CAKE
Comics A.M. | The Oatmeal vs. FunnyJunk, and problems cartoonists face
Art by Matthew Inman
Legal | Danny Bradbury takes a look at the financial and copyright aspects of online comics in an insightful article spurred by the recent dust-up between The Oatmeal and FunnyJunk. Among other things, he parses out how The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman makes $500,000 a year from his comic, why Inman and other creators object to their work being published elsewhere without attribution (and why they sometimes don’t care), the legal protections they can use (and how they sometimes fail), and how sites like Pinterest avoid the problem. There’s also an explanation of why FunnyJunk attorney Charles Carreon is suing Inman et al. on his own behalf, rather than FunnyJunk’s: “Carreon has now effectively abandoned the threat of a FunnyJunk lawsuit, stating that he was misinformed by his client. His letter claimed that all the comics had been removed from FunnyJunk, but Inman pointed out dozens that were still there.” [The Guardian]
The things people say to Julia Wertz!
Julia Wertz lays bare the indignities of the creative life in her latest comic “Things People Said to Me at Comics Conventions,” which chronicles, well, the thoughtless and occasionally hilarious things people say to her at cons. Other creators chime in with their own stories in comments.
For the record, I met Julia at MoCCA last year and had a brief, pleasant conversation with her. The thing I remember was that, unlike most creators, she is much better looking in person than her caricature of herself, and she didn’t seem the least bit grumpy, either. But maybe she was just having a good day.
Whether because she’s a glutton for punishment or she’s looking for new material, Wertz will be at CAKE in Chicago June 16-17.
(via The Beat)
