Marvel Boycott Diary: Please Help Boycott the Avengers Movie

So here are a few links from the ongoing protest against Marvel Entertainment and Disney's treatment of Jack Kirby and his family:

ITEM! The Jack Kirby petition now has 1,200 signatures! Comics fans from all over the world have already signed the petition asking Marvel Entertainment to give credit and compensation to Jack Kirby's family for the characters and stories Kirby created and co-created during the 1960s at Marvel Comics. Please, if you haven't already, read the petition and sign it if you agree with it. Also, if it's not too much to ask, please share it with your friends online, local comic book shops, and media --help to get the word out about this issue that strikes at the heart of creator rights, the comic book industry, and Hollywood.


ITEM! The man who started all this talk of boycotting Marvel last summer, Steve Bissette, has a new post up at his blog about the basic issues of the campaign (and he's found a killer Captain America image to illustrate his argument). Now that the hype for the Avengers movie has really started to gear up, with blogs, newspapers, and networks mindlessly posting every press release and trailer about the film, it's time for those who believe in justice for Jack Kirby and his family to kick things up a notch as well. As Bissette notes, "The thought of sitting through another bloated multi-million dollar-budgeted charade about how “it’s right to fight for justice” when Marvel/Disney can’t cough up the equivalent of, say, one day’s shooting budget for catering or grips to toss a bone to Jack’s heirs—well, that act of enduring that film isn’t at all attractive or appealing to me any longer on any level." Check it out!

ITEM! Finally, the court case that really started this, involving the Kirby children's attempt to reassert copyright over the characters Jack Kirby created and co-created for Marvel, is now under appeal. Daniel Best has posted the actual legal document submitted by the Kirby lawyer here. It's a fairly long document with some legal language, but it argues some points about the original judgement and the evidence the judge ignored, in addition to introducing new arguments about the behavior of Marvel and Stan Lee. Well worth reading!