator and the schedule for the next month:

In light of the Court’s rulings to date in these companion cases, which have narrowed the areas of dispute between the parties, the Court believes that it would be prudent at this juncture for the parties to once again engage in meaningful settlement talks.

Previously, the parties utilized the good services of their jointly chosen mediator, Judge Daniel Weinstein (Ret.). The Court has also been informed that former California Supreme Court Justice Edward A. Panelli has graciously agreed to provide his services as a mediator for the parties if they so choose. The parties may contact Justice Panelli at (415) ***-****.

Regardless of which mediator’s services the parties wish to utilize, the Court hereby ORDERS the parties to devote the next thirty (30) days to engaging in good faith efforts to settle their dispute in the Superman and Superboy litigation. At the conclusion of this period, on September 18, 2009, the parties are to file a joint report, outlining the efforts that they have taken in furtherance of settlement (without, of course, revealing any of the substance of those efforts).

If the parties have not settled these cases at that point, the Court ORDERS a Status Conference to take place on September 21, 2009, at 11:00 a.m. to set further dates for the remaining phase two accounting trial in the Superman litigation.

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Longtime readers of these posts on the Superman case may recall what happened after I posted the stripts & scripts from the previously unpublished 1934 collaboration between Jerry Siegel & Russell Keaton.

As Judge Stephen Larson recounts in a new opinion issued today (p.36), this post led the Siegels’ lawyer, Marc Toberoff, to contact pioneering publisher Denis Kitchen regarding Kitchen’s comment noting the existence of additional unpublished Siegel-Keaton material, and the correspondence led to the plaintiffs’ discovering a script for a Superman story that Siegel and Shuster would later adapt for Action Comics #4:

Plaintiffs have submitted declarations evidencing that the script in question was in the possession of Russell Keaton’s widow who turned it over, along with other materials, to the family’s literary and marketing agent, Denis Kitchen, in 1993. Mr. Kitchen thereafter on August 21, 2008, posted a comment in response to a blog story titled “Russell Keaton, Superman’s Fifth Beatle,” wherein he disclosed that, in addition to the subject of the story (which concerned the illustrated strips, but not the scripts, Siegel and Keaton had created concerning the version of Superman as someone from Earth’s future), “there’s LOTS more correspondence and scripts.” Plaintiffs’ counsel thereafter ran across Kitchen’s post while searching the Internet, and after contacting him obtained a copy of the script, which he then promptly produced.

As explained earlier, the discovery of this material led the Siegels to seek the copyright to additional Superman material beyond Action Comics #1:

According to Toberoff, the script he discovered due to the Newsarama post provides conclusive proof that other Superman material by Jerry Siegel should not be considered work for hire. The football story in Action #4 “was unquestionably recaptured” by the Siegels, he concludes, and it “gives rise to a strong inference” that the material in Action Comics #2-6 was also written earlier. Moreover, based on other evidence, Toberoff argues that the court should award the Siegels co-ownership of other Superman material published during a five-year termination window that ends on April 16, 1943, including the Superman dailies, Action Comics #7-61 and Superman #1-23.

Judge Stephen Larson has just issued his ruling on this claim, and while they didn’t get everything, the result is another notable victory for the plaintiffs: the Siegel heirs are now co-owners of the Superman material in Action Comics #4 as well as certain other key early pages & newspaper strips.

I’ll have more after I’ve read the entire ninety-nine page opinion. For those who can’t wait, here’s the conclusion:

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.

At the San Diego Comic Con Comics Arts Conference, Kim Munson presented material from her ongoing research on the landmark 1983 Comic Art Show at the Whitney Museum. Her slides from the panel offer a useful overview the event, which helped set the stage for comic art becoming a staple of major museum exhibits around the globe.

The judge presiding over the Siegel Superman trials has set December 1, 2009 as the start date for the apportionment phase, with a pre-trial hearing scheduled for November 9. But that doesn’t mean the case will be dormant until then.

Citing the difficulties evident in determining the fair market value of the Superman properties, the judge has provided for the appointment of a special master/court-appointed expert to issue a report before the trial. The parties have until July 31 to make a joint stipulation as to who this master/expert should be.

As the court indicates, the appointment of a special master is appropriate in cases that involve accounting issues and other complex matters that could be difficult for a judge to resolve effectively.

In other news, Variety reports a statement from the Siegels’ lawyer, Marc Toberoff. Besides conceding the fair market value issue was always going to be a difficult one to win, Toberoff states that this phase pales before the larger accounting issues and particularly the imminent reversion of the remaining 50% of the Superman copyright to the Shuster heir in 2013. In addition, Toberoff asserts that “the Court pointedly ruled that if Warner Bros. does not start production on another Superman film by 2011, the Siegels will be able to sue to recover their damages.”

As I noted earlier, claims by the parties in a case should be read with care. DC/Warner Bros. celebrated a clear victory, but the opinion was actually more nuanced–the judge did not so much pronounce the movie licenses as clear fair market value deals as conclude, with evident frustration, that he did have enough information to rule otherwise.

Similarly, while the judge does indeed note that the plaintiffs “plaintiffs could bring an accounting action at that time to recoup the damages then realized for the Superman film agreement’s failure to contain a reversion clause,” technically that’s no so much a formal ruling as dicta. Whether such a lawsuit would succeed or be cost effective remains an open question, as is evident from the judge’s discussion of the “challenged” state of the Superman property and the relatively limited value of a shared copyright.

The judge also hedges the assertion that the remainder of the Superman copyright will revert to the Shuster estate in 2013. While the potential is there for a Siegel-Shuster partnership of considerable value, the judge also notes that “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,” given the difficulty in “successfully navigating the formalistic and complex termination provisions in
the 1976 Copyright Act.”

As I indicated last night, the judge continues to exert pressure for a settlement in subtle but recognizable ways, but each side also continues to press its claims in what is at base an extremely complex set of circumstances. While the Siegels have an incentive to settle the case early to avoid the possibility of a judicially determined low valuation, they also have clear incentives not just to get judicial validation of their financial claim, but to use the appeals process to–at the very least–run out the clock until 2013. Likewise, Warner Bros. should be concerned that the next phase may not be lacking in data that the judge could use against it, even as it no doubt is equally convinced that an appeal could result in its favor.

If I had to make a prediction, I’d say that one thing is certain–anything could happen.

As noted last night, yesterday’s Siegel opinion contains a number of interesting points beyond the outcome. One that deserves its own post: its revelation concerning the state of the Superman movie franchise.

In the court’s discussion of the lack of any reversion clause, the judge observes that for the “plaintiffs to succeed in proving that the Superman film agreement was in fact below fair market value, they must establish that there would have been a film sequel or a reversion of rights by this point if the agreement contained such a reversion clause keyed to film development.” However, the Siegels could not demonstrate this, in part because there is no sequel currently in the works.

As Warner Bros. President & Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn testified,

aside from his “hopes” to develop the Superman character, at present the property is not under development at Warner Bros. (Trial Tr. at 166). No script has been written, filming has not commenced, and the earliest a Superman film could be theatrically released would be in 2012. (Trial Tr. at 155). As Mr. Horn explained, “we had hopes to keep the [Superman] character alive and to once again reinvent Superman. We are — our hope is to develop a Superman property and to try again. What hurt us is that the reviews and so on for the Superman movie . . . did not get the kind of critical acclaim that Batman got, and we have other issues with Superman that concern us.” (Trial Tr. at 153). Thus, in the seven years since the Superman film agreement was executed a single movie has been released and no further development has occurred.

This statement in regards to the Superman movie being stalled is part of Warner Bros.’ broader assertion that the character is, in the words of the defense, “damaged goods.” A key element of the company’s strategy at this point is to talk down Superman’s value, which is why Warner Bros. believes there are problems with the films going forward–the property is “viable . . . but challenged,” as evidenced not only by the latest film but the fact that the character’s circulation numbers put him number 4 in popularity “on a good day,” behind the X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman.

The judge also makes an interesting observation regarding Superman and gender. The context: his discussion of the incomparability between the Superman franchise and the film deals presented by the plaintiffs, such as musicals (e.g., My Fair Lady), adaptations of bestselling novels (Tom Clancy) and other comic book films (the Green Hornet, “a low-tier comic book character that appeared mostly on radio during the 1930s and 1940s and that has not been seen since a brief television show in the mid-1960s”). Besides these apples-to-oranges comparisons, the judge observes, the plaintiffs made a comparison that he found completely absurd, as they likened Superman to

even more incredibly, a web creation then popular with little girls — the NeoPets.

So there you have it–even a federal district court has found that comics aren’t for girls.

On the surface, the latest court ruling in the Siegel Superman lawsuit is relatively straightforward: the court examines whether Warner Bros. paid fair market value for the Superman movie & Smallville licenses, and the ruling finds in favor of the defendants. However, there’s much more to this opinion than who won.

One clear theme that emerges in this opinion is the judge’s dissatisfaction with how the plaintiffs have been arguing their case. For example, the judge repeatedly asserts that the plaintiffs did not provide pertinent comparative data and failed to address what was arguably the central issue in this phase–namely, the value not of the Superman property as a whole, but of the rights in Action Comics #1 shared by Warner Bros. and the Siegels. The judge also makes a striking argument that DC unreasonably failed to include a standard clause for reversion of rights should Warner Bros. fail to make another Superman movie, only to conclude that he lacked a basis for ruling against Warner Bros. on this issue as well.

All told, the judge makes a point of stating in regard to the Superman movie rights that the reason he found in favor of the defendants was “insufficient evidence”–in other words, it’s not so much a determination that the licenses actually reflected fair market value as the lack of needed evidence for finding otherwise.

Whether the judge is correct on this point I’ll leave to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals–what I find most significant is the extent to which he is arguably signaling that the Siegels may not want to count on the present court to provide a significant amount over what they might get in a settlement. The judge’s evident frustration sends a message that is all too common in situations such as this–namely, that while the plaintiffs may have won a moral victory, that might not necessarily translate into significant cash, at least not without clear documentation and convincing arguments. In this regard, it’s worth noting that the judge calls attention to how different the original Superman was in contrast to his current incarnation–it will be most interesting to see how he assesses the value of the Siegels’ copyright interest in relation to current material.

In addition, there are a number of other reasons why this opinion is well worth reading:

As noted earlier, the next phase of the case involves apportionment of the value of the relevant Superman material between the Siegels and Warner Bros. That is ultimately the real prize, and I’ll post the details on the schedule as soon as they’re available.

Shortly after I posted the opinion the following statement from DC & Warner Bros. appeared in my inbox:

DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment are very gratified by the court’s thorough and well-reasoned decision in this matter. The decision validates what DC and Warner Bros. have maintained from the beginning, which is that when they do business with each other, they always strive for – and achieve – fair market value in their transactions. We are very pleased that the court found there was no merit to plaintiffs’ position that the Superman deals were unfair to DC Comics and, by extension, the plaintiffs.

No big surprise here–the judge is always smart when you win. But is that all that the opinion says, or is there more than meets the eye?

Check back soon for more from this fascinating opinion.

Last year a federal court awarded the Siegel heirs half of the copyright in the Superman material in Action Comics #1. Remaining to be decided, however, was how much that copyright interest was worth.

Today the court released its ruling on the first issue related to this question: namely

“whether the license fees paid” by Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. (“Warner Bros”) to its corporate
sibling, DC Comics, for the audiovisual rights to the Superman copyright pursuant to various
licensing agreements entered into during the 1999 to 2002 period “represents the fair market value
therefor, or whether the license for the works between the related entities was a ‘sweetheart deal.’”

A more complete explanation of the details of the opinion will have to wait for another time–I have about two minutes to write this before another commitment. In a nutshell, the judge agreed with Warner Bros. that the license fees paid were not below fair market value.

Remaining to be decided at a future date: how to allocate the relevant profits between the Siegels and Time Warner.

As many of you no doubt have read, a federal appeals court has refused to grant the petition for rehearing in the Dwight Whorley case. Whorley had been convicted of possessing child porn, receiving obscene manga and sending obscene email.

The court ruled 10-1 against rehearing the case, but the focus of attention has been the lengthy dissent, in which Judge Roger Gregory urged Whorley to take the case to Supreme Court. Among other things, Gregory argues that Whorley’s conviction violated the First Amendment insofar as it punished speech pertaining to “imaginary children.”

Judge Gregory’s may have struck a chord in the comics & manga communities, but odds are that it will not make a similar impression on a majority of Supreme Court Justices, let alone appellate judges in his or any other federal circuit. The Court established years ago that fiction and drawings can be obscene. There is no split among the federal circuits regarding that issue, and the Supreme Court is not likely to view protecting pornographic depictions of children as a compelling reason to overturn decades of established obscenity jurisprudence.

Anti-censorship advocates, including Judge Gregory, have been wont to quote passages from the 2002 Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition decision regarding the unconstitutionality of banning virtual images, but these passages don’t prove what people think they do. In short, the quotes are being taken out of context–the Aschroft case dealt with a statute that banned virtual images regardless of whether they were obscene, a constitutional problem that current law arguably corrects.

There are equally substantive issues with Judge Gregory’s argument that obscenity communicated over the Internet should be regarded as personal, akin to private thoughts or matter read in one’s home, rather than connected to interstate commerce and thus a legitimate subject of federal law. This blog is not the place for an extensive analysis of Commerce Clause jurisprudence and the regulation of electronic communications, but suffice it to say that for Whorley to prevail on this point, the Supreme Court would essentially be nullifying precedent that provides the basis for much of Congress’s present legislative authority, let alone analogous principles that have enabled Congress to regulate obscenity sent by mail or through Customs.

Still, if people want to file appeals claiming that the Internet is intrinsically private or that images of fictional children cannot be obscene, that’s their right–it is, after all, a free country, at least in regard to the freedom to pay lawyers to make quixotic arguments.

The following is a new animated video by Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton. Besides the LV logomania, the cartoon is rife with interesting visual references, from Yellow Submarine and Alice in Wonderland to Doctor Who, Pulp Fiction and C.S. Lewis.

The scenario: a meet cute involving a girl who goes back in time to the 1897 workroom of 14-year-old Gaston Louis Vuitton. How the events in this video affect the timestream is unclear–clearly this calls for a sequel.

President Obama has appointed Charles Rivkin–former Jim Henson Company CEO and current producer of Yo Gabba Gabba!–to serve as U.S. Ambassador to France.

Nikki Finke provides the political backstory. I really don’t have any additional observations, except occasionally it’s a relief to note law-related news that doesn’t involve damages, injunctions or plea bargains.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a lengthy feature article on the popularity of Donald Duck in Germany. One indication that the character has become a cultural phenomenon: an 8000 page German collector’s edition, priced at $1900, came close to selling out upon publication.

The article ascribes the character’s popularity to the strip’s longtime translator, Erika Fuchs, an art history Ph.D. who rewrote Carl Barks’ dialogue to include references to German literature, myth and politics. This is no doubt part of the reason why the strip has inspired an eponymous nonprofit organization, D.O.N.A.L.D., to hold annual scholarly gatherings for the past thirty-two years, but as at least one commenter notes, Barks himself seeded his work with historical and literary references. Surely Barks made a difference as well?

He did, of course–the mythic quality of his Duck work is what made it such a suitable foundation for Fuchs’ elaboration. But the difference in tone is worth noting. Post-war Germany was in the process of restoring its identity after Nazi ideology raised serious questions as to the legitimacy of the country’s cultural heritage. A funny book provided a means for Fuchs to highlight the value of German traditions free from worrisome evocations of the Nazi’s use of German culture to establish ethnic supremacy.

Barks wrote in a radically different context. America’s literary heritage was not morally suspect; to have used Donald Duck to legitimize Melville or Dickinson would have seemed pretentious, if not bizarre. Barks’ visual and verbal rhetoric is instead far more pragmatic–Donald and his retinue are on a perpetual quest to succeed in a world full of baffling new tools and old ways.

What both the German and American versions of Barks’ work illustrate is the strategic value of junk media in remaking society. That so many people continue to view comics as little more than trash is not necessarily a bad thing–it frees the medium for creative expression outside the normative constraints of so-called high art, thereby retaining comics’ power as a cultural trojan horse.

Journalista & The Beat provide an interesting link this morning to a site that includes a detailed critique of the local lawyers, including an allegation that Handley was not informed by his lawyers that he was pleading guilty to a child obscenity count that could lead to prison time. This strikes me as somewhat unlikely, given that Handley is on record as expressly pleading guilty to the child obscenity statute that has long been the central public issue in the case.

Still, there are several lessons here for retailers and readers of sexually explicit comics material.

Know your environment. Whether one likes it or not, the fact is that child obscenity cases are an easy way for prosecutors to get the sort of publicity that can help them advance in their careers. Relying on the popular belief that current law is clearly unconstitutional is a rather risky proposition. That you personally don’t believe minefields should be legal doesn’t make them any less explosive.

Know your material. If there’s a chance someone could perceive your material as containing sexually explicit images of teenagers or below, you’re potentially at risk. This is particularly true with manga, which has a robust tradition of childlike imagery.

However, the realpolitik of local juries makes even literary comics a risky proposition. For example, I could easily see a local prosecutor arguing that Alan Moore’s Lost Girls is merely a prurient perversion of childhood characters with no redeeming value. Yes, a scholar may argue against this, but the audience that counts is the jury, not the academy.

Know your case. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Handley did indeed not know the charge or the potential sentence when he copped the plea. If you, god forbid, ever find yourself in a similar position, I strongly recommend that you take a few minutes to read the documents you’re signing.

If you’re unfamiliar with a statute, look it up; if you’re not sure of the potential penalty, look that up too. If something’s not clear, ask, and if you might face jail time, consider paying for a second opinion or at least ask trying to ask the judge for clarification. It’s also wise in such situations to hold back from signing an agreement without an understanding–if at all possible, expressly stated in writing–of the sentence that the prosecutor is going to recommend.

On the flip side, it’s also useful to remember that a prosecutorial press release is designed to make the prosecutor’s side look tough on crime. A public reference to the maximum possible penalty does not mean that this is the sentence the prosecutor will request or the defendant will receive.

Again, my aim in all of this is merely to explain the situation, not to endorse it. There’s a significant gap between what many think ought to be the law and what the legal reality actually is. In the United States freedom of the press is not an absolute–if you read, sell or distribute material that could be seen as containing sexually explicit images of minors, you might want to consider how much you’re personally willing to risk.

Yesterday Newsarama reported the CBLDF’s announcement that “Christopher Handley, the Iowa manga collector, has pleaded guilty ‘to possessing obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children and mailing obscene material.’” This development has understandably raised questions as to significance of the Handley case as legal precedent. In addition, it has also given rise to speculation as to whether the anti-censorship cause would have been better served if the CBLDF–as opposed to Handley’s local lawyers–had been in control of the case.

Below the jump: my thoughts.

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Craig Yoe has announced the imminent publication of a special limited edition of Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster. This limited release will include a substantial amount of material not included in the standard release, such as a bookplate signed by Yoe and Stan Lee, a facsimile of a letter to Yoe from Shuster’s sister, and sixteen pages of additional Shuster artwork deemed too hot for bookstores.

This new material only reinforces Secret Identity’s importance as one of the most revelatory works of comics scholarship in recent memory. As Yoe observes, the comic book witch hunts of the 1950s might have had a far more severe outcome if Dr. Frederic Wertham had made the connection between Superman comics and Nights of Horror, the Shuster-illustrated fetish magazine that had become notorious thanks to its alleged role in inspiring the Brooklyn Thrill Killers in 1954.

Ironically, the very unwillingness of comic book critics to take the medium seriously as an art form kept them from seeing the evidence that was literally right before their eyes. Were they not so willfully ignorant about the distinquishing qualities of comic book artists, Shuster’s work would likely have become the missing link between superhero comics and teenage depravity.

In the interests of full disclosure I should note that I did play a small role in locating some legal material for the book, but my contribution was at best minuscule. The book’s real value comes from the stunning art and Yoe’s compelling historical introduction, which reads like a Beat-poet jazz riff inspired by the era it describes.

Below the jump are a few of my own reflections on Secret Identity and its significance for obscenity law and contemporary culture. Some of the references may seem unfamiliar if you haven’t read the book, so I strongly recommend that you get a copy for yourself!

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A certain DC Comics character is coming back from the great beyond, and if my inbox is any indication a lot of you are wondering how this could have happened.

The answer–or at least a possible explanation–below.

Warning–spoilers ahoy!

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The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop on a new Watchmen lawsuit, this time arising from the movie’s coffee.

Yes, that’s right–coffee. The makers of Chock Full O’ Nuts have filed a complaint alleging that Warner Bros. and a company owned by Watchmen: Portraits photographer Clay Enos have illegally copied the coffee brand’s can design.

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