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!

Marvel Cinematic Universe Collection: Amazon's Customer Service Win

This morning, I woke up to the following e-mail from Amazon:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,  

We're writing to let you know that the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One-Avengers Assembled Collection will not be released by Marvel as originally expected. Instead, Marvel is planning to offer a similar collection in new packaging. The new collection will include the original titles offered with the first version of the item, and is expected to be available in the spring of 2013. To make this easy for you, we updated your order for the original collection and will ship the new collection when it becomes available. The price of the new collection will be the same as the original collection.  

To show our appreciation for your understanding, we are providing you with a promo code to receive a free copy of Marvel's The Avengers (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging). To be eligible, you must have placed your order between June 1, 2012 and August 28, 2012. Any cancelled orders are not eligible to receive the free copy. Codes must be redeemed by October 15, 2012.

So, while the huge collection with whatever changed case is delayed for two seasons, I'm getting the crown jewel for free on its release.

If you pre-ordered the collection between the dates mentioned at Amazon, scour your e-mail to make sure you don't miss out.

An Exercise In Ethics

I stumbled on to ComicMix republishing the list of folks that donated (through The Hero Initiative) to help Robert Washington III's family in paying his funeral costs.

I remember it being a subject that many commercially successful websites that cover comic books covered. Many have themselves or contributors in that list, but there are some that are conspicuous in their absence.

I share the link above so that, if you're so inclined, you can reference the list versus a site you may have frequented that generated content and hits by covering it, but appear to not have donated a single penny.

Bleeding Hypocrisy

I've recently left the Bleeding Cool forums. I'm not trying to bring all of that here.

What I will bring is that, in defense of the criticism he received from myself and others, Rich Johnston took a swing at Newsarama:

As long as I'm happy with the article, yes. I can only write Bleeding Cool for an audience of one, that's how I've always worked. Once I start doing Top Tens you know I've stopped. 

Sometimes I do write articles to wind people up, but only because they are bad jokes. Bendis' Dialogue Tics for example.

Funny that.

Ten Horrible Histories Songs
Top Ten Couples In Comics (contributor, posted by him)
Top Ten Superhero Teams (contributor)
Top Ten Most Ridiculous Movie Posters At Cannes This Year (contributor)
Top Ten Best Films Of All Time, According To Hundreds Of Film Directors And Critics (contributor)
Top Ten Horrific Reasons To Love WonderCon
Top Ten Comic Girlfriends… And Boyfriends (contributor)
(Top Ten) Best Reviewed Films Of 2011 Vs. The Most Pirated (contributor)
John Waters Top Ten Favourite Films Of 2011 (contributor)
Tom Huxley’s Top Ten Comics Of The Decade (contributor)
Bleeding Cool’s Top Ten British Comics Of The Decade
Top Ten Tips To Blag Your Way Into San Diego
Top Ten Picks For Frightfest, With Trailers (contributor)
Top Ten British Christmas Telly – Rich’s Choice
Grace Randolph’s Stacktastic! (Top Ten) Death(s), The Gift That Keeps On Giving (contributor)

I think that's more than sufficient back up (and that's not counting the (at least twice monthly) sales charts). While not all are his, Rich is the king of content on that site: if he didn't want Top Ten lists, they wouldn't be there and, indeed, he has directly published a number that he didn't write.

The knock on Top Ten lists is that they're lazy click bait. Everyone employs them from time to time. No one judges a site if they're rare, so long as you don't pretend you're above it.

I can't find a context for what Rich is saying he will have stopped once he resorts to Top Tens, but it's obvious that, whatever it is, he stopped years ago.

Oh, and lest it be misinterpreted: I'm not defending Newsarama. Despite knowing and respecting several people there, I don't believe Mark Waid was off the mark when he pegged them as the new Wizard. Sad how the once mighty continue to fall so far.

Tasteless Critics

There are some folks that are taking shots at the recently deceased Joe Kubert over his participation in Before Watchmen. These are people that can't just be respectful for 24 hours before taking a shot.

One of them is Alan David Doane, who has compared Kubert's participation in BW to Joe Paterno's covering for a child molester on his Tumblr and on Twitter.

He feels that Kubert is lesser for having accepted a paycheck for a legally fine, morally debatable project.

Funny that it comes from a man advertising a payday loan site:

Those predatory loans that are technically legal (in some states, at least), but morally reprehensible (hence the term "predatory" involved in their classification).

He's a douche...and a hypocritical one at that.

Regardless of what you think of Before Watchmen, Joe Kubert deserves better than people taking cheap shots at him like this. Shame on folks that find themselves incapable of paying him any respect.

Need Geek-Friendly Wall Coverings?

Posters on sale over at AllPosters.com (20% off). Didn't expect to see a selection of comic book ones, but, when I did, I figured I'd share the info.

Justice League -...
34 in. x 22 in.
Buy This at Allposters.com

Personally, I don't have a spot at home to start throwing these sorts of posters up, as I have no mancave and our spare room is set up for the mothers to visit. So I'll likely be grabbing something more like this:


Starry Night, c....
Vincent van Gogh
Buy This at Allposters.com


But more power to those of you that can let your geek flag wave. Oh...and all of the above have affiliate links in them. If you're against that sort of thing, just type AllPosters.com into your browser. ;)

Another Misappropriation of Crowd-Funding

How often does this happen?

Nick Lopez (the "project director) is trying to solicit $4500 to do a graphic novel "what if" where Mace Windu survives and teaches Luke, instead of Obi Wan, I gather.

That strike anyone else as...I dunno...problematic?

$4500 seems like more than the simple cost of materials for a graphic novel, unless it is much larger than your average GN.

In addition to that, some of the rewards are 11x17 posters from his Etsy store. Like this one:

Sure seems like a screen grab from Empire that is just run through a filter, no?

I believe he's well aware of the violation his work effects, as I found the following on the FB page for this project:




When confronted with the appearance of this project, Nick Lopez responded with the following:

Actually, as the project video states, creating a comic book is very costly. Some could cost $100 to $300 per page. Our story is a 4 part series. Each of the 4 chapters is at least 15 pages in length. At the very least each page will cost up to $80 to make. So if you do the math... $80 x (15 pages x 4 chapters)... it comes out to about $4800. So that's the minimum cost of producing this project.

As I said in response, I don't think boards and tools add up to $80/page, so that still leaves someone profiting off this project. It doesn't matter if it is just that he's paying someone else to draw it and then soliciting people to advance purchase the work (as the minimum "donation" gets the first two chapters of the project (which makes you wonder what happens with the third and fourth)), as it still is a violation of the Lucas rights.

Somehow, I doubt this is the only fan project that winds up trying to bend or ignore the law when it comes to crowd-funding. Anyone else have examples?

UPDATE: How NOT To Demonstrate Accountability

Original Story July 16, 2012 8:52pm EDT:

Over on BleedingCool, a freelancer made a pretty big mistake covering the Firefly 10th Anniversary Reunion Press Conference.

Kate Kotler reported that Joss Whedon made a serious statement about continuing the franchise by doing a reboot.

I have been unable to find a single soul other than Ms. Kotler who thought this was the case. Her own editor, Brendon Connelly, originally ran it correctly as an article stating that Whedon had a snarky/sarcastic response about doing it. But she pushed on (allegedly with the support of Rich Johnston) to report her version.

That version stood up as an article for three days, as Brendon allowed her the opportunity to back it up.

During this time, she claimed she was in active communication with Debbie Myers (of The Science Channel) in her attempts to confirm it. The three days ended with the indication being that she was not once in touch with her beyond being directed to schedule an appointment with her assistance as the press conference broke up.

She blamed her equipment, saying her recorder broke down, when video and audio of the whole thing was available online within nine (9) hours of her article posting. She had over two (2) full days to see that how she recalled events happening (she says her notes eventually didn't fit what was recorded as happening, demonstrating sloppiness) was incorrect.

In the end, when she finally admitted her mistake 72 hours later, she said the following:

I strongly believe that the mark of character is the ability for an individual to stand up and honestly admit when they are wrong and have made a mistake. That is what I am here to do today.

I thought that took the cake. But then I saw the following exchange on Twitter:








Seriously? She objects (and continues to object when people call her on it) to having her own Twitter account tagged to her work, wanting the heat for her mistake (and that was hardly heat there) to go to the BleedingCool account, instead.

"I understand you're mad about the article, but could you make sure to blame the people I wrote the inaccurate article for instead? Kthnx!"

That about sums up the whole crazy ride.

UPDATE July 17, 2012 9:28pm EDT: Oh Lord, she gets even more ridiculous.

I feel a little like that there are a lot of people who were just waiting to take shots at me, when/if I was caught in a situation where I fucked up.

Being spectacularly wrong and refusing to acknowledge it for three days happened because people were rooting for it and waiting for it. She's running from the "innerwebs" to avoid seeing people take shots at her for her mistake, which is probably about the only reasonable response I've seen from her. Of course, until she actually takes an honest and sincere bit of responsibility for her error, I'd rather she have to take her lumps, but avoiding her "bad press" is generally a health approach.

Hypocrisy Sparkles (or "Hypocrisy & Stances on Creators' Rights")

So, news came out that JMS is partnering with Image Comics.

You know...the same JMS that Eric Stephenson, Image Comics publisher, railed against after the writer put both feet in his mouth when he chose to defend Before Watchmen in saying:

"Did Alan Moore get a crummy contract? Yes. So has everyone at this table. Worse was Siegal and Shuster. Worse was a lot of people."

Making that statement was going far beyond just participating in the project, as well as being patently ridiculous. It is, also, diametrically opposed to Stephenson's stand on the project and the larger issue of creators' rights.

So, shouldn't Stephenson then politely rebuffed the approach of the writer looking for a home for his own projects? Wouldn't that have been the principled stand to take?

Well, I thought that prior to going to Stephenson's blog to look up his response to JMS's idiocy. Which is when I found him piggybacking on Joe Keatinge's announced Thanos mini to push Keatinge's current and Jim Starlin's previous Image work, without once touching on the fact that Starlin indicates he created Thanos before being contracted for it and is not properly compensated for the character's continued use in comics or any other media.

Why no position on Marvel's continued use of a character without properly compensating the creator (never mind changing the character without the creator's approval)? It was a different time? Other creators have been screwed over far worse? Or, perhaps, was the public reaction more about seizing on the moment to turn it into marketing for your company?

I'd really like to know.