Hail The Victor! (Quick, Get On His Good Side!)

It's funny how Hollywood news sites change their tone when they see who the winner of a dispute is.

When Tony Moore initially sued Robert Kirkman, I don't recall there being a lot of bias in the reporting. They treated it as a serious challenge that might have merits.

Now that the lawsuit is settled with Kirkman apparently retaining control?

Not so unbiased.

Look at the phrasing of the opening line:

Kirkman settles litigation with a childhood friend who was trying to grab co-control over the lucrative zombie franchise.

Then there are the additional lines that are too cute, not by half, but by three-quarters, as they find ways to jam in "walking", "dead" and "killing".

The smoke has cleared with Kirkman emerging victorious in Hollywood's eyes. Let the treating of the plaintiff's cause as frivolous commence!

Kirkman Manifesto: Fuck Over Your Friends?

Wow. Tony Moore is suing Robert Kirkman because, he alleges, his old friend duped him into an agreement that put control of their Walking Dead property in Kirkman's hands, with little of the promised monies making their way to Moore and absolutely no access to the books to insure honest profit-sharing.

Don't write for the corporations, but profit like them by screwing over others.

SCHWAPP!!! Kirkman Manifesto Deleted Scenes Pt 1

I've dug up the unedited Kirkman footage. I can't run the whole thing in one YouTube, due to length. So here's the first part.

Maybe Instead Of Speechifying... Part Deux

Mike Sterling over on Progressive Ruin brought up the Walking Dead:

The first volume, reprinting the initial issues of one of Image Comics' precious few success stories in recent memory. The keystone of a whole series of paperback books reprinting this popular series. A series that recently released its 50th issue to much attention.

The first volume, unavailable. For most of the summer.

I had a number of customers looking to start reading Walking Dead, having heard the hype and read the reviews/interviews and so on. Normally, that first volume is an easy sell...it's only $9.99, and it has a lot of good word of mouth, so it doesn't take much to get someone to try it out. But it's only an easy sell if I have any to sell. And because I haven't had any copies to sell, those are lost sales. I've plenty of volumes 2 through 8, but a new reader's not going to want to jump in with the second volume. S/he wants to start from the beginning, and if I don't have the beginning, I don't have that new reader.

I dunno, Robert...maybe instead of shooting off some crackpot shit that you maybe gave two minutes thought before yelling action at your camera (for no apparent reason because you were the director and cast)...you should have been working on resolving this type of problem.

You know...so that retailers like Sterling would have copies of the first trade around when your perennially late product had its landmark 50th issue.

I could be wrong. I'm just passionate about this and I'm trying to save the industry...from your attention deficit disorder. ;)



FYI: as far as I know, Mr. Sterling isn't bringing this up with the intention of having it used as evidence that Kirkman needs to spend more time straightening his own shit out instead of making sweeping generalizations about how people should work or thinking ideas he came up with during one session on the crapper might save comic books. That's just me.

Maybe Instead Of Speechifying...

From Brian Hibbs over at CBR:

However, for publishers other than Marvel and DC, we don't have a FOC, which means we're on the hook for that material. Further complicating this is that not all publishers are producing work on a timely basis, and Diamond allows them some 60-90 days leeway; and for a brokered publisher like, say, Image, it's up to that publisher to decide what the "grace period" actually is. For example, this week we're receiving "The Walking Dead" #51. But the current "Previews" catalog is soliciting "The Walking Dead" #57. That means there are six issues of that series in the pipeline. While it is possible that Image will make the "late" issues returnable, it's pretty rare that this actually happens.

Maybe Monsieur Kirkman needs to be working on fixing his issues with late product?