Copyright Vigilantes: Intellectual Property and the Hollywood Superhero, 1998–2018 explains superhero blockbusters as allegories of intellectual property relations. In movies based on characters owned by the comics duopoly of DC and Marvel, no narrative recurs more often than a villain’s attempt to copy the superhero's unique powers. In this volume, author Ezra Claverie explains this fixation as a symptom of the films’ mode of production. Since the 1930s, the dominant American comics publishers have treated the creations of artists and writers as work for hire, such that stories and characters become company property. Thus, publishers avoided sharing the profits both from magazine sales and from licensing characters into other media. For decades, creators have challenged this regime, demanding either shares of profits or outright ownership of their creations. Now that the duopoly rents, licenses, and adapts superheroes for increasingly expensive franchises, and for growing
