Our Heroes Have Been Stolen:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
It's this line in the U.S. Constitution which establishes the purpose of copyright and patent law. "To promote the progress of science and useful arts." The purpose was never to allow someone to make unlimited money off of a single popular piece of art or important scientific discovery or advancement, but to allow them time to recoup the losses of creation. Before copyright law, if someone created something wonderful, someone else could just copy it, and the one who put the effort into creation would have to immediately compete with cheap knockoffs -- and the cheap knockoffs had a lower overhead, because they didn't need to invest in the creation process. Copyright protected the creators. They had "limited times" to recoup those losses. But they couldn't rest on their laurels, either -- they'd need to eventually start to create new works. Thus, arts and sciences were being encouraged: those who were creating new works or finding new discoveries were protected long enough to cover their cost of creation or discovery, and then they'd have to go out and do it again.
Originally, this was fourteen years. If, after fourteen years, the creator was still alive, they could file for the extension of another fourteen years. Twenty-eight years, max. Over the years, that has extended to life of the creator plus seventy years. Folding in corporate personhood, where the "creator" is a theoretically immortal industry, as well as corporations such as Disney (well, pretty much all Disney) pushing for longer and longer copyright extensions... that which should be Public Domain is well and truly lost to us. We haven't just lost one generation of public domain -- at this point, we've lost at least four generations. And the sad thing is that so few people really understand just how far astray we've gone. The belief has shifted. "Well, George Lucas created Star Wars -- why shouldn't he make as much money as he can off of it? Why shouldn't his kids and grandkids get to live comfortably?" Trust me -- George made plenty of money off of Star Wars in 28 years.
But ideas don't belong to one person. They belong to all of us. Both Science and the Arts enrich the human experience, though I'm going to focus more on art here. Art that does not affect the viewer isn't art. Art is made art by the reaction in the consumer. It's a personal connection between the creator and the consumer. Think about your favorite book, or your favorite movie, or your favorite piece of music or painting. Consider how it made you feel. That feeling is yours. No one else can own it. That reaction to that piece gives us a personal connection to that art which no one can take away. And that, in turn, can inspire someone to create more art. It allows art to inspire art, for culture and civilization to grow and build upon itself. But not as long as ideas are locked away for usually over 100 years -- and it'll be even longer as corporations demand longer and longer copyright extensions. Ideas have been stolen.
But it's not just ideas. Our heroes have been stolen, too. Heroes who should be in Public Domain are still owned by, not people, but media conglomerates. Warner Brothers and Disney own so many of the people who should belong to all of us, who have inspired so many, who should be in new stories.
It was a little over seventy-five years ago that a couple young kids from Ohio designed a man who came to us from the stars. He fought for justice and truth, and he astonished readers from the very cover of the comic book, where he smashed a gangster's car with his bare hands. He was a hero of the people. (The "American Way" element was added later during World War II, only to be dropped again after the war was over.) Other heroes joined Superman in short order: Batman, the dark avenger of justice; the Human Torch, an android who felt compelled to aid humanity; the Sub-Mariner, an antihero torn between two worlds; Wonder Woman, an ambassador of peace from a warrior culture; Captain America, the ordinary man who became a supersoldier through scientific advancements but who never lost his heart. There were many more heroes of this era, some still well-known, some amazing-but-obscure, and some who probably are better off forgotten.
After World War II was over, superhero popularity ebbed until DC began reinventing their old heroes with more of a scifi twist. This was followed with Marvel creating all sorts of new heroes, such as the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and Spider-Man. Diversity began to slowly make its way into the comics, thankfully, with wonderful characters like Black Panther, Shang Chi, Storm, and Luke Cage. (DC had a harder time bringing in diversity, but they eventually did the same.)
At the heart of all of those stories, however, was the idea that one person could make a difference. Some were born to greatness like Superman; others worked to earn their place like Wonder Woman, Iron Man, or Batman; others were the benefit of science, whether by experimentation (such as Captain America) or accident (the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man). But it wasn't their powers that made them great: it was their hearts. There were outliers even from the beginning: Namor was an anti-hero, or the Golden Age Black Widow was Satan's personal assassin, while later eras brought us characters like Wolverine and Punisher. But even those anti-heroes were presented with heart, with their dark impulses never shown as something to aspire to, but something to pity. The Punisher was a good man pushed too far, who was emotionally unstable, who was basically dead in his soul, but still trying to accomplish some good in the only way he knew how (which happened to be by killing a lot of criminals).
The heart of every superhero story was always that one person could make a difference.
Marvel, now owned by Disney, and DC, owned by Warner Brothers, legally own most of the superheroes people know, and those characters are left in the hands of Joe Quesada on Marvel (he's been promoted from Editor-in-chief, but his executive decisions still seem to carry weight), and Dan Didio (Editor-in-chief) on DC. Dark Horse owns a couple heroes some casual geeks will recognize, like Hellboy, while Image owns a few more (Spawn and Invincible are probably their best-known), but the vast majority of heroes we all know and love are owned by two media corporations, and overseen by two men.
When I say that my heroes have been stolen from me, I mean it. I grew up on Spider-Man, on the X-Men, on the Teen Titans and Captain America. These characters inspired me, and they showed me what sort of person I wanted to be.
In 1989, Marvel did a storyline involving the Superhero Registration Act. In this story, the government was attempting to get all people with superpowers to register with the government. The heroes came out against this act. Captain America spoke up against the injustice of the act, and I saw that you can love your country without turning a blind eye to its flaws; you can question it and encourage it to be better.
Spider-Man married Mary Jane when I was 10. I saw a young man who was growing up, who may have had problems (and he had plenty of them), but he had a healthy, loving relationship with his wife. I had some good examples of that in my real life, too, but it was nice to see it in a hero as well. In general, Spider-Man always did what he could to help people, even when it was difficult or painful for him.
The Teen Titans were a group of young heroes who banded together and formed a deep loyalty to each other. Even when a new member was revealed to be a traitor in a story when I was young, in the amazing "Judas Contract" story, they never lost the core of that connection. Their friendship made them greater than the sum of their parts. They could withstand anything together.
In the "Civil War" storyline which Marvel told a couple years ago, the US Government tried to establish a registration and draft for all superheroes. There had been a terrible, shocking tragedy, and the government was responding by trying to get all superheroes to register their powers, and be forced into working for the government. For some reason, half the heroes thought this was a great idea. Captain America didn't, and fought the heroes who did. In the end, however, Captain America realized that the fighting was causing collateral damage, so he surrendered. This is NOT my Captain America, nor is it compatible at all with the Superhero Registration Act storyline that taught me so much and so inspired me. The fallout from Civil War changed the shape of the Marvel comic universe, and everything since then has been built upon it. The consequences are still being felt, years later.
Spider-Man realized Aunt May was dying (again, but this time REALLY for real!). So he made a deal with Mephisto, one of Marvel's Satan-analogues. Aunt May's life was spared, but in exchange, his marriage was undone; it never happened at all, and no one remembered it. In a recent story-arc, Peter Parker died, with Doctor Octopus, one of his long-time enemies, moving into his brain, though Peter's mind has remained as an "echo." Doctor Octopus has been presented as being a "superior" Spider-Man because he's willing to kill people. In the most recent issue, Peter's echo was fully exorcised from the brain, but not before establishing that Peter only helped people because he wanted to be liked. He admitted that he would have been willing to kill a small child to try to get control of his body back.
DC comics recent did a soft reboot of their whole universe, despite many story arcs not being complete. By "soft reboot", I mean that some of their previous stories still happened, but others never did at all, and until they tell us which happened and which didn't, we don't know. Among the things they did in that reboot was eliminating all the history of the Titans. The heroes still existed (except those who never existed now), but they never formed a team; they never developed a friendship with each other. That has been exorcised from the universe.
Indeed, that which I have always loved about superheroes has been removed, and tainted such that they are retroactively not there at all. The things I love have been stolen by the companies which legally own them.
Now, I know that this is comics, and storylines come and go. Eventually, things will be retconned, I'm sure, and I can hope that someday, I can read a Spider-Man comic and recognize the character I love. But it's not just a single story right now. It's the whole industry. The soul of the industry has changed. The moral is no longer "you can make a difference." It's now, "You can't make a difference. Don't try."
The creators (with a few exceptions, though they are generally overridden by editorial fiat) seem to believe that one man cannot make a difference. Perhaps they feel their own lives have failed to make a difference, and they wish to excuse themselves; I don't know. All I know is that the heart of the superhero has been ripped out. I sometimes catch a glimpse in a new story -- Agents of Atlas, for example, or the Runaways -- but eventually, those shreds are torn out again, usually by editorial fiat.
I admit that the DC animated movies, and the live-action Marvel movies (at least the ones Marvel is producing directly), thus far seem to retain the heart of the characters, and I appreciate that (though I'm hearing some disturbing things about the Mandarin in the new Iron Man 3 movie). It's not the Captain America who went through the events I loved reading, but I can recognize him. It's not perfect and has a lot more flaws than some might notice, but hey, it's close enough to support and appreciate.
I no longer buy Marvel or DC comics, and I certainly don't touch anything I grew up on. I wish to support the industry, so I purchase titles from other publishers (Dynamite, BOOM!, Dark Horse, even a little Image), but I cannot support the companies who have set out to destroy everything I've ever loved about their characters and stories. I'll support buying collections of old stories, of classic tales (of real classic tales, not "comics from four years ago which we're calling 'classic'"), in part in the hopes that someday, they try to tell more stories like that, but really, it's more of a rebellion. Those are the stories which once inspired me; those are the stories the current publishers seem hell-bent to make us forget. I read old stories to remember the heroes as they were once presented to the world.
Copyright law gave my heroes to corporations which have no ethical right to them. They have stolen my heroes from me. They've stolen them from all of us.
And dammit, I want them back.
It's this line in the U.S. Constitution which establishes the purpose of copyright and patent law. "To promote the progress of science and useful arts." The purpose was never to allow someone to make unlimited money off of a single popular piece of art or important scientific discovery or advancement, but to allow them time to recoup the losses of creation. Before copyright law, if someone created something wonderful, someone else could just copy it, and the one who put the effort into creation would have to immediately compete with cheap knockoffs -- and the cheap knockoffs had a lower overhead, because they didn't need to invest in the creation process. Copyright protected the creators. They had "limited times" to recoup those losses. But they couldn't rest on their laurels, either -- they'd need to eventually start to create new works. Thus, arts and sciences were being encouraged: those who were creating new works or finding new discoveries were protected long enough to cover their cost of creation or discovery, and then they'd have to go out and do it again.
Originally, this was fourteen years. If, after fourteen years, the creator was still alive, they could file for the extension of another fourteen years. Twenty-eight years, max. Over the years, that has extended to life of the creator plus seventy years. Folding in corporate personhood, where the "creator" is a theoretically immortal industry, as well as corporations such as Disney (well, pretty much all Disney) pushing for longer and longer copyright extensions... that which should be Public Domain is well and truly lost to us. We haven't just lost one generation of public domain -- at this point, we've lost at least four generations. And the sad thing is that so few people really understand just how far astray we've gone. The belief has shifted. "Well, George Lucas created Star Wars -- why shouldn't he make as much money as he can off of it? Why shouldn't his kids and grandkids get to live comfortably?" Trust me -- George made plenty of money off of Star Wars in 28 years.
But ideas don't belong to one person. They belong to all of us. Both Science and the Arts enrich the human experience, though I'm going to focus more on art here. Art that does not affect the viewer isn't art. Art is made art by the reaction in the consumer. It's a personal connection between the creator and the consumer. Think about your favorite book, or your favorite movie, or your favorite piece of music or painting. Consider how it made you feel. That feeling is yours. No one else can own it. That reaction to that piece gives us a personal connection to that art which no one can take away. And that, in turn, can inspire someone to create more art. It allows art to inspire art, for culture and civilization to grow and build upon itself. But not as long as ideas are locked away for usually over 100 years -- and it'll be even longer as corporations demand longer and longer copyright extensions. Ideas have been stolen.
But it's not just ideas. Our heroes have been stolen, too. Heroes who should be in Public Domain are still owned by, not people, but media conglomerates. Warner Brothers and Disney own so many of the people who should belong to all of us, who have inspired so many, who should be in new stories.
It was a little over seventy-five years ago that a couple young kids from Ohio designed a man who came to us from the stars. He fought for justice and truth, and he astonished readers from the very cover of the comic book, where he smashed a gangster's car with his bare hands. He was a hero of the people. (The "American Way" element was added later during World War II, only to be dropped again after the war was over.) Other heroes joined Superman in short order: Batman, the dark avenger of justice; the Human Torch, an android who felt compelled to aid humanity; the Sub-Mariner, an antihero torn between two worlds; Wonder Woman, an ambassador of peace from a warrior culture; Captain America, the ordinary man who became a supersoldier through scientific advancements but who never lost his heart. There were many more heroes of this era, some still well-known, some amazing-but-obscure, and some who probably are better off forgotten.
After World War II was over, superhero popularity ebbed until DC began reinventing their old heroes with more of a scifi twist. This was followed with Marvel creating all sorts of new heroes, such as the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and Spider-Man. Diversity began to slowly make its way into the comics, thankfully, with wonderful characters like Black Panther, Shang Chi, Storm, and Luke Cage. (DC had a harder time bringing in diversity, but they eventually did the same.)
At the heart of all of those stories, however, was the idea that one person could make a difference. Some were born to greatness like Superman; others worked to earn their place like Wonder Woman, Iron Man, or Batman; others were the benefit of science, whether by experimentation (such as Captain America) or accident (the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man). But it wasn't their powers that made them great: it was their hearts. There were outliers even from the beginning: Namor was an anti-hero, or the Golden Age Black Widow was Satan's personal assassin, while later eras brought us characters like Wolverine and Punisher. But even those anti-heroes were presented with heart, with their dark impulses never shown as something to aspire to, but something to pity. The Punisher was a good man pushed too far, who was emotionally unstable, who was basically dead in his soul, but still trying to accomplish some good in the only way he knew how (which happened to be by killing a lot of criminals).
The heart of every superhero story was always that one person could make a difference.
Marvel, now owned by Disney, and DC, owned by Warner Brothers, legally own most of the superheroes people know, and those characters are left in the hands of Joe Quesada on Marvel (he's been promoted from Editor-in-chief, but his executive decisions still seem to carry weight), and Dan Didio (Editor-in-chief) on DC. Dark Horse owns a couple heroes some casual geeks will recognize, like Hellboy, while Image owns a few more (Spawn and Invincible are probably their best-known), but the vast majority of heroes we all know and love are owned by two media corporations, and overseen by two men.
When I say that my heroes have been stolen from me, I mean it. I grew up on Spider-Man, on the X-Men, on the Teen Titans and Captain America. These characters inspired me, and they showed me what sort of person I wanted to be.
In 1989, Marvel did a storyline involving the Superhero Registration Act. In this story, the government was attempting to get all people with superpowers to register with the government. The heroes came out against this act. Captain America spoke up against the injustice of the act, and I saw that you can love your country without turning a blind eye to its flaws; you can question it and encourage it to be better.
Spider-Man married Mary Jane when I was 10. I saw a young man who was growing up, who may have had problems (and he had plenty of them), but he had a healthy, loving relationship with his wife. I had some good examples of that in my real life, too, but it was nice to see it in a hero as well. In general, Spider-Man always did what he could to help people, even when it was difficult or painful for him.
The Teen Titans were a group of young heroes who banded together and formed a deep loyalty to each other. Even when a new member was revealed to be a traitor in a story when I was young, in the amazing "Judas Contract" story, they never lost the core of that connection. Their friendship made them greater than the sum of their parts. They could withstand anything together.
In the "Civil War" storyline which Marvel told a couple years ago, the US Government tried to establish a registration and draft for all superheroes. There had been a terrible, shocking tragedy, and the government was responding by trying to get all superheroes to register their powers, and be forced into working for the government. For some reason, half the heroes thought this was a great idea. Captain America didn't, and fought the heroes who did. In the end, however, Captain America realized that the fighting was causing collateral damage, so he surrendered. This is NOT my Captain America, nor is it compatible at all with the Superhero Registration Act storyline that taught me so much and so inspired me. The fallout from Civil War changed the shape of the Marvel comic universe, and everything since then has been built upon it. The consequences are still being felt, years later.
Spider-Man realized Aunt May was dying (again, but this time REALLY for real!). So he made a deal with Mephisto, one of Marvel's Satan-analogues. Aunt May's life was spared, but in exchange, his marriage was undone; it never happened at all, and no one remembered it. In a recent story-arc, Peter Parker died, with Doctor Octopus, one of his long-time enemies, moving into his brain, though Peter's mind has remained as an "echo." Doctor Octopus has been presented as being a "superior" Spider-Man because he's willing to kill people. In the most recent issue, Peter's echo was fully exorcised from the brain, but not before establishing that Peter only helped people because he wanted to be liked. He admitted that he would have been willing to kill a small child to try to get control of his body back.
DC comics recent did a soft reboot of their whole universe, despite many story arcs not being complete. By "soft reboot", I mean that some of their previous stories still happened, but others never did at all, and until they tell us which happened and which didn't, we don't know. Among the things they did in that reboot was eliminating all the history of the Titans. The heroes still existed (except those who never existed now), but they never formed a team; they never developed a friendship with each other. That has been exorcised from the universe.
Indeed, that which I have always loved about superheroes has been removed, and tainted such that they are retroactively not there at all. The things I love have been stolen by the companies which legally own them.
Now, I know that this is comics, and storylines come and go. Eventually, things will be retconned, I'm sure, and I can hope that someday, I can read a Spider-Man comic and recognize the character I love. But it's not just a single story right now. It's the whole industry. The soul of the industry has changed. The moral is no longer "you can make a difference." It's now, "You can't make a difference. Don't try."
The creators (with a few exceptions, though they are generally overridden by editorial fiat) seem to believe that one man cannot make a difference. Perhaps they feel their own lives have failed to make a difference, and they wish to excuse themselves; I don't know. All I know is that the heart of the superhero has been ripped out. I sometimes catch a glimpse in a new story -- Agents of Atlas, for example, or the Runaways -- but eventually, those shreds are torn out again, usually by editorial fiat.
I admit that the DC animated movies, and the live-action Marvel movies (at least the ones Marvel is producing directly), thus far seem to retain the heart of the characters, and I appreciate that (though I'm hearing some disturbing things about the Mandarin in the new Iron Man 3 movie). It's not the Captain America who went through the events I loved reading, but I can recognize him. It's not perfect and has a lot more flaws than some might notice, but hey, it's close enough to support and appreciate.
I no longer buy Marvel or DC comics, and I certainly don't touch anything I grew up on. I wish to support the industry, so I purchase titles from other publishers (Dynamite, BOOM!, Dark Horse, even a little Image), but I cannot support the companies who have set out to destroy everything I've ever loved about their characters and stories. I'll support buying collections of old stories, of classic tales (of real classic tales, not "comics from four years ago which we're calling 'classic'"), in part in the hopes that someday, they try to tell more stories like that, but really, it's more of a rebellion. Those are the stories which once inspired me; those are the stories the current publishers seem hell-bent to make us forget. I read old stories to remember the heroes as they were once presented to the world.
Copyright law gave my heroes to corporations which have no ethical right to them. They have stolen my heroes from me. They've stolen them from all of us.
And dammit, I want them back.