Okay, so I was watching Smallville, which is something abnormal that will cease entirely after the series finale of Angel, and I was annoyed. Angry, even. Furious. I don’t even remember the scene that triggered my drastic change of mood, but something in me just snapped. I yelled a bit at the TV, and almost turned it off (till I realized Angel was about to start and I didn’t have anything better to do). Something changed after that episode, though, and I had to do something.
You see, I sometimes participate in the copyright threads. Not much, I’m mostly a lurker, and not in the file-sharing threads, cause those just get nasty and mean and nothing gets communicated, but I’m a sucker for the threads that deal with the purpose and length of copyrights. Even when I don’t post (which is most of the time), I’m drawn to those copyright threads. And occasionally, yeah, I even feel that I have something to contribute to them.
So there it is, the episode of Smallville, and Clark Kent is acting like a moron, and my head is about to explode, and inbetween the fervent prayers that the hurting finally stop and the good show begin, I realize something. I can’t just sit back lurking anymore. I have to state, once and for all, the truth I’ve been too embarrassed to admit.
The world doesn’t have enough Superman.
Likely I’m younger’n most of the folk on this board, but I’d wager most of us grew up with Superman. My mother tells me that I used to beg to go to sleep in my Superman outfit every night (she says she’d sometimes let me, but I’d have to take the cape off for fear of it wrapping around my superboy neck and choking the life out of me). I loved Superman. I wanted to be him. The strength, the heat-vision, the Fortress of Solitude, the cape & tights, everything. God, as much as it pains me to admit it, Superman I, II, and III were pivotal in my development as a human being (that robo-lady in III can be damn scary when you’re young - unless you’re protected by Superman).
This isn’t intended to turn into a debate about copyright length or somesuch technical issue. This is just a request for more Superman.
So, yeah, okay, I guess it really is a copyright debate. I grew up with this stuff. The people who created it are dead and gone. But the corporation that owns it is still sitting on it, protecting their “property”, such as it is, from infringement.
I’ll insert the obligatory “I realize the importance of copyrights” right here. I do realize. I promise. Cross my heart. But this 90 year retroactive work-for-hire thing just blows my fucking mind. And life of the creator PLUS 70 years? What the hell is that?
Look, I don’t care to write Superman stories myself. I’m not much of a creative, artsytype person. At least, I haven’t been most of my life, and now that I’m trying a little of it myself, just a smidgen, I find that there was probably a reason for that. (Not that I’m giving up, mind. Just that none of you are ever likely to hear of my timid but determined literary exploits.)
All I wanna see is a cultural icon, an integral part of American culture, freed from the restrictions of government sponsored censorship. That’s it. Instead of just one corporation having the right to produce a new Superman movie whenever they feel like getting off their duffs, I want every major studio to be able to put a movie together. Instead of just DC jealously guarding an idea they bought over 60 years ago, I’d like to see every comic publisher get a crack at the Big S Man.
70 years from the 1938 publication of Action Comics #1 is 2008. That year might could’ve been the opening of the floodgates (if you ignore the possible trademark implications, which I don’t even want to think about). Open those gates, and most of the stuff would be terrible, wretched, eye-gougingly bad stories, enough to make Superman III look like Hamlet. We’d have so much Superman, we’d start bleeding from our every orifice, and they’d still make more. And some of it, not a lot, but some of it would be good.
Do we have a right to this much Superman? Damn right, we do. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday very soon we have a right to it. 2008 I could’ve lived with. Not happily, not without a few hissy fits like this one, but I would’ve managed. 2028 is like some sick joke.
I don’t even much like the cape & tights thing, and I haven’t for a long time. (Superman IV didn’t phase me. That’s called progress.) Unless someone talented and British is writing a superhero, it just seems that the genre is limiting both itself and the medium that normally carries it, which is to say comics. But there’s the principle, see. I don’t remember too much from my bygone elementary school days, but I do remember my first grade teacher unjustly writing my name on the chalkboard for something I didn’t do (the humanity!) and my great desire to burn a rectangle out of the chalkboard with my eyes and watch as my name dropped to the floor. The shattering shards as the blackboard hit the floor would’ve proven my innocence.
Christ, I remember that. I don’t remember the teacher’s name, I don’t remember who accused me, hell, I don’t even remember if the accusation had actually been false, but I do remember wanting to have heat-vision to burn my name off the chalkboard. That would’ve been badass, and I knew it at seven years old.
I’m not asking for much here. Really, I’m not. Star Wars, for instance, also had a profound effect on my life, and as much as I’d like to see that world liberated from George Lucas’s tyranny, I realize that many wouldn’t find that acceptable. He’s still alive and kickin’, after all.
But Superman? Around since before WWII and yet if any company that’s not AOL/Time Warner even so much as thinks about producing a Supes story without say-so, they’d get hit with a lawsuit faster than a speeding you-know-what. That’s the way it is, and indeed, that’s the way it should be for a time. But the time should expire soon for the Man of Steel, and it’s not going too.
And that’s just… sad.
I know some people aren’t gonna care about more Superman, but damn it, they should. Copyrights give the creators of works the financial security they need, and thus much wonderful stuff is made. But these more-than-lifetime-long copyrights are taking wonderful stuff away, and that’s just not right. Our national superhero, who supposedly epitomizes human values, is a freakin’ alien. DC doesn’t often want to get involved in messy stuff like that, but someone out there probably does. And the day our aspiring author would be allowed to explore such issues is now twenty years further away.
Superman legally belongs to DC, but a very real part of him belongs to the rest of us. And it’s about time that the we’re finally allowed to take possession.