Toon Zone Talkback - Ruby-Spears & Kroffts Team to Develop Jack Kirby Characters

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Apparently Jack Kirby used to get bored when he was sitting around at Ruby-Spears working on Thundarr the Barbarian. So he would create amazing concepts for cartoon shows and toy lines. Hundreds of illustrations that just sat in a box somewhere. The New York Times has an article about the Ruby-Spears founders and Sid and Marty Krofft finally digging these out and planning to finally develop them into cartoons, games, comics and anything else they can do with them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/movies/13kirby.html

kirbyslide5.jpg


Be sure to click through the slideshow. Some of the concepts, like the Gargoids and Malagar, look incredible.

There's not likely to be a messy copyright dispute over this stuff. According to the article Kirby had a clear work for hire contract with Ruby-Spears, so this stuff belongs to them.

The stuff itself looks a lot better to me than the latter day Kirby characters that were dredged up for the Topps comics for "Kirbyverse" series like Bombast. This stuff has a wider range than just superheroes and shows more energy and excitement.
 
Comic Book Resources has posted an interview with Marty Krofft, Ken Spears, and former Ruby-Spears, Krofft, and ABC development executive Bonnie Dore about their discovery and development plans for a series of production artwork by the late Jack Kirby (read rabroad News' earlier coverage here). Among other topics, the three discuss how these works were discovered, their tentative development plans for the work, and when they hope to bring some completed material from the trove of Kirby's works. The article also includes three exclusive pieces of art from the collection.
 
Shawn, I just started a thread concerning this topic in the General Animation Discussion Forum.

And from the looks of those Gargoids pictures I saw, this would have been a perfect companion to Cartoon Network's Secret Saturdays series!

I don't mind seeing a Roxy's Raiders series! Female adventurers that kick butt, About time that girl-centered action shows and comics come back into the fold!
 
I'm all for some Ruby-Spears reworks. Quiet a few of their series were well before their time. Centuarians could make an AWESOME remake.

That being said, I'm a bit concerned about this whole lawsuit against Disney and Marvel. Without investigating it too closely, my initial knee jerk reaction is "Are you serious?". Ruby-Spears animated characters who already had clear creators by Marvel, they didn't create characters Marvel used.

I'm honestly getting a little sick of brat kids trying to claim rights to a property THEIR PARENTS worked on for a company after their parents death.
 
I gave them a quick look yesterday and they looked pretty cool. Some of the drawings look very un-Kirby like at first but there are certain things he does that make it his no doubt. Foot placement is one thing that I noticed as well as those slashy lines he would use to indicate muscles. I'll give them a longer look but this is an awesome find.
 
I kinda see this as a tough sell since it's hard to tell weather these lost characters have any potential, or not. Maybe some of these characters could appear in a possible 'Thundarr' revival since Kirby worked on the original series, and more people are familiar with that. Especially since most people would look at these ideas, and say 'Jack Kirby created that?'
 
Just posted another article about this where Comic Book Resources talks about these propreties with Marty Krofft, Ken Spears, and a former exec who worked with both. Includes three new pieces of artwork.


I'm not sure if this is a tangent or a concern about the Ruby-Spears/Krofft work being discussed, but that case doesn't apply here because Ruby-Spears has a contract that establishes that Kirby's work was all work-for-hire, meaning the studio owns it free-and-clear. The original NY Times article and most of the coverage afterwards makes that point explicitly.

There has been much discussion about that case in this thread. I think your view of the situation unduly screws Kirby's estate out of what he's due considering all that he created, but I go into more details in that thread and I'd rather not repeat myself ;).

EDIT: As for the announcement and the work itself, I have to say I'm a bit ambivalent about it for a few reasons. For starters, "development" means next to nothing. Wake me up when there's actual product to deal with. And, along those lines, I'm not sure if anyone could really take on the kinds of concepts and mindset of something by Jack Kirby without some degree of reverence and deference to the man, which is the exact opposite of what he probably would have wanted. He's been quoted as saying that he didn't want people to imitate him -- he wanted people to come up with their OWN Captain Americas and X-Men and Fantastic Fours. I'm concerned we're going to get warmed over Kirby leftovers. I want (and I think he wanted) something that will knock my socks off with the kind of energy and creativity Kirby had at his peak, but with something totally new and different. On top of that, to be honest, his later-day stuff was definitely the least of his work.

I'm also ambivalent about the declaration that Ruby-Spears have a work-for-hire contract that says they own this stuff and can do what they want with it. That just means it's legal for them to do whatever they like and reap whatever financial benefit ensues without giving Kirby (or his estate) a dime. The legality of the issue has nothing to do with why I side with the Kirby estate over Marvel while they do the exact same thing, so I can't really say that I'm too thrilled that Ruby-Spears has a piece of paper that gives them the legal right to do it. If you're going to blast out, "HEY, LOOK AT US, WORLD, WE HAVE STUFF CREATED BY JACK KIRBY!!!!" I think the least you can do is kick back a bit to his estate for the privilege. Otherwise, I see no moral distinction between the claim that his kids are just greedy money grubbers riding on their father's reputation and media companies doing the exact same thing. As I understand it, DC pays his estate royalties on all his work that they reprint even though they don't HAVE to, which is why I own lots of DC reprints of Kirby work but not as much of it by Marvel.

But, on the flip side, "More Kirby == More Better" is a pretty good rule to live by and some of the concepts sound cool, at least. That's not a lot to work with vs. the stuff that gives me pause.

Also, for the record, I don't care much about Thundarr one way or the other, but it seems that more than a few people think this will be a better sell by tying it to a revival of that property. See above about what Kirby thought of people continuing/expanding/"building on" his work.
 
I understand the whole concept of "Work-for-Hire", however, its hard to claim such a thing when you are using characters that were made by others.

They can claim ownership over concepts, ideas and whatnot they created, but they can't claim ownership over said characters. Next thing we'll see Ruby-Spears claim they own Superman >.< It's not like Superman hasn't already been drug through the mud enough with IP issues.

I'd like to see claims made to Hasbro about how Ruby-Spears owns G.I. Joe because they did a season or so of it. Hasbro protects their IP like no other.

IP issues almost always only hurt the viewer =(
 
Not to mention the other Krofft titles created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears (i.e. Wonderbug, Bigfoot and Wild Boy).

As for planned projects, I'd take Golden Shield over that crappy 2012 film any day.
 
Seriously! I see an update of EW and DG where the two protagonists are sisters who fight crime together. And, those damn ElectraComps need to be shrunk down, not to mention Lori and Judy having actual superpowers that they were born with, and better outfits to wear!

Bigfoot and Wildboy are the male monster versions of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. These guys are brothers who share a relationship similar to the one shared by Zak Saturday and his Cryptid brothers. Oniy one has superhuman strength, while the other has superhuman speed and agility. Both are intelligent and able to speak.

Wonderbug, on the other hand, would have electronic abilities similar to any known vehicle character in the last thirty years (Knight Rider, Turbo Teen, Transformers, etc.), But I think Wonderbug becomes some sort of mecha that the driver can wear and transforms into the dune buggy mode when not fighting crime. Also, a racing theme could be established where Wonderbug competes in off-road races in different terrains across the globe!

Kenny :cool:
 
I'm afraid the second half of that sentence means you don't really understand the concept of "work-for-hire." That's EXACTLY what a work-for-hire contract means, and this is also why it's such a big deal that Marvel apparently can't produce a work-for-hire contract that Kirby signed for all that work he did for them. If they could, that entire lawsuit vanishes overnight.

Bruce Timm and Paul Dini created Harley Quinn for BTAS, and Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer created Livewire for STAS, but neither one owns the characters they created. I am sure that DC can produce a work-for-hire contract for all of them, which means anything they create is the property of DC Comics and the sole compensation they are entitled to receive for their work is limited to their salary and benefits at the time. Bryan Konietzko and Mike DiMartino created the world and characters of Avatar the Last Airbender, but Nickelodeon owns the whole thing and they can do anything they want with it.

Any work that Ruby-Spears did for G.I. Joe cartoons is different because Hasbro licensed the characters and concepts to Ruby-Spears. Watch the end credits of one of those shows and you will find fine-print legalese that says it's copyright Hasbro and everything you just saw is their intellectual property. You could say that the Ruby-Spears studio was doing work-for-hire for Hasbro, though I don't know what the exact legalese was in that relationship (actually, I didn't know R-S ever did any work on a G.I. Joe cartoon). Most animation studios doing advertisements or handling outsourced animation duties are doing work-for-hire.

I think saying "IP issues only hurt the viewer" is also a rather selfish viewpoint to take, since IP law is the only thing that ensures a creator can be compensated fairly for their work. If not for IP law, J.K. Rowling would still live in poverty while Scholastic would be raking in millions (if not billions by now) on her Harry Potter novels. I don't think any of that "hurt" any of her fans.
 
I thought Sunbow/Marvel produced 'G.I. Joe' for Hasbro. Did Joe Ruby, and Ken Spears have some involvement in the first season as side work away from their own studio?
 
I get where Ed is coming from and, yeah, reading the CBR interview you really do get a feel that they've just decided now would be a good time to exploit what might be one of the few remaining properties they have to exploit.

But I still prefer it to this stuff being thrown away or sitting in a box forever. If nothing comes of it but a nice art book, that's fine with me. I'm really skeptical of their abilities to turn this stuff into cartoons and movies, but there are a few comic guys out there that could take some of these designs and turn out comics worth reading. No one should or could try to be Kirby, but perhaps his wild energy and enthusiasm could be used as a springboard for an interesting comic book experiment.

Also, the art itself is just more exciting than a lot of Jack's later comic book stuff is. It's no Silver Surfer or New Gods, but it's no Bombast either.
 
Ok, you know what .... I actually made a mistake thinking this was the kids of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears suing over their works >.<

I have a great deal of respect for Ruby Spears and general and I hate to see that name drug through the mud.

Some how I had a disconnect that this was still the Jack Kirby case >.
 
The "Arise, Serpentor, Arise" arc was the start of season 2, but I also don't think it matters. I think launchpad20 is right: G.I. Joe was always produced by Marvel/Sunbow, and Ruby-Spears never worked on it. I certainly can't find any reference to either individual or the studio as a whole having anything to do with the animated show, but I also haven't had a chance to throw my DVDs in the player (or even watch "Arise, Serpentor, Arise" again) to verify that. There was a handover of the story editing duties from Steve Gerber to (I think) Buzz Dixon after season 1 wrapped, but I don't think there was any real change in the animation staff.

Getting back on topic, I did finally look at the concept art on the Times website, and that's Jack Kirby, all right. "Roxie's Raiders" is almost hilariously over-Kirby-ed, mostly because of the midget and the cowboy with really huge hands. It's almost like he was parodying himself. Unfortunately, most of the rest don't really strike me as anything hugely inspired as concepts (though Golden Shield is pretty damn cool), but I also think all of them could work well enough as shows with the right execution. I'm also mildly amused by the fact that every single woman in all the material is a redhead.

I think I'm looking forward to the art book most, though. Since Mark Evanier is involved, I'm fairly certain that Kirby's estate will get something out of it, while I can't say the same about anything that comes out of the Ruby-Spears/Krofft alliance. But we'll see.
 
I started to reply to this until I realized it's off-topic and needs to be discussed elsewhere, like the Entertainment forum.

Even suggesting it as an animated series is still off-topic from this thread. This thread is about Kirby's work and Ruby/Spears/Krofft's attempts to exploit it. Any further off-topic speculation about anything other than the Kirby stuff will be deleted or moved to a more appropriate forum.

You don't just "get a feel" for it. Ken Spears admits they're exploiting it:

It makes me a little ill that he just blatantly says it that way. Way to go, Ken. You just pithed off the entire Kirby fandom and the Kirby estate as well.

Krofft also makes the greatest overstatement and exaggeration of his career by saying, "...we've done everything first class in our whole careers." If "low budget", "campy," "corny," and "cheesy" equal "first class", they need to change the dictionary definition.

And then Krofft has the gall to add, "And now we have a chance to honor the great legacy of Jack Kirby in a way that has some real class and dignity." If by "honor", he means "exploit for profit" so Kirby gets a byline, the Kirby estate gets nothing, the fans get yet another mediocre big-budget CGFX extravaganza, and the IP holders rake in the profits. Furthermore, I see very few of the Krofft productions having much to do with "class" or "dignity."

It's very difficult to see their handling of Kirby creations with class or dignity after the travesty that was "Land of the Lost" (2009). If they did that with their own creation, I shudder to think what they'll do with Kirby's.
 
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