SIEGELS SUE SMALLVILLE'S SUPERBOY

[India Ink]

I think the legal argument goes that if Superboy always belonged to Siegel and not DC (or at least partially), then whatever was created under that feature (Krypto, Lana, the Legion) is therefore the property of that feature.  But you would have to argue this out in court, and there are lots of legal angles that we don't understand.  It's not a simple case.

Binder, Hamilton, et al were working for DC--therefore everything they did was work for hire. But also, Wesinger always said that he came up with these ideas (and I tend to think he probably did in a lot of cases) and told the writers what to write. Binder and Hamilton and Siegel all had their own distinctive styles and gave their own tone to the plots. But I'm not sure you can copyright tone.

By the same token, artists probably came up with ideas on the page, that the writers didn't think of. And those visual ideas would have given Weisinger further springboards he would have passed on to his writers.