Asterix
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Legal | Anime producer and distributor Funimation Entertainment issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice to the webhost of AnimesFree demanding that the fansub site remove more than 1,000 infringing episodes of more than 40 series. The site’s administrator complied, and then complained about the company enforcing its copyrights: “AnimesFree.com will continue just as STRONGLY as it has been these past three months. Meeting everyone new on the website was great and I don’t intend for it to stop anytime soon. So we’re not going to quit just because of a few dozen series. There’s two things that you can do when a bully pushes you down. You either stay down and cower, or you stand back up and fight until you can’t walk anymore. There are just some things that the ‘Anime’ corporate giants will never understand about how people rely on online Anime communities.” The commenters on the post aren’t particularly sympathetic to the administrator’s plight. [AnimesFree, via Deb Aoki]
Rich Hafstead
Retailing | Heidi MacDonald reports that Rich Hafstead, partner in the Jim Hanley’s Universe chain in New York City, passed away Oct. 9. He had been semi-retired since suffering a heart attack in 2006. [The Beat]
Retailing | A 10-year-old girl is in a coma after she was trapped Tuesday under shelves that collapsed in a bookstore in Sapporo, Japan. The girl’s 14-year-old sister also was injured. The store, Daily Books, sells secondhand manga and video games. [The Japan Times, The Mainichi Daily News]
Legal | In light of recent legal moves by the heirs of Jerry Siegel and Jack Kirby, Christopher Murray and Paul Iannicelli consider the termination provisions of the 1976 Copyright Act. [ Mondaq]
- October 14, 2009 @ 07:58 AM by Kevin Melrose
Family fight erupts over the future of Asterix
Asterix and Obelix
The daughter of Asterix co-creator Albert Uderzo is publicly criticizing her father for selling his stake in the books’ publisher to Hachette Livre, and authorizing the company to continue the series after his death.
“Today, I’m rebelling,” Sylvie Uderzo wrote in the French newspaper Le Monde. “Why? Because Asterix is my paper brother. I find myself entering into battle against, perhaps, Asterix’s worst enemies — the men of industry and finance.”
Albert Uderzo, now 81, created the enormously popular Asterix in 1959 with the late writer Rene Goscinny. Editions Albert Rene was founded in 1979, two years after Goscinny’s death.
The sale last month to Hachette, approved by Goscinny’s daughter Anne, gives the French publishing giant a 60-percent stake in Asterix. The remaining 40 percent remains with Sylvie Uderzo, who claims her father previously had intended the comic to end once he dies.
She blames her father’s advisers for pushing him into a “180 degree turn.”
The Asterix albums have been translated into 107 languages, and have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.
- January 14, 2009 @ 10:12 AM by Kevin Melrose