Slade Wilson27

On 6/21/2014 at 7:09 AM, vane said:

 

 

There was an recent interview done this year with the granddaughter of the creator of Wonder Woman,

 

It seems the Marston estate still owns the right.

 

 

I understand that your family still owns Wonder Woman. Does that mean that DC Comics needs the family's approval for all Wonder Woman stories and products?

 

Yes, they need family approval before any decisions are made.

 

Have you been interviewed before about this?

 

Never!

 

http://noblemania.blogspot.com/2014/04/granddaughter-of-wonder-womans-creator.html

 

That interview isn’t correct I believe because there was a similar one where it states. This 

I was told that your family still owns Wonder Woman. Does that mean that DC Comics needs the family’s approval for all Wonder Woman stories and products?

No, DC/Warner Bros. has full artistic control. The Marston family has zero input. Since Gram died in 1993, DC has been delighted with the silence from the family… (Hahaha—you’ve hit on one of my pet peeves! I would most certainly not be quiet if I had the choice; that decision, however, is not mine to make.)
Which confirms DC’s ownership but then the Marston family never owned Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman was a work done for hire. There is no way they could have. Wonder Woman was always fully owned by DC  in her 80 years of existence. But it’s just that dc could have lost that ownership of her if she wasn’t kept in print for long enough 

https://www.noblemania.com/2014/05/interview-with-another-granddaughter-of.html?m=1

On 6/20/2014 at 7:11 PM, Crimebuster said:

 

 

They couldn't cancel it!

 

At the time, DC did not own Wonder Woman. They had a contract with the Martson estate that stipulated they had to publish a certain number of Wonder Woman comics every year or else the contract would end and the rights would revert fully back to Marston. DC couldn't ever let that happen, of course, because the estate could then rent the rights out to Marvel or something. So in order to protect themselves, they had to publish Wonder Woman regardless of how bad sales got.

 

It's my understanding this relationship continued well into the late 80's at least, which is the reason we got the Trina Robbins/Kurt Busiek Wonder Woman mini-series that came out between the end of the original series and the launch of the Perez reboot - DC had to publish Wonder Woman comics under their deal with the Marston estate.

 

Busiek explained this in an interview about the series:

 

"The book came about because, back at that time, DC’s legal deal regarding Wonder Woman was that they needed to publish at least four issues a year of something headlining Wonder Woman, with her as the main character and with the logo prominent and all, or the rights to the character would revert to the Marston Estate. It could be issues of WONDER WOMAN, of SENSATION COMICS featuring Wonder Woman as the lead, whatever, but there had to be at least four issues a year. I’m told that since then things have changed, but I don’t know the details."

 

I believe DC and the estate eventually reached some sort of buyout deal giving DC full ownership, but I'm not sure of the details either.

That’s not entirely true. D.C. always fully owned Wonder Woman but It came at a cost where they had to keep her in print for a certain amount of time otherwise the rights of the character would go to the family. Wonder Woman was never bought buy DC. It makes no sense. She was done on work for hire. 
what happened is that in 

In an October 25, 1940, interview with the Family Circle magazine, William Moulton Marston discussed the unfulfilled potential of the comic book medium.This article caught the attention of comics publisher Max Gaines,who hired Marston as an educational consultant for DC. One of the editors told William to make a hero. Marston went back home to his wife and said that he wanted to create a superhero. The wife said it should be a woman since there were too many superheroes. William agreed and his exacts word to create Wonder Woman were

Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.

— William Moulton Marston

Wonder Woman was created to essentially be a female superman. That’s literally what he said it was done on work for hire. But then there was contract that he made with dc that at the same time was understandable and not understandable lol. 
 

Who gets hired by a company and then that very same company tells you to make a character FOR THEM but then after a few years before you unexpectedly die you make a contract which essentially threatens the company’s ownership of a character that you created FOR THEM. It makes no sense. Who does that?

the contract was this:

“Negotiated before his death in 1947, his heirs retain small royalties from all Wonder Woman related creations and merchandise. Also there is a reversion of rights clause that states if DC Comics does not publish for one month any Wonder Woman comic book, the rights to the Wonder Woman character and related merchandise, past, current, and future revert to his family. Effectively, this means that if DC Comics became so poor that they could only publish one comic book a month, it would have to be Wonder Woman, or else they would lose her to Marston's family.”

So no DC always owned Wonder Woman they never bought her. That makes no sense she was literally done on work for hire. They ended the contract which threatened their ownership of her. They’ve owned her from day one since her creation  because I mean she was literally a WORK-FOR-HIRE. Work for hires are corporate owned. I mean her name wasn’t even originally Wonder Woman. It was “Suprema the Wonder Woman” but then max Gaines told Marston to shorten it to “Wonder Woman.