Hollywood Insider discovers what most of us already know: Fanboys are in revolt over 20th Century Fox’s legal brawl with Warner Bros. over the movie rights to Watchmen.

Some are even threatening to boycott Fox films like The Day the Earth Stood Still and, yes, even X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Of course, we know that won’t happen: Come May 1, they’ll be lined up to watch a sideburned Hugh Jackman pop his claws.

But what of the idea proposed by commenters at Comics2Film to hurt Fox by pirating Wolverine? Eh, probably not a very good, or effective, plan.

“It’s hard to imagine a boycott or a digital pirate attack could significantly skewer Wolverine’s prospective box office, even if they did actually come to pass,” writes Hollywood Insider’s Jeff Jensen. “Fanboys are pretty amped for Jackman’s franchise bid — the trailer Fox showed at Comic-Con killed — and a vast majority of geeks probably shy away from doing anything that will rile up a small army of Fox lawyers armed with court orders.”

As I posted earlier this morning, all of this uproar is likely for nothing. Sure, Fox may say it wants to prevent the release of Watchmen, but that’s not necessarily what it means. Money — lots of money — talks.

“The bad news is that it’s going to be an arduous process,” entertainment lawyer Dinah Perez tells Underwire. “The good news is that Fox and Warner Bros. have until March 2009 (Watchmen’s current release date) to figure it out and come to a settlement.”

MGM wants to bring Jonas Moore comic to TV

MGM Domestic Television Distribution has optioned the U.K.-based multimedia online comic The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore for development as a series.

The comic, created by Howard Webster, blends photography, music, live-action footage and comics art to tell the story of Jonas Moore (portrayed by Colin Salmon), a video-game player in a future where the British Empire still reigns supreme and America is just one of thousands of virtual worlds.

Variety reports that Jonas Moore is part of MGM’s push to restart its television-production business.

The Ticker

• All of the hand-wringing about the future of Watchmen is probably unnecessary, according to entertainment attorneys: “Fox has no financial risk here in a movie that could produce revenues for it,” Dinah Perez says. “As such, I doubt that Fox is going to force Warner Bros. to shelve the movie. In all likelihood, a settlement will be reached whereby Warner Bros. gets to distribute the movie, and Fox gets a piece of the action.” [Underwire]

• Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons has seen a two-hour and 45-minute rough cut of the movie, which he says is “very sexy, very violent.” The addition of the Tales of the Black Freighter segments to the DVD will push the release past three hours. [Blockbuster Buzz]

• Iron Man director Jon Favreau is at work on the sequel — and on a political cause. [Hero Complex]

• The Lord of the Rings writing team is back together for The Hobbit and its sequel: Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens will collaborate with Peter Jackson and director Guillermo del Toro. [The Hollywood Reporter]

• Rumor mill: Is there turmoil on the set of X-Men Origins: Wolverine? [Splash Page]

• “After Watchmen, Hollywood Should Tackle These ‘Unfilmable’ Comics.” [SciFi Scanner]

• A timeline tracing the history of anime. [Variety]

It’s relatively common knowledge that in 1934 Jerry Siegel approached other artists besides Joe Shuster to be his collaborator on Superman. One of these artists was Russell Keaton, who had been ghosting the Buck Rogers Sunday pages. Siegel and Keaton maintained a brief correspondence over the character, with Keaton eventually deciding “not to gamble on such a young and inexperienced writer.” Instead, a few years later Keaton launched his own newspaper strip, Flyin’ Jenny.

And now, in the words of Paul Harvey, the rest of the story.

In preparing the termination notice to regain the Superman copyright, the Siegel family found a box of old Superman material, catalogued its contents–and then, in a move, lost track of it. Fortunately, the material was re-discovered in April of last year.

Among the documents: photostats of the scripts and artwork of Siegel and Keaton’s Superman.

That’s right, Siegel and Keaton.

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 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.

Based on the surviving artwork, it would appear that Keaton did indeed prepare a set of sample daily strips for the syndicate to review. Had Siegel and Keaton succeeded in selling the strip, the history of comics would no doubt have been far different. At the very least Russell Keaton, not Joe Shuster, would most likely be remembered today as Superman’s co-creator.

The material also provides a decidedly different take on Superman’s origin. In this version, the infant Superman arrives here from the future via a time machine, sent to 1935 by “the last man on earth.” The couple that discovers him: Sam and Molly Kent.

The story then takes a series of fascinating turns in regard to Superman’s childhood, which is the subject of the first extended storyline. Most poignant: in a nod to Siegel’s own immigrant parents, the boy speaks a language that Sam and Molly don’t understand, leading them to speculate that he came from “a foreign country.” The secret of his origin appears to lie in a cryptic “Mystery Note” found in the time capsule, but–as is all too common in immigrant families–when Clark Kent grows up he can no longer read the words.

What this material might mean for the Superman and Superboy lawsuits we’ll discuss in a later post. For now, these historic documents deserve to be read in keeping with Siegel’s original intent–not as the subject of a legal dispute, but as an astounding adventure.

For those who want to check out the original source material, here are the the Fox complaint, Warner Brothers’ response, the disputed legal documents and the judge’s order.

Arguably the most explosive sentence in the order: “It is particularly noteworthy that nothing on the face of the complaint or the documents supplied to the Court establishes that Gordon, the claimed source of Warner Brothers’ interest in ‘Watchmen,’ ever acquired any rights in ‘Watchmen.’”

As several reports state, Warner Brothers faced a similar situation before, when, in 2005, the same judge granted a preliminary injunction that would have kept The Dukes of Hazzard movie from being released, prompting the studio to agree to a multimillion dollar settlement. The plaintiff’s lawyer in the Hazzard case: Marc Toberoff, who is now representing the Siegel heirs.

A federal judge has denied a motion to dismiss 20th Century Fox’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. over the rights to produce and distribute Watchmen.

In the lawsuit, filed in February, Fox claims to hold the exclusive copyrights and contract rights to Watchmen, and seeks to prevent Warner Bros. from moving forward with the movie. The lawsuit also seeks unspecified damages.

Hollywood gossip columnist Nikki Finke reports that U.S. District Court Judge Gary Allen Feess is still considering Fox’s motion for an injunction.

Fox claims that between 1986 and 1990 it acquired all movie rights to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ DC Comics series. According to the lawsuit, in 1991 Fox assigned some rights to Largo International, which later dismantled and transferred those rights to producer Lawrence Gordon. Gordon, in turn, agreed to pay a buy-out price to Fox if he ever entered into a deal with a third party.

After stops at Universal and Paramount, Watchmen ended up at Warner Bros. But Fox claims than neither Gordon nor Warner Bros. has paid the required fee or acquired the necessary rights.

“While the Judge’s opinion is preliminary and his views could change in the course of the litigation, his current take on the facts is consistent with our position,” a Fox source tells Finke.

Update: Variety reports that Fox isn’t looking for monetary compensation. Rather, it wants to prevent Warner Bros. from ever releasing Watchmen.

The trade paper quotes “a source close to the litigation” as saying, “When you have copyright infringement, there are some damages you never recover.”

Hollywood Insider provides a little history and context.

Update: Jeff Trexler has all of the relevant legal documents, including the judge’s order, and highlights what’s been mentioned in several reports — that Warner Bros. faced a similar situation in 2005 with The Dukes of Hazzard.

According to the Daily Mail, maids, bellhops, cooks and dishwashers from all three Disney-owned hotels in Anaheim staged a protest outside the happiest place in the world, with 32 of them being arrested. The protesters — some of whom were dressed as Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Peter Pan and other Disney characters — staged the demonstration over pay, health care costs and other issues related to ongoing negotiations between their union and Disney. They’ve been working without a contract since February.

Billionaire financier Ronald O. Perelman has agreed pay $80 million to settle a lawsuit accusing him of helping to divert $553.5 million in notes when he controlled Marvel.

Perelman, who acquired the comics publisher in 1989, and other Marvel directors were accused of diverting proceeds to his other companies before Marvel’s 1996 bankruptcy.

Noteholders for Marvel, and eventually the company’s litigation trustees, sued Perelman in 1997 for $470.8 million. Perelman, 65, denies any wrongdoing.

This settlement agreement is a result of negotiations of the past two years. A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 11 to consider approval of the deal.

The depiction of women in comics has received its fair share of criticism in recent years, most notably in Gail Simone’s Women in Refrigerators and Valerie D’Orazio’s Occasional Superheroine. Comics have likewise sparked some controversy in regard to images of heroic homosexuality. But as the latest documents released in the Jerry Siegel case illustrate, these issues have a long history.

The documents in question: correspondence between Detective Comics and Jerry Siegel from 1939 through 1947, entered into evidence as part of DC’s attempt to establish that all the work done by Siegel & Shuster during that time was work for hire. The case still has a while to percolate — the judge has postponed the hearing on unresolved trademark/copyright issues until September 15 — but the material itself is a gold mine for folks interested in the comics history.

Even apart from the gender issues there’s a lot of amazing stuff here — the recurring savage criticism of Joe Shuster’s art; an early critique of Wayne Boring as an artist unsuitable for Superman; the hiring of Winsor McCay, Jr., as Superman ghost-artist-in-training; the insinuation that Superman was not significantly more popular than Zatara, Pep Morgan and Tex Thomson; and the prohibition on depictions of a flying Clark Kent are just a few of the historical moments in the mix.

Yet it is the sex stuff that really stands out, providing a rare insiders’ perspective on the comics writing culture of the past. One of the true highlights of the newly released correspondence is the black-and-white sketch of Lois Lane included in this post. The artist was Siegel’s and Shuster’s editor, Whitney Ellsworth, who was attempting to get the duo to make Lois Lane less curvaceous.

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There’s a rising concern in some quarters that Comic-Con International has sold out in ways that go beyond the lack of on-site registration. What once had been an educational community seems to have morphed into a PR-palooza, with the celebration of an art form giving way to corporate hype and celebutards.

For an event such as Comic-Con, complaints like this aren’t just idle chatter. San Diego Comic Convention is a tax-exempt educational charity and, as Blog@ reported last year, leading charity watchdogs have raised serious questions as to whether Comic-Con continues to deserve its 501(c)(3) status.

Does rampant marketing compromise Comic-Con’s charitable mission? A quick legal overview after the jump:

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Writing for Barron’s, Bill Alpert provides an overview of Stan Lee Media’s $5 billion lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment, filed back in March 2007.

The article doesn’t appear to be tied to any movement in the suit, but instead relies on Marvel’s current box-office success as a news hook. Still, it’s a good summary of the players and events surrounding the case: infamous entrepreneur Peter F. Paul, a bankrupt dot-com, Stan himself, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The lawsuit asserts that in 1998 Lee assigned his intellectual property to Stan Lee Media before he negotiated a new contract with Marvel — the previous one was rejected during Marvel’s bankruptcy — in which he relinquished claims to ownership of the characters he co-created.

So Stan Lee Media, which is being sued by Stan Lee, claims it co-owns Lee’s Marvel creations, and should receive half of the money Marvel has earned from them. Marvel, of course, says the lawsuit has no merit.

Confused yet? Go read the article.

Tom Spurgeon reported late on Friday that DC refused to allow an excerpt of Paul Pope’s roundly acclaimed Batman Year 100 from being included in this year’s edition, despite the efforts of guest editor Lynda Barry, series editors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel, Pope himself, and publisher Houghton Mifflin:

Pope said that he was contacted fairly only on in the process by Madden and Abel to try and get the comics publisher to OK the addition. “I made formal requests, as did Lynda and a number of other people with some degree of influence.” One unfortunate outcome is that it may have kept Pope from the book altogether. “Jessica and Matt said not to worry, because if DC would not allow the addition of my Batman pages, they would be running my story “Fun! Comics” — from THB:CFM #1, which debuted at SDCC that year — so I would be in the collection regardless. Despite the fact that I own THB and Batman was a work for hire project, I wanted to see the Batman pages run in the book as well, so I lobbied for that. Lynda had been searching for some superhero material to add to the series, mine fit the bill. Her intention was to shed light on quality material from the so-called ‘mainstream’ of comics. I’m all for that.

“Months went by and I figured the matter was dead in the water, que sera sera. Then I get an email in the 11th [hour] from HM, letting me know they were about to go to press and were still trying to get DC to OK the addition of the Batman pages. In the end, DC took so long to formally deny the request that it not only prevented the Batman pages from running, it also forced HM to go ahead with the book without any material from me at all.”

Related: The revelation initially came out of this extended interview Spurgeon did with Barry. Which you really should read.

When we last left our discussion of the dispute over the copyrights to Superman and Superboy, the judge had ordered the Siegels, DC and Time Warner to engage in settlement negotiations. Originally the mediation was to last 60 days, but scheduling conflicts pushed the deadline for the parties’ joint progress report back to the end of June.

As Newsarama readers have noted, DC Comics Executive Editor Dan DiDio made an offhand comment this weekend at Wizard World Chicago that has led some to wonder whether the Superboy lawsuit has been settled. Here’s the scoop from the “DCU Crisis” panel:

DiDio also paused to point out the special nature of Legion of Three Worlds. “We’ve got Geoff, we’ve got George, we’ve got SuperBOY Prime (yes, we can say that again).”

This could reasonably be taken as a sign that the Superboy lawsuit is over — after all, it was the Siegel family’s initially successful (but later vacated) attempt to reclaim the character that apparently led DC to take the name off the market.

However, DiDio’s reference to Superboy is not the only piece of evidence to emerge this weekend. On Friday, the Siegels and Time Warner filed their joint progress report in the Superboy and Superman lawsuits. This report states that the parties have not reached a settlement, despite four mediation sessions attended by their lawyers and DC President and Publisher Paul Levitz.

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According to Photo District News, an L.A. photographer has filed a lawsuit against Marvel and Paramount, accusing them of using a photo he took of Iron Man as part of a mock newspaper front page in the film.

Photographer Ronnie Adams shot a series of photos of the Iron Man set back in May of 2007 from a parking structure with a view of the set, which were posted on the movie site IESB.net. Paramount managed to shut down the site for a brief time over the photos. Now Adams claims Paramount used one of his photos in the film without his permission.

The picture in question features Iron Man from behind a chain -ink fence. Adams claims it’s the same picture used in a scene in the movie, where Tony Stark is reading the paper and the front-page headline asks “Who is the Iron Man?”

Photo District News has a side-by-side comparison (click on the image on their site to open the pop up), so you can see for yourself how well they match up. Of course, it’s also possible that someone associated with the film took a shot of that scene as well.

Adams is asking for unspecified monetary damages, as well as “an order stopping Paramount and Marvel from using the picture in the DVD release of the movie, in advertising and in any video game,” according to the story.

(Thanks, Larry!)

Comics retailer and convention organizer Michael George was sentenced this morning to life in prison in the 1990 murder of his first wife Barbara.

He’ll remain in the Macomb County, Mich., jail until Aug. 8, when Circuit Judge James Biernat will hear defense attorneys’ arguments for a new trial.

George was convicted March 17 of first-degree murder, felony firearm, insurance fraud and obtaining money from an insurance agency under false pretenses. He shot his wife in the head on July 13, 1990, in the back of their Clinton Township comic store and staged in to look like a robbery.

ICv2.com reports that Publishers Services International Publisher Services, Incorporated, a distributor to the book and hobby markets, has sued Dabel Brothers Publishing, alleging breach of contract.

According to the lawsuit, filed last Friday, PSI began negotiations in August 2007 — around the time the Dabels split with Marvel — to become Dabel Brothers’ exclusive sales and fulfillment agent. PSI advanced the Dabel Brothers $45,500, apparently anticipating a happy conclusion to those negotiations, as well as a $50,000 payout from Marvel to the Dabels.

However, Dabel Brothers instead signed with Del Rey. According to the complaint, just $12,500 of the advance was repaid. The lawsuit seeks the remaining $30,000, plus legal costs and interest.

Dabel Brothers Vice President Les Dabel tells ICv2 his company has been making payments to PSI.

Update: 1:30 p.m. PT — The correct name for the distributor is Publisher Services, Incorporated, as I noted above.

After a lengthy deliberation, Macomb County, Mich., Circuit Judge James Biernat this morning upheld the jury’s conviction of retailer and convention organizer Michael George in the 1990 murder of his first wife Barbara.

Defense attorney Carl Marlinga had argued that the evidence wasn’t sufficient for the March 17 conviction of his client on charges of first-degree murder, felony firearm, insurance fraud and obtaining money from an insurance agency under false pretenses.

George faces life in prison without parole.

Update: The Detroit Free Press has more extensive coverage, including quotes from attorneys and Barbara George’s family.

The judge in the Michael George murder case said today he’ll rule May 23 on a motion to overturn the jury conviction.

George, a retailer and co-founder of Pittsburgh Comic-Con, was convicted on March 17 of first-degree murder, felony firearm and insurance fraud in the 1990 killing of his first wife Barbara in the back of their Clinton Township, Mich., comic store.

This morning, Macomb County Circuit Judge James Biernat listened to arguments on the defense’s post-verdict request to set aside the jury’s decision. Biernat said the verdict, which was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, deserves careful consideration.

“Any injustice done in the name of justice is the worst injustice of all,” The Detroit Free Press quoted Biernat as saying.

Editor’s note: Jeff Trexler returns to Blog@Newsarama … the following post on Thomas Denton’s recent charity auctions originally appeared over on his blog, and he graciously agreed to let me cross-post it here.

Above: Be careful what you wish for . . .

Remember a week or so ago when I posted that charity is not a viable defense to IP infringement? Some well-meaning folk in the charity biz said I was being “contentious,” but the fact is, this is the law. You can defy it or pretend it doesn’t exist, but if you do there can be serious consequences.

Case in point: the cancellation of the Say It Backwards Superman auctions for Candlelighters. Whether or not you think the move is good PR, Time Warner–if it did indeed file the objection–has solid legal grounds for asking eBay to pull the items containing its trademarks or copyrighted characters.

Why would a company risk a backlash by taking action against charity? And what about the common practice of artists selling commissioned works featuring DC or Marvel heroes? I’m in the middle of grading exams so our overview will have to be brief, but here are a few important things to note:

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The Grand Rapids Press reports that Marvin Michael-Marquis Jones, one of three people police believe was involved in the shooting of comics retailer David Pirkola, waived his probable cause hearing and will stand trial in Kent County Circuit Court. Jones faces charges of armed robbery and attempted murder.

Jones’ lawyer, Michael Liquigli, says his client is negotiating with the prosecutor on a plea agreement.

The paper also reports that Pirkola remains in serious condition. iFanboy continues to accept donations and auction items that will benefit Pirkola. Becky Cloonan donated the piece that accompanies this post.

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.