You may know about the legal problems that have been plaguing the Superman character for roughly the past year. Long story short, the family of Jerry Siegel, one of Superman's 1938 creators, has decided they want to regain the rights to the character, which DC apparently assigned to Siegel "forever," according to Variety (you know the DC execs must be cursing the company's 1938 management right now). The Siegels won the lawsuit, successfully regaining the rights to many (but not all) aspects of Superman, and the ruling is set to go into effect in 2013. Oh, and when the estate of of co-creator Joe Shuster found out about this, they got in on the deal, too.

This is all bad, but not catastrophic, news for DC Comics and Warner Bros., their parent company. Basically, it means that they'll probably have to cough up a wad of cash to continue using the character as freely as they have been. Yeah, it sucks, but that's just how it is. The rights were legally signed to someone else. This is what happens when you want to get them back, regardless of whether the legal rightsholders are just being greedy.

But this is where things get ridiculous. Instead of eating the loss and moving on, Warner Bros. is now making sneaky legal maneuvers to try to hurt the other side's case. Deadline Hollywood has reported that the company is now suing the Siegel and Shuster lawyer directly, regarding some tangential matter of his own financial interest in Superman. Warner Bros.' goal, it seems, is to create a sort of conflict of interest that would force the opposing lawyer off the Superman litigation (there's also some talk of the company stealing documents from the lawyer, but that's currently a he-said/she-said situation). Basically, Warner Bros. is playing things dirty to try to retain the rights to Superman when it seems they don't have legal claim to those rights.

What does this mean? It means that Superman is apparently not a character to use for storytelling purposes because everyone's treating him like he's just a source of income. Neither side of this legal battle seems to have the interests of the character and his creators' legacies at heart. The Siegel and Shuster parties just want to get money from Superman, and Warner Bros. is going to absurd lengths to avoid having to pay for full use of the character. There's obviously nothing wrong with Warner Bros. fighting these claims, but they would likely be better off doing so in a straightforward, honest manner (aside from the fact that that would be the morally right thing to do). If they did this, things could end sooner, and they could get back to work, focusing their time and energy on putting out good stories (regardless of whether they win or lose). Instead, they're devoting inordinate amounts of that time and energy trying to devise ways to avoid having to cough up some cash. Superman deserves better than this.