The Dateline NBC website has the complete transcript, and partial video, from last night’s episode, which focused on the murder trial of retailer Michael George.

George, co-founder of Pittsburgh Comic-Con, was convicted in March in the 1990 killing of his first wife Barbara. A jury found that he shot her in the back of their Clinton Township, Mich., comic store, and staged the crime to look like a robbery.

Next week Circuit Court Judge James Biernat is expected to hear arguments on the defense attorneys’ motion to set aside the jury verdict.

Police have arrested two suspects in the April 25 shooting of Grand Rapids, Mich., comics retailer David Pirkola.

According to The Grand Rapids Press, James Muriel-Neal Thompson, 18, and Michael-Marquis Jones, 19, were arrested the following day and arraigned on April 28 on charges armed robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery and assault with intent to murder. However, police only now released the information.

Pirkola, owner of Apparitions Comics and Books, was shot during the evening robbery of his store. He remains in critical condition at Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital.

Police continue to look for a third suspect, 18-year-old Jevon Marquis Sawyer.

iFanboy is raising funds to help with Pirkola’s medical bills and the operation of his store.

An editorial in today’s Rome, Ga., News-Tribune takes the Floyd County district attorney to task for her three-year prosecution of retailer Gordon Lee.

Lee originally was charged with six counts stemming from a Halloween 2004 giveaway during which one of his employees mistakenly handed a copy of the Alternative Comics #2 Free Comic Book Day sampler to a boy. The issue depicts a naked Pablo Picasso. After a mistrial and numerous delays, the case finally was dismissed on April 19, with Lee writing a letter of apology to the family of the boy.

“In the end,” the News-Tribune editorial states, “the only thing Leigh Patterson, the Floyd County district attorney, could do to Gordon Lee after more than three years of trying was turn him into a comic-book hero.”

The newspaper goes on to say the case gave Rome “a new black eye.”

David Pirkola, owner of Apparitions Comics and Books in Grand Rapids, Mich., is in critical but stable condition in a local hospital after being shot during a robbery at his store Friday night. The Grand Rapids Press reports that a man entered the store around 7 p.m. and demanded money, shot Pirkola and fled. The crime remains under investigation.

iFanboy.com is currently raising funds to help out Pirkola:

So iFanboy is putting out the call to you, comics fans to help a retailer in need. We’ve set up a PayPal donation button below to allow you donate as much as you’d like. You can use credit cards or bank accounts, and don’t need a PayPal account to donate. All money donated will be sent to David Pirkola to help with his medical bills, as well as to keep his store afloat, so if you can spare it, please donate below.

We will also be reaching out to our friends in the industry to help as well, so stay tuned for possible giveaways or auctions of comics goodness, the proceeds of which will go to helping David and his recovery.

A judge in Macomb County, Mich., ruled today that attorneys for retailer Michael George can argue to have his jury verdict overturned.

George was convicted on March 17 in the 1990 slaying of his first wife Barbara. Prosecutors say he shot her in the back of their Clinton Township comic-book store, and staged the crime to look like a robbery. Earlier this month George’s attorneys asked that the verdict be set aside.

Today, Circuit Court Judge James Biernat said defense attorneys can argue on May 6 for a directed verdict.

If the motion is unsuccessful, George faces life in prison without parole. He’s being held in the Macomb County Jail until the May 6 hearing.

In what Heidi MacDonald aptly described as “shaman’s magic,” several weeks ago Grant Morrison portrayed the young Siegel and Shuster changing the world in a comic released on the very same day that a federal judge issued his historic ruling in the Superman case.

As longtime DC comics readers may recall, this was not the first time that Siegel and Shuster had the power to remake reality with their words. For example, in Action Comics #447, a storyteller named Joseph Jerome can fashion reality, including Superman, with the power of his imagination. Likewise, Action #554 relates how two boys save the world by creating Superman through the force of their belief. Yet as we have already seen in this series, not all depictions of their imaginative power are so sanguine. The Siegel-and-Shuster Superman in Adventures of Superman #612 is depicted as a relic of a long-forgotten past; while the power of imagination may bring him to life, the realities of life today might also make him obsolete.

This tension between past and present is equally evident in the Siegel case. On the one hand, for many within the comics community the ruling was a symbolic victory in the struggle for creators’ rights, vindicating not just Siegel and Shuster, but legions of comic book artists and writers whose genius was exploited by corporate greed.

Yet much to the surprise of longtime industry watchers, the judgment also provoked a strong negative response. Some critics focused on the fact that the winner was not Siegel himself but his heirs, who were said to have gained an unearned windfall. Other observers went a step further, questioning the wisdom of a law that voids otherwise valid contracts, and accusing the Siegels themselves of exploiting Superman for their own financial gain.

As you may have noticed if you’ve been reading comment threads, the debate can get rather intense. In this, our last post of the series, we’ll examine how the creative vision of Siegel and Shuster helped give rise to both sides.

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No offense to the Rome News-Tribune, who have done a good job of covering the Gordon Lee case over the last few years, but I’m kind of hoping this is the last time I have to link to them on the matter. In any event, they report on the closing of the case, noting that Lee wrote a letter of apology to the family that received the offending copy of Alternative Comics’ Free Comic Book Day book back in 2004:

Charges against local comic book store owner Gordon Lee have been dismissed, according to Floyd County District Attorney Leigh Patterson.

“I’m still catching my breath from it,” Lee said Sunday. “(The announcement) hit me so quick that everything is still a blur.”

Patterson said the case was dismissed after her office met with Lee’s counsel and decided a measure other than prosecution could be taken in resolving the case.

“He did a written apology to the victims in the case,” said Patterson.

Congrats to Lee and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund on the end of the case.

Update: A press release from the CBLDF adds a little more context on the letter Lee wrote:

Following the mistrial, Rome District Attorney Leigh Patterson vowed to bring the case back for trial on the next misdemeanor calendar. Last winter, CBLDF counsel filed a motion to dismiss on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. That filing detailed the history of the prosecutor’s errors up to and including the mistrial. Last February, the next trial calendar came and went without Gordon’s case being called and without that motion being heard. Shortly afterwards, Patterson’s office contacted Lee’s counsel, and said they would be willing to drop the case if Gordon wrote a letter of apology. Lee had always been willing to write such a letter, and promptly delivered one to Patterson’s office, where it sat for several weeks. After multiple attempts to bring the matter to a close, CBLDF counsel finally succeeded in moving Patterson’s office to live up to their end of the agreement and drop the case last Friday.

Who could’ve guessed that retailer Gordon Lee, comics legend Stan Lee, DC’s Wildstorm imprint and Virgin Comics would be the big newsmakers on the first day of New York Comic Con?

The big story, without a doubt, was the announcement Friday evening by Neil Gaiman that charges against Rome, Ga., retailer Gordon Lee have been dropped.

Lee’s legal battle stemmed from a Halloween 2004 giveaway during which one of his employees mistakenly handed a copy of the Alternative Comics #2 Free Comic Book Day sampler to a boy. The issue depicts a naked Pablo Picasso. After several false starts, the case finally went to court in October, only to end in mistrial during the prosecutor’s opening statement.

Gaiman said Friday the case has cost the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which represented Lee, more than $100,000.

But Gordon wasn’t the only Lee in the spotlight: Stan Lee (no relation) kicked off the convention in fine form Thursday night when he was presented with the inaugural New York Comics Legend award. The event, held at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, drew countless creators and media-types, including Comic Foundry’s Laura Hudson, who had an interesting encounter with the folks from Virgin Comics.

The Stan Lee juggernaut continued on Friday during the invitation-only event for Ultimo, his collaboration with Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei for Shueisha’s Jump SQ.II spin-off magazine. As expected, Viz Media’s “exciting news” is that Ultimo will be released in North America shortly.

But wait! The Man isn’t finished: He’ll oversee a line of superhero comics for Virgin Comics, which also announced that writer Grant Morrison and filmmaker Shekhar Kapur are collaborating on an animated series to be delivered via the Internet and mobile phone. The series, titled MBX, is a futuristic retelling of the Mahabharata epic poem.

DC’s Wildstorm imprint, meanwhile, continued efforts to rebrand itself — or, perhaps, simply brand – with the announcement of three license acquisitions: Prototype, Gears of War, and The X-Files. That last property is expected to be officially announced today. However, X-Files creator Chris Carter let the information slip last night.

More coverage of New York Comic Con:

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As yesterday’s interview with Joe Simon reminds us, the Siegels aren’t the family with a potential copyright case. The Shuster estate has filed to regain its share of Superman in 2013. Joe Simon has already negotiated a settlement for his co-creation of Captain America, and there are reports of smaller settlements arranged behind the scenes. With the Siegels’ newsworthy success, others have no doubt started looking into whether they might have a claim.

Some fans are understandably worried about the future of their favorite comics, but the likelihood is that relatively few viable termination claims will be filed and even fewer will have visible effects. Even if trademark law weren’t an issue — and it’s a big one — most creators simply have little prospect of earning substantial profits from their own versions of a character. Moreover, for creators already receiving royalties, the potential gain from a new settlement may not be enough to warrant an expensive and stressful lawsuit.

The biggest obstacle, however, is probably the law itself. Creators don’t have termination rights in work made for hire, while the procedural requirements for filing a valid termination are rigorous and arcane. Industry watchers are no doubt familiar with the failed lawsuits filed by Archie Comics artist Dan DeCarlo. Whatever the sympathy for his effort among fans and other artists, DeCarlo’s claims clearly did not fit within the current legal framework. In fact, had the judge in the Siegel case applied his expansive interpretation of derivative works to the pre-Action Comics house ads, the Siegels arguably would have lost.

Nonetheless, the fact that the Siegels and a few other creators or heirs may be able to gain from long-sold copyrights has caused a fair amount of controversy — and that will be the subject of the next, and last, post in this series.

The Superman case is not the only legal action the Siegels have undertaken against DC. They are also suing for the rights to Superboy, relying on the same termination rights statute that led to their regaining the Superman material in Action Comics #1.

The Superboy case provides a potent illustration of how fragile a court victory can be. Two years ago, a court held that Superboy belonged to the Siegels. However, the case was subsequently reassigned to Judge Stephen G. Larson, the same judge who issued the recent Superman decision. In a controversial ruling last July, Judge Larson granted DC’s motion to reconsider the earlier decision, which meant that the previous decision to grant Superboy to the Siegels was no longer valid.

If the Siegels and DC do not settle, the Superboy trial is scheduled to take place after the Superman trial concludes. In this post, we’ll examine several key issues raised by the Superboy case — and how the Siegels’ regained rights in Superman could turn it upside down.

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The New York Times talks with legendary comics writer Joe Simon about the creation of Captain America, the recent Superman ruling and his own copyright dispute with Marvel Comics:

“That’s great,” the bespectacled Mr. Simon said. “Jerry Siegel started it,” he added, referring to the effort by Mr. Siegel’s wife and daughter in 1997 to secure the copyright to Superman. (Under a 1976 law, heirs can recover the rights to their relatives’ creations under certain circumstances. Mr. Siegel died in 1996 without major compensation for his character.) That family’s stand inspired Mr. Simon’s own claim to Captain America in 1999.

“We always felt ‘we wuz robbed,’ as Joe Jacobs, the boxing promoter, used to say,” Mr. Simon said of his dispute over the ownership of Captain America, which he settled out of court with Marvel in 2003. He said his royalties for merchandising and licensing use of the hero now help pay his legal bills from the case.

Simon, 94, also weighs in on the new Captain America: “The new costume, with the pistol and knife, and the old shield design going down to his privates, that’s not Captain America.”

He’ll appear Friday at the “Legends Behind the Comic Books” panel at New York Comic-Con.

Superman is not the only news story pertaining to comics and copyright. Last week, an Animation World article by Mark Simon caused a bit of a stir. The subject: a proposal to amend the U.S. copyright law regarding so-called “orphan works,” material whose creator ostensibly cannot be identified or located.

According to Simon, Congress is poised to pass legislation that would essentially eviscerate copyright protection for illustrators, photographers and other creators. Blogger Meredith Patterson, in a widely acclaimed post linked on Boing Boing, ostensibly refuted Simon’s article by showing it to be “poorly researched,” “illogical” and “retardedly” insistent that artists write their representatives about the bill.

Since this is a pressing IP issue that has engaged both the animation and comics communities, let’s set aside our Siegel series for a moment to determine whether artists concerned about this issue are indeed over-reacting.

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– Jeff Smith talks RASL with Heeb Magazine.

– Brigid Alverson’s MoCCA panel discussion from last December with Del Rey editor Dallas Middaugh, translator Mari Morimoto, Kinokuniya manager John Fuller, and letterer/designer Brad Foltz is now online.

– The discussion between Douglas Wolk and David Hajdu continues, and leads to some heated debate over at Comics Comics.

– Jeet Heer talks about the Superman case.

– This may be Jim Mooney’s last published work.

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A number of fans are concerned about the impact of the Siegel decision on the future of Superman, and understandably so. Since the lawsuit became news a few years ago, properties implicated in the Siegel claims–Superboy and the Earth-2 Superman–have been killed. Moveover, the Siegels’ lead attorney asserts that the Siegel and Shuster heirs will take over the franchise in 2013, with some fans adding that this means the end of DC’s trademark rights in 2018.

How can Superman survive?

As I’ve hinted throughout this series, there are actually a number of reasons why DC is not likely to lose Superman, even after the Action #1 material enters the public domain in 2033. So some of us can sleep better at night, here’s an overview of why the death of Superman has been greatly exaggerated.

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Marvel owning Superman–before the Siegel copyright decision, you would have assumed this could only be a dream, a hoax, or an imaginary story. Now it might actually happen. As we saw in my last post, under the law of jointly owned copyrights it is at least theoretically possible for the Siegels to sell their Superman rights to another publisher, since the law allows each co-owner to assign or license copyrighted property.

Yet the Siegels’ copyright interest in Action #1 does not give them an unfettered right to do whatever they want with the whole franchise. For example, in the previous post we noted that the judge left unresolved the question of how much of the current Superman universe derives from the material that the Siegels share. New characters are one problem–Lex Luthor, Zod and Bizarro are just a few of DC’s copyrighted story elements not found in the Siegel material.

However, this is not the greatest obstacle to what would be the sale of the century. As DC’s own lawyers have argued, trademark law arguably protects the distinguishing elements of the Superman properties in ways that can effectively prevent the distribution of competing Superman material. The Siegels, of course, disagree.

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As a number of commenters have observed, the court decision recognizing the Siegels as co-owners of Superman raises serious questions about the future of the franchise. Do the Siegels own anything more than the exact panels in Action Comics #1? Can the Siegels exercise creative control over DC’s Superman comics? Can the Siegels sell Superman to Marvel? And if the Shuster estate regains its copyright interest in 2013, will DC lose Superman forever?

As we’ve noted elsewhere, the answer to these questions is a bit complex, since copyright is not the only aspect of intellectual property at issue in this case. Trademark makes the situation that even more complicated. What if DC uses trademark to keep the Siegels from doing anything with their copyright? Does trademark make the public domain meaningless? Is it true, as some claim, that the Siegel and Shuster heirs can get the Superman trademarks back in 2018 simply by holding on to their copyright?

To answer these and other related questions, let’s begin with what we know the Siegels’ won: half of the U.S. copyright interest in the Superman material in Action Comics #1, effective as of April 16, 1999. For legal references, unless otherwise noted see the relevant pages from the judge’s opinion cited in this post.

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The latest court order in the Siegel case could be the beginning of the end. For years the prevailing assumption has been that this case would end in a settlement, not a trial. By imposing a sixty-day mediation period, the judge is pressing both sides to bring this dispute to its natural close.

The thing about settlement negotiations, though, is that they’re highly unpredictable. If you haven’t ever seen one in action, you might want to read this description of the events leading to the Siegel and Shuster payment arrangement in 1975, excerpted from Gerard Jones’ must-read history, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book.

You might notice that in Jones’ account the law was not the only concern shaping the outcome. This is not at all unusual. In a settlement negotiation, the law is merely one of several things that can influence what each party decides they can accept. The following are a few of the factors that are likely to play a role in determining whether negotiations succeed or break down.

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George Lucas’s empire are about to go to war, and not with the Rebel Alliance — they’ve got a date tomorrow with the lawyers at SimmonsCooperAndrew in England. The Times Online discusses the case, where Lucasfilm is trying to prevent the designer of the stormtrooper uniforms, the headgear of the imperial fighter pilots and the helmet designed for Luke Skywalker from selling copies to fans:

For his part Mr Ainsworth remained a designer and engineer and would later create a face-sucking monster for the Alien films. In 2004, however, he discovered one of the original helmets he had made in a cupboard in his home in Twickenham.

After successfully selling it to a collector, he began to manufacture the outfits once more, through his company, Shepperton Design Studios. He found a legion of Star Wars fans willing to pay up to £1,800 for a suit and helmet. Lucasfilm responded in 2006 by suing Mr Ainsworth. A judge in California awarded the firm $20 million (£10 million) in damages for copyri