Copyright does not have to be defended. If you let an individual infraction lapse for a certain time after learning about it, you lose the right to sue for that particular infraction, but the copyright remains yours. It’s the reason fanfic and the like is allowed to exist- it’s at the company’s discretion and some cases aren’t worth pursuing.

Trademarks are what you have to defend vigorously or lose, and this is where it can get confusing because to an extent the images and insignia of many DC characters are trademarked.

No need to be rude, double-A. Certainly, one thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other. If DC wanted to jump into the digital distribution wagon, I’m pretty sure they’d do it themselves and wouldn’t need to re-scan the comics they already have in high-quality digital format.
And Stacks’ work, even if illegal, looks really damn good. I didn’t know about that copyright knot that Kurt talked about, but if once solved, I’d trow my money at some official Stacks’ statue.

As I understand it, they don’t have the rights to it.

They can’t make a deal to allow someone to do statues of Julie Newmar as Catwoman, because those rights are tangled up between Fox, Warner Bros. and DC (and presumably Newmar), and DC can’t just straighten it out by sheer will. They can’t produce Batman TV-show-related stuff themselves, either, without getting sued by Fox.

But they also can’t allow other people to make unlicensed Catwoman statues without harming their own trademark, whether those statues look like Newmar or not.

It’s not that DC is “pretending [the Batman show] never happened,” it’s that the rights are tangled up among larger companies that haven’t reached an agreement that would allow DC to do anything with that material.

That’s why (I assume) the new King Tut in BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL isn’t a thing like the TV character. King Tut is a historical figure and thus in the public domain, but the King Tut from the Batman TV show is tangled up in a rights dispute. So they can base a character on the historical Tut, but not on the Victor Buono Tut.

kdb

re: Geoff Johns – I’m with Irwin. Batman, Green Lantern, et al are children’s comic book characters and stories should be reasonably fit for younger readers. There are plenty of venues for adult-oriented material. The problem is that most creators can’t write a story that doesn’t involve tights and violence, but they want to tell everyone they are creating “adult” material, so they ratchet up the violence and T&A. To me, it’s the equivalent of having Archie characters snort coke and have abortions.

There’s probably time to fix that, but only if the inclination is there.

Yes, I remember how upsetting it was when Grandma’s head was punched off and viscera was strewn all over her sitting room. Or when Uncle Earl had someone poke their fingers through his eyes, into his brain, and out the back of his head. THAT was a bear to clean up, lemme tell ya.