legal
Bar Harbor Batman arrested over April Fool’s joke gone wrong
Bar Harbor Batman
If you’re one of those men who just wants to watch the world burn, it’s probably better if you don’t post about it on Facebook.
Maine’s Bangor Daily News reports that 35-year-old Christopher Schwartz, the self-styled Bar Harbor Batman — “A Beacon of light in a bleak and otherwise dismal world” — was arrested Sunday after posting a Joker-esque April Fool’s prank demanding “payment of 1 million Dollars or I will Blow up the Hospital. Once the funds are secured, Private Message me for Further Instruction.”
Although Schwartz reportedly tried to explain to police that the post was a joke, he was taken to Hancock County Jail on a charge of terrorizing, and later released on $1,000 bail. It seems Wayne Manor is located uncomfortably close to Mount Desert Island Hospital, leading the Bar Harbor Police Department to take the post seriously.
- April 2, 2012 @ 01:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Arizona legislature passes bill censoring electronic speech
Arizona state flag
Legal | The Arizona legislature passed a sweeping bill last week that would make it a crime to communicate via electronic means speech that is intended to “annoy,” “offend,” “harass” or “terrify.” While the law was intended to update the state’s telephone harassment laws to encompass the Internet, it’s not limited to one-to-one communications and thus, as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund notes, could criminalize “all manner of writing, cartoons, and other protected material the state finds offensive or annoying.” Media Coalition, a trade association that includes the CBLDF among its members, has sent a letter to Gov. Jan Brewer urging her to veto the bill. [Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Media Coalition]
Passings | Rex Babin, editorial cartoonist for the Sacramento Bee and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, has died of cancer. [The Daily Cartoonist]
- April 2, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Warner Bros. seeks trial in high-stakes Superman rights battle
From Action Comics #1
In a bid to retain full ownership of the Man of Steel, Warner Bros. filed a brief on Friday asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a 2008 decision that granted the heirs of Jerry Siegel half the rights to the original Superman story, and to enforce a deal abandoned by the writer’s family seven years earlier. If the 9th Circuit chooses not to rule, the studio wants the case to be remanded to a district court for trial.
In its 117-page brief, Warner Bros. seeks to overturn the earlier ruling that terminated the transfer of copyright to the Superman story in 1938′s Action Comics #1 under the 1976 Copyright Act. The 2008 decision allowed the Siegel family to reclaim many of the Man of Steel’s defining elements, including his costume, Lois Lane, his origin and secret identity — paving the way for the estate of artist Joe Shuster to do the same in 2013 — while leaving Warner Bros. and DC Comics with such later additions as Lex Luthor, kryptonite and Jimmy Olsen. As Hollywood, Esq. reports, the Siegel heirs appealed in December 2011, arguing they should have been permitted to recapture the rights in later Superman comics, which they contend Siegel and Shuster created “on spec,” and then sold to DC for $10 a page.
- March 27, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Longtime New York cartoonist Al Ross passes away
Al Ross' 1944 self-portrait
Passings | Al Ross, the longtime New Yorker cartoonist who had more than 600 gag cartoons published in the magazine, passed away March 22 in the Bronx. He was 100. Ross had his first cartoon published in The New Yorker in 1937. Tom Spurgeon offers an obituary, while The New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff posts his own tribute. [The New York Times]
Creators | Underground cartoonist S. Clay Wilson underwent surgery last week due to complications from an accumulation of spinal fluid on the brain. According to cartoonist Justin Green, the prognosis is good, “meaning that he can be expected to stay alive without drastic cognitive impairment in the near future.” Green also shares details on a trust fund that’s been set up for Wilson and his wife Lorraine. Wilson fell and suffered a severe head injury in November of 2008. [Justin Green Cartoon Art] Continue Reading »
- March 27, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by JK Parkin
Stan Lee Media loses appeal, sees hope for lawsuit against namesake
Stan Lee
Stan Lee Media, which just last month lost its bid to reclaim the rights to Conan the Barbarian, has been dealt another setback as an appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision preventing the failed dot-com from intervening in Stan Lee’s decade-old lawsuit against Marvel as part of an effort to gain control of the writer’s most famous co-creations.
However, Hollywood, Esq. reports the company hopes today’s ruling by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals will pave the way for pending action in California against its namesake and co-founder, whom it claims improperly transferred rights to such characters as Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Avengers and Thor from Stan Lee Media to Marvel. A judge had stayed the lawsuit last year pending the 2nd Circuit decision.
Lee sued Marvel back in 2002, claiming the company breached a conditional assignment of his copyright in Spider-Man when it failed to pay him 10 percent of profits from Columbia Pictures’ Spider-Man movie. He received a partial summary judgment before entering into a confidential agreement with Marvel. Stan Lee Media attempted to intervene in the dispute as the real party of interest, but was rejected by the judge because the company had gone into bankruptcy the previous year, and none of the shareholders could demonstrate they had legal standing or the authority to represent SLM.
- March 21, 2012 @ 02:00 PM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Ryan Matheson speaks on Canadian manga case
From a CBLDF campaign
Legal | Ryan Matheson, who was stopped at the Canadian border in 2010 and charged with criminal possession of child pornography because of a manga image on his computer (which even the officials who arrested him couldn’t agree was child pornography), talks about his ordeal in a personal statement on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund site. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund announced Thursday that the Canadian government has dropped all criminal charges against Matheson. [CBLDF]
Comics | Leah Moore sees two things: a huge number of women who like comics, and a comics industry that is in serious trouble, and thinks it’s time to connect the dots and start making comics that appeal to the other 50% of the audience. “Okay, well, let’s say, instead of jumping in and writing comics designed to attract women readers (Minx comics discovered this is harder than it looks), how’s about writing comics which don’t actually put women off? How’s about a bit less objectifying, a bit less sexualisation, a bit less pervy gusset shots and tit windows? Just a bit? Make some of the regular mainstream big name books everyone enjoys reading a bit less eyewatering and weird about women. That would be a great start.” [Warren Ellis]
- March 16, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Elected official presses charges over cartoonist’s gag
Wisconsin state assemblyman Steve Nass (R-La Grange) has filed criminal charges against political cartoonist Mike Konopacki, claiming that Konopacki’s use of Nass’ letterhead for a gag press release constitutes a felony.
It all started when Nass pressured officials at the University of Wisconsin’s School for Workers to cancel an arts festival, “The Art of Protest,” that would have featured cartoons and other works of art inspired by the labor protests that took place in the state last year. The school called off the festival after Nass and his chief of staff, Mike Mikalsen, threatened to cut the school’s funding. Mikalsen said upfront that Nass feels the funding for the school should be cut altogether, and added, “But we mostly reminded them that Rep. Nass and other Republicans are working closely with UW-Extension on WiscNet and some other pretty important issues, and that if this issue were to go bad and upset conservatives and our supporters around the state, we’d have a problem working together.”
In other words: Nice little school you’ve got there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to the funding.
- March 14, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
McFarlane to pay Gaiman $382,000 following Spawn settlement [Updated]
Todd McFarlane will pay Neil Gaiman $382,000 in the wake of the settlement in January of their nearly decade-long legal battle over the rights to Medieval Spawn, Angela and other characters.
According to documents obtained by Daniel Best, a federal bankruptcy judge last week ordered the release of the funds placed into escrow in 2008 under McFarlane’s reorganization plan to offset potential losses from the lawsuit. Todd McFarlane Productions filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2004 following the $15 million court award to former NHL player Tony Twist, who sued over the use of his name in Spawn for the mob enforcer Antonio “Tony Twist” Twistelli. McFarlane and Twist settled in 2007 for $5 million.
Best notes that with interest, Gaiman should receive somewhere around $464,000, although much of that will likely go to legal expenses. The writer has publicly stated that he gives money won in the proceedings to charity.
The agreement reached in late January gives Gaiman 50-percent ownership of Spawn #9 and #26, as well as the three issues of the 1994 Angela miniseries, ending a fierce court fight over the characters he and McFarlane created together some two decades ago. A federal jury had already found in 2002 that Gaiman has a copyright interest in the characters, but the subsequent bankruptcy of Todd McFarlane Productions left the writer unpaid. McFarlane was dealt another blow in 2010, when a federal judge ruled that Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany are mere derivatives of Medieval Spawn and Angela, meaning that Gaiman is also the co-owner of those copyrights and entitled to one-half of the profits generated by the characters.
UPDATE: Gaiman wrote on Twitter, “that simply says the escrow money has come out of escrow. I could have been paid none of it or ten times it.”
- March 2, 2012 @ 08:00 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Comic-Con badges go on sale Saturday
Comic-Con International
Comic-Con | Badges for Comic-Con International go on sale online Saturday at 8 a.m. PT for those who met the Feb. 28 deadline to register for Member IDs. Emails were sent out Thursday directing those with Member IDs to the specific Event Planning International Corp web address. Organizers instituted the registration system this year in an attempt to make the notoriously problematic badge-purchasing process go more smoothly: Everyone — attendee, volunteer, professional or press — who intends to purchase or apply for a convention badge must first have a Member ID. Comic-Con will be held July 12-15 at the San Diego Convention Center. [Comic-Con International]
Community | If you helped Mike Meyer, the mentally disabled man whose entire Superman collection was stolen last year, NPR would like to talk to you. After the theft, comics fans sent hundreds of Superman items to Meyer to replace the ones that were stolen. Eventually the original collection was retrieved, and Meyer shared most of the donated items with a local children’s hospital. NPR interviewed Meyer for its State of the Re:Union show and would like to talk to donors large and small as well. Contact details are at the link. [ComicsAlliance]
- March 2, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Comics of ‘nerdiest meth king ever’ auctioned for $125K
Aaron Castro
Crime | The 18,753 comics in the collection of a Colorado drug kingpin — dubbed the “nerdiest meth king ever” by the Denver Post — sold for $125,050 at an online auction held by the U.S. Marshals Service. Prosecutors say Aaron Castro, who was sentenced in November to 45 years in prison on drug and extortion charges, planned to launder profits from a major methamphetamine distribution ring by opening a comic store. (According to forfeiture documents, he even stashed some of his meth in his comics collection). Castro reportedly became so obsessive about his collection that he “began to struggle with money because he would spend his drug money on comic books.” Proceeds from the auction will go into either a special account to fund forfeiture actions, or to law-enforcement agencies that assisted in the Castro case. [Denver Post]
- March 1, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | Putting ‘Panel Parity’ into practice; JManga goes global
X-Club #3
Creators | Novelist and X-Club writer Simon Spurrier recounts how he gave up his seat on a panel at last weekend’s London Super ComicCon to creator Tammy Taylor, in the spirit of “Panel Parity”: “Paul’s idea is that you can’t expect true gender parity in comics unless you create the conditions to facilitate it. Even if one has to dabble in positive discrimination, even if one must expect outraged cries of ‘tokenism!,’ ‘political correctness gone mad!,’ ‘patronising cockcentric condescension!,’ it’s worth it. So Paul created a movement he called ‘Panel Parity’ in which he planned to exercise the only real power he has – like any of us in the weird world of industry conventions – to make a difference. Paul pledged that whenever he’s invited onto a panel which doesn’t feature at least 50% women, he’ll surrender his own seat to a female speaker. Even if that means tracking down someone less ‘well-suited’ to discussing the topic at hand than himself. Even if it means disappointing people in the crowd who travelled to the show specifically to see him talk. As long as Said SheGuest is able to contribute in some way to the conversation, Paul feels her presence on stage is more valuable than his own. Which is a brave and important and splendid thing to say.” [Simon Spurrier]
- February 29, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Michael George denied retrial; DC to close forums
Michael George
Legal | A judge denied a motion for acquittal and a new trial in the case of Michael George, the former comic book store owner and convention organizer convicted of killing his wife in 1990, dismissing the defense’s argument that there was insufficient evidence for conviction. George is serving a life sentence. [Detroit Free Press]
Publishing | DC Comics announced last night it will shut down its message board in early March as part of an overhaul of the publisher’s website that will include Facebook-hosted commenting and integrated Twitter feeds. [The Source]
Creators | About 15 people threw eggs at Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks as he spoke on freedom of speech at the University of Karlstad. Vilks has raised the ire of some Muslims with his cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed. Vilks told the audience, “Insults are part of democratic society. If we begin censoring ourselves, it will mean undermining freedom of speech in the long run. I don’t think that the problem is that artists are too provocative but that we are not provocative enough.” None of the eggs hit the cartoonist, and the protestors were removed from the room. [UPI.com]
- February 23, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Not-guilty pleas in death of elderly comic collector
Legal
Legal | Rico Venditti and six other alleged members of a stolen-goods ring pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal murder and racketeering charges following a revised grand jury indictment in the July 2010 home invasion of an elderly comics collector. The victim, 78-year-old Homer Marciniak of Medina, New York, died of a heart attack a few hours after being tied up and assaulted during the robbery, which prosecutors claim was set up by Venditti and two others. [The Associated Press]
Conventions | A preview of the first Image Expo, which kicks off Friday in Oakland, California, does double duty as a profile of Image Comics. [Contra Costa Times]
Conventions | Bruce Lidl looks at the potential “Comic-Con tax” that could hit attendees as a result of the expansion of the San Diego Convention Center. [The Beat]
- February 22, 2012 @ 06:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Order of the Stick and the $1 million Kickstarter model
The Order of the Stick
Publishing | Three million-dollar Kickstarter drives, including Rich Burlew’s $1.2 million campaign for The Order of the Stick, make the fund-raising site look like a pot of gold to some folks, but it’s not that easy: Suw Charman-Anderson, who;s contemplating a Kickstarter drive herself, looks at the factors that make the big money-makers so successful. [Forbes]
Editorial cartoons | The New York Times has responded to Daryl Cagle’s criticism of its hiring policy and fees for editorial cartoonists, saying the newspaper will delay bringing political cartoons back to its Sunday review section until editors have had time to revisit their policies. [The Cagle Post]
Editorial cartoons | For those who want a look at the bigger picture, Columbia Journalism Review surveys the landscape of editorial cartooning and in particular, the economics of syndication. [Columbia Journalism Review]
- February 21, 2012 @ 07:55 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
Quote of the day | ‘They only sue when there’s money on the table’
“I just went, Robert, what you’re about to get involved in is a pain in the ass, take it from me. But there is a silver lining in that you’re doing something that matters. Because nobody ever sues anybody over something that doesn’t matter. So, you know, if your book was selling four copies, it wouldn’t matter what agreement everybody thinks they have. Nobody cares. They only sue when there’s money on the table. There’s money on the table because you’re doing something successful. You have to get a thick skin, and in a weird way, if people keep coming at you, and lawyers keep coming at you, that means you’re doing something successful, that you’re enough of a target for them.”
– Todd McFarlane, who last month settled a decade-long legal battle with Neil Gaiman, relating his advice to Robert Kirkman, who’s being sued by former Walking Dead collaborator Tony Moore
- February 20, 2012 @ 02:00 PM by Kevin Melrose