Okay, some of this news is relatively fresh and there is a ton of copyright law minutiae to parse through. That said, big stuff is going down when it comes to Marvel's characters and how much of a right Marvel has to say it's their characters. A lot of this kicked off with the estate of Steve Ditko suing for control over the copyright of the first appearance (so basically the bedrock) of Spider-Man. Ditko himself never cared much about the copyright stuff but his estate/family does, much to Marvel's chagrin. Then other heirs to popular characters started suing too as we're in a weird gap period for copyright law that allows challenges every 56 or so years or something. The big thing is if these copyrights belong to creators and Marvel or if it was all work-for-hire and Marvel doesn't share copyright. Whatever the case, as soon as it looks like Marvel has the faintest chance of losing in court they will come to a hefty financial agreement (see the case with the Kirby estate). There is bound to be more as this all develops.
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