The mayor of a city in southeastern Turkey plans to sue director Christopher Nolan for unauthorized use of the name “Batman.”

You see, that’s the name of the city: Batman. It’s the the capital of Batman Province, an important oil-producing region. It rests on the banks of the Batman River.

I’m not making this up.

“The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us,” Mayor Hüseyin Kalkan tells a Turkish news agency. “There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”

He tells Hürriyet Daily News that after a media spotlight was cast on the city last year because of an increasing suicide rate among women, a columnist asked why the mayor hadn’t sued the producers of the Batman movies for royalties to aid the struggling economy.

With that, a light bulb went off.

But there is, apparently, another issue at play: Residents of Batman who live abroad can’t use “Batman” in the names of their businesses because of trademark infringement.

Curiously, though, Kalkan’s wrath is reserved solely for Nolan. He doesn’t plan to sue DC Comics or Warner Bros.

Bizarro update: A commenter points to this 2007 article that states Kalkan “was awarded damages by DC Comics after a lawsuit over the use of his town’s name for the superhero Batman.” In February 2008, the mayor was sentenced to 10 months in prison for “spreading terrorist propaganda” in a newspaper interview.

The final calendar for the Superman case has been set.

The judge has divided the remaining issues into two separate trials. Because of the specific legal questions involved, neither will be a jury trial. Instead, the judge will issue the final determinations on his own.

On Jan. 12, 2009, the issue at stake will be the Siegels’ claim that DC Comics, Warner Bros., Time Warner and other companies connected to the Superman properties are alter egos. That is, the Siegels are arguing that these companies are so intertwined that they are essentially one and the same. The primary reason a plaintiff files an alter-ego claim is to reach the assets of separate entities that would otherwise not be required to pay. For example, if DC could not pay the full amount of its debt and the court deemed Warner Bros. and Time Warner to be its alter egos, the Siegels could collect the remaining amount from those other companies.

As for any amounts the Siegels may be owed from exploitation of the material in Action Comics #1, the date set for trial in regard to accounting of profits is March 24, 2009.

Of course, the dispute between the Siegels and DC (et al.) is not necessarily over even after the court issues its decisions, as an appeal is a distinct possibility. In addition, the court might also schedule a trial for any remaining issues in the Superboy case.

A mother in Halsey, Ore., has filed paperwork to have Andy Riley’s popular The Book of Bunny Suicides removed from the Central Linn High School library.

But Taffey Anderson, whose 13-year-old son borrowed the book from the library, refuses to return it so a school district committee can review her complaint. Instead, she reportedly plans to burn the graphic novel.

“I understand her feeling very strongly about her rights, values and responsibility as a parent,” Principal Julie Knoedler told The Oregonian. “But I’m disappointed that she is forcing us to buy another copy before we can review the book.”

Published in 2003, the darkly humorous book is a mix of single-image gags and multi-panel strips depicting, as the title suggests, cute little bunnies committing suicide in imaginative ways.

“I saw poor bunnies going through meat grinders; people, like, throwing them in there and they’re getting shot out,” Anderson told the Albany Democrat-Herald. “People in Nazi helmets, and there’s a bunny, and they’re shooting him.”

In her complaint to the school district, she wrote, “This book has absolutely no curriculum value to anybody.”

Anderson pledges not to return the book. And if the library were to replace it, “I’ll have somebody else check it out and keep that one. I’m just disgusted by the whole ordeal.”

I am, too. Just not about the book.

(Via Examiner.com)

Update: As a reader points out in the comments, Bunny Crisis appears to be over, at least mostly. According to an item posted Tuesday on American Libraries, Anderson has returned the book and, after numerous negative articles, has softened her stance.

She nows says she’d be satisfied if The Book of Bunny Suicides is kept behind the circulation desk and restricted to high-school students. The Central Linn High School Library serves both high-school and junior-high students.

Nathan Fisher, the Connecticut teacher pushed out of his job last year after giving a copy of Eightball #22 to a ninth-grader, is still teaching — just not at Guilford High School.

Rick Green of the Hartford Courant updates Fisher’s story, noting that the educator landed at Coginchaug Regional High School in Durham, Conn., where he’s happily teaching English and journalism, and serving as adviser to the online student newspaper.

“It feels like a family,” Fisher told him. “It’s like they say. It’s the hardest job you will ever love.”

Fisher resigned from Guilford High School in September 2007 after complaints that he gave the Daniel Clowes comic to a student as a reading assignment. A police investigation found that no criminal charges were necessary.

• Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki’s Skim has been shortlisted for the Canada Council for the Arts’s 2008 Governor General’s Literary Awards in the Children’s Literature-Text category. [Xtra]

• An Italian prosecutor claims that a vampire manga — which one, I don’t know — inspired Raffaele Sollecito to kill Meredith Kercher in 2007. The defense calls the theory “stupid.” Curiously, earlier this year British tabloids tried to link the bloody murder to Akira. [BBC News]

• Designer and author Chip Kidd talks briefly about Bat-manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan: “”It was a labour-of-love project, an act of graphic-novel reclamation, if you want to call it that.” [National Post]

• Suzan Colón of The Advocate is encouraged by the promise of two non-heterosexual characters in James Robinson’s new Justice League series: Batwoman and the alien Starman. She also rattles off a list of “seven of the most memorable queer heroes.” [Advocate.com]

• If you’re thinking about starting a blog, don’t. Paul Boutin says the Age of the Solo Blogger is over: “Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.” [Wired]

A librarian in Brooklyn, N.Y., has been fined $500 for promoting his daughter’s graphic-novel adaptation of Macbeth in a newsletter he distributes at a local high school.

According to The New York Times, Robert Grandt listed Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Manga Edition, which his daughter Eve Grandt co-created for John Wiley & Sons, as “Best New Book” under the heading “Grandt’s Picks.” He also displayed copies on a library table at Brooklyn Technical High School with a sign that read, “Best Book Ever Written.” The book was given for free to those interested.

On Monday the city’s Conflict of Interests board announced that it had settled its case against Robert Grandt, who agreed to pay a $500 fine and admit he had violated the city ethics code by promoting his daughter’s work.

Needless to say, Grandt isn’t pleased by the decision. “It’s unbelievable,” he told The Times.

Charities have realized that comics characters are an effective way to get money and attention, but for every authorized use — such as the Met’s superhero fashion exhibit or Diane von Furstenberg’s Wonder Woman collection — there are countless other examples of charities using comic-book icons without permission. Every so often, a publisher clamps down on one of these initiatives–and their reward is typically negative press. Just this month, for example, DC Comics was criticized for not giving the Heroes Initiative permission to include pictures of DC properties in The 3-Minute Sketchbook.

Singling out DC is a bit unfair — Marvel has had its own share of charitable controversy, and DC has allowed its characters to be used for other charitable projects — but the broader question raised by such incidents is not unreasonable. After all, if the money is going to a charity, why shouldn’t a publisher just let its characters help a good cause?

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Today the judge in the Siegel case is holding a status conference to set the “FINAL and DEFINITIVE schedule” for the trial. The judge’s all-caps emphasis may seem a bit unusual for a routine scheduling order, but it’s a visceral reaction to the twists and turns the case has taken since the calendar was originally set back in April.

A lot of it is legal wrangling that we’ll set aside for another time, but one issue is particularly relevant to readers of this site — because that issue arose from one of our most recent posts.

The post in question was from late August, and it revealed previously unknown artwork and scripts from the 1934 collaboration between Jerry Siegel and Russell Keaton. As Siegel lawyer Marc Toberoff explains in a court filing:

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A Michigan judge on Friday ruled the Macomb County prosecutor’s office won’t be disqualified from the retrial of Michael George, the retailer and convention organizer convincted in March of killing his first wife  Barbara in 1990.

Circuit Court Judge James Biernat also issued a gag order to to prevent attorneys from discussing the case outside of the courtroom.

On Sept. 12 Biernat overturned George’s jury conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct and the release of new evidence that could lead the jury to believe another person was responsible for the murder of Barbara George. The misconduct was related to the assistant prosecutor’s use of Michael George’s mug shot during closing arguments.

Defense attorneys had petitioned Biernat to disqualify Prosecutor Eric Smith and his office from the case.

Last week prosecutors filed a request for appeal of Biernat’s decision with the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Barbara George was shot in the head on July 13, 1990, in the Georges’ Clinton Township comic-book store. Prosecutors contended that Michael George staged the killing to look like a robbery so he could collect money from an insurance policy and a shared estate, and start over with another woman.

Michael George remains in Macomb County Jail awaiting his new trial, which had been set to begin on Dec. 2.

The House of Representatives has adjourned–for now–and unless the Clerk was asleep at the keyboard the so-called orphan works bill did not pass.

That means the bill is dead and gone, right?

Not really.

If we’ve learned anything from reading comics, nothing is dead unless we see a corpse–and even then, chances are the deceased will eventually come back to life. Law is much the same way. Since there has been so much confusion about the state of the bill over the past few days, here’s a brief explanation of what happened this week and what it means for the future.

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Warner Bros. screened nearly 30 minutes of previously unreleased Watchmen footage for journalists last night in West Hollywood and, perhaps not surprisingly, it received a largely positive response.

Alex Billington of FirstShowing said it looked “absolutely phenomenal.” Patrick Lee of Sci Fi Wire dubbed the opening-title montage as “impressive.” And Michael Cieply of The New York Times said the three clips “spared nothing when it comes to the messy side of the super life.”

Similar screenings are planned in London and New York City.

Expectant fans may be pleased to learn that Watchmen will have a run time of 2 hours and 43 minutes, which director Zack Snyder felt was necessary to tell the story and showcase the action sequences.

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Despite some reports saying it has died a quiet death, the Orphan Works bill Jeff Trexler talked about yesterday is still alive – stalled, but alive. Per Wired’s Threat Level blog: “Lost in the House of Representatives’ push to pass $700 billion bailout legislation is the so-called Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008.”

Jeff, Blog@’s resident Matt Murdock, is unavailable today to put some thoughts together (he says he’s getting ready for one of his classes, as he teaches law at Pace University, but I think that’s actually code for preparing to fight Bullseye), but he dropped me a note to say that it isn’t dead, that it’s “more complex procedurally than that, as the comments illustrate” in the Wired.com report.

As someone points out in the comments section to the Wired story:

“The House has agreed to drop THEIR bill, but they agreed to take up the Senate bill (which passed this week) and substitute it for theirs. There is a high probability that the House will pass it this week when they come back, under suspension rules that allow them to Hotline the bill and pass bills by default.”

And then on her own blog, Colleen Doran, who has been following it closely, adds, “A little birdy tells me that Senator Leahy fully intends to get right back on his high horse in January 2009.”

Watch for more from Trexler soon.

The artistic community is buzzing over news that the Senate has passed its version of the orphan works bill.

And for good reason. The legislation will significantly change the incentive structure in copyright enforcement.

As I discussed in a previous post, the legislation’s stated aim is to clarify the status of so-called orphan works–old copyrighted material whose rights owners cannot be located. The typical example cited to justify the bill is something old with a personal or educational value, such as a family photograph or a historic archive.

But what matters most is not the ideal application but the actual language, and this is what has so many people concerned.

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A judge in Macomb County, Mich., has denied bond for convicted killer Michael George while he awaits a new trial in December.

The retailer and convention organizer was convicted in March of the 1990 killing of his first wife Barbara and sentenced to life in prison. However, on Sept. 12 Circuit Judge James Biernat Sr. overturned the jury verdict, citing prosecutorial misconduct and new evidence that could lead the jury to believe another person was responsible for the murder.

In his decision on Tuesday, Biernat said George poses a flight risk, and should remain in the Macomb County Jail. The new trial is set to begin on Dec. 2.

Barbara George was shot in the head on July 13, 1990, in the Georges’ Clinton Township comic-book store. Prosecutors contended that Michael George staged the killing to look like a robbery so he could collect money from an insurance policy and a shared estate, and start over with another woman.

• Stephen Chow will make his American directorial debut on Seth Rogen’s The Green Hornet, and co-star as Kato. Chow has directed five feature films, including Kung Fu Hustle and its sequel, which is now in production. “I’m excited to be taking on The Green Hornet — obviously I’ve been a huge fan of the show since I was a kid,” Chow says.

The movie is set to open on June 25, 2010. [The Hollywood Reporter]

• The legal battle between 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. over Watchmen swirls around veteran producer Lawrence Gordon. [The New York Times]

• Uh, spoilers? Alessandra Stanley reviews tonight’s season-three premiere of NBC’s Heroes. [The New York Times]

• Photos from the set of Kick-Ass, with some comics-panel comparisons. [Slashfilm]

• Police in Kyoto, Japan, have charged a man with violating copyright law for illegally uploading the movie Wanted using P2P file-sharing software. The 33-year-old could face 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $96,154. [Variety]

• Frank Miller’s The Spirit gets into the guerrilla-marketing game. [FirstShowing.net]

The owner of Sarge’s Comics in New London, Conn., was sentenced to six months of home confinement and two years of probation for making and selling pirated DVDs.

Robert P. Miller, who pleaded guilty in August 2007 to one count of copyright infringement, also was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $9,575 to the Motion Picture Association of America and other parties, and perform 100 hours of community service.

When agents raided Miller’s store in June 2005, they reportedly recovered 778 DVDs and CDs containing pirated works, as well as a CD/DVD burner. He admitted to making copies of movies and television shows to sell to his customers.

Back in June my buddy Larry sent me a link to a story about a photographer suing Marvel and Paramount over a photo he took of Iron Man that he says was used as part of a mock newspaper front page in the film. The guy took the photos from a parking structure with a view of the set, and it was later posted on IESB.net.

Anyway, Larry sent me a screen grab from the upcoming DVD release of Iron Man, and it looks like the photo has been changed in the movie. Here’s the theater version:

And here’s the DVD version:

Thanks again, Larry!

Comics retailer Michael George, who was convicted in March of killing his first wife in 1990, will get a new trial.

In a decision handed down earlier today, Macomb County (Mich.) Circuit Judge James Biernat Sr. cited prosecutorial misconduct and the release of new evidence that could lead the jury to believe another person was responsible for the murder of Barbara George.

The misconduct apparently is related to the assistant prosecutor’s use of Michael George’s mug shot during closing arguments.

Barbara George was shot in the head on July 13, 1990, in the Georges’ Clinton Township comic-book store. Prosecutors contended that Michael George staged the killing to look like a robbery so he could collect money from an insurance policy and a shared estate, and start over with another woman.

George was sentenced in June 20 life in prison.

The new trial is set to begin on Dec. 2.

Related: The Detroit Free Press has more details on the new evidence

A federal judge in Los Angeles has set Jan. 6 as the trial date for 20th Century Fox’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. over the rights to the Watchmen movie.

According to Variety, U.S. District Court Judge Gary Allen Feess indicated the case isn’t suitable for the preliminary injunction that Fox had sought because the issues are too complex to be resolved on an interim basis.

Feess wants the case to move quickly, and has asked attorneys for both parties to expedite discovery and deposition proceedings.

Fox could still ask the judge to prevent Warner Bros. from releasing Watchmen following the discovery phase.

As we reported yesterday, Fox last week had asked for a June trial date, while Warner Bros. pushed for April. So Feess is working on an accelerated timeline.

Warner Bros., meanwhile, is still aiming for a March 6 opening for Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the Alan Moore-Dave Gibbons miniseries.

Attorneys for 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. laid out plans for the legal battle over Watchmen in a report filed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles.

The New York Times points out that Warner Bros., which says that Fox “sat silently” as producer Lawrence Gordon took Watchmen “to studio after studio with Fox’s express knowledge,” seems ready to draw Gordon, Paramount Pictures, Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures into the fight. None of those is named in Fox’s lawsuit.

Fox, which is requesting a June trial date, says it will seek an injunction to prevent the planned March release of Watchmen. Warner Bros. contends Fox shouldn’t be allowed to stop the movie, and asks for an April date.