Hacker News Reader

Comment by orlandohill | Hacker News Reader

There's also a follow-up.

https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/more-about-fables-in-t...

Hearing how DC treats comics creators makes me want to boycott their future publications. Thankfully, there are publishers like Image that operate more fairly.

View on HN

>But here’s the thing: No one will ever know how valuable the asset is that they threw away. Yes, they sell lots of Watchman, but how many sales did they lose from those who would have bought the book, but didn’t, out of respect for Moore? There’s no way to know, and because there’s no way to know, the loss can never show up in their balance books. How many new and wonderful projects might Alan Moore have done with DC, had they been able to keep him happy (and in this case the way to keep him happy was easy and known: simply be fair in their dealings from now on. Quit trying to cheat him)? There’s no way to know how much DC lost over the years due to something that didn’t happen.

Well we could go by antipiracy logic and take everyone who has ever bought an Alan Moore book post-DC and multiply it by what DC was charging for books. If it works for publishers it works for authors, right? /s

It's a lesson people have to learn periodically, I suppose. As noted in that FAQ, both Frank Miller and Alan Moore already went through this with them, publicly and loudly. I like his point about not knowing what was lost by poisoning those relationships. They robbed themselves of the fruits of two of the best writer/artists in comics history, at the peak of their creative ability, and robbed us of seeing what they'd have done if they'd stayed.

(Frank Miller at least did more work for DC later, but sadly not at his peak)

>They just claimed this is how it had to be done.

My previous employer (not even the employer, some HR person) tried to steal my outstanding leave payment with exactly the same sentence; this sentence is now a huge red flag for me. It comes from a position of arrogant laziness, a more accurate translation would be 'this is how I want it to be done because i can't be bothered finding out how it's actually done', which is then reflected in the rest of OP's post: they didn't even read the contract. I did end up getting my outstanding leave payment, too, but it took some threatening.

> Bill: Yes. Probably. DC has to continue paying me royalties on the books they’ve published and keep in publication, so, as long as I work hard to keep them honest each quarter, I still have some potential income from Fables.

How does it work, legally speaking? I meant that now Fables is in public domain, would DC still need to pay royalties to him? I understand that they had/have a contract, but not sure if the contract is tied to copyright implicitly or explicitly.

A contract like that covers a lot more than just the material itself: there's branding, use of the author's name and likeness, editorial rights of both parties, etc. There's no particular reason to assume it would be tied to the copyright status of the work itself, and plenty of reasons to assume it wouldn't (after all, you don't want to have to pull the author branding just because something entered the public domain over time).

They still have to honor their contract with him, and if there's an exit clause, that means he gets to exit it as well, which I believe he would like.

I think what's happened is he's placed the characters/concept/design etc into the public domain, but NOT his copywritten work product.

IP vs Concrete Creation using that IP

His FAQ in the follow up post makes it clear he believes that he's released to the public domain every part of it that he owns. That would include all of his writing over the years.

There's certainly a lot of gray area left on the artwork, especially. DC probably owns most of it? It might take a lot of work to track down the original artists and find their thoughts on all this.

At face value based on what Willingham seems to believe, you could probably remix the early comics, use the dialog word for word, maybe even panel for panel. But you'd probably need to use entirely new artwork and be very careful that the artwork is entirely new with fresh concepts.

But there's a fun twist there given how much of Fables is itself based on older public domain works and arguments that many of the core concepts of the characters have always been public domain and even very close artwork may be entitled to some interesting fair use judgments.

(I'm not a lawyer of course, and neither is Willingham. If I had one suggestion for Willingham it might be to talk to Creative Commons lawyers and get something like the CC0 involved, including legally binding descriptions of the parts of the series that Willingham now thinks are dedicated to the public domain.)

No, it's the whole thing. Under his contract he retained ownership of all the material, and presumably nothing about his contract actually bars him from releasing it as public domain.

Does he own the rights to the art though? All the penciling and coloring was done by people under contract, not him.

Depending on how the contracts are written, they may be works for hire, with the copyright owner getting the copyright for the art as well.

Reading this, and hindsight being what it is, it seems like the contracts didn't have penalty clauses for non-compliance. It's horrible to say this when you're theoretically dealing with adults, but it is as if everything needs a big stick or stungun attached to it, and a lot of NO, BAD MONKEY penalties for every "crack" they fell through. That would be hard to build a contract around.

Image has a ton great titles too. I never gave much thought to them until one day I realized how much space they take up on my shelves. Saga alone takes up a ton of that space, but other series I've enjoyed include The Wicked + The Divine, Monstress, Paper Girls, Skyward, and Injection (although I think that one has been canceled after the author was)

As someone unfamiliar with graphic novels, can you recommend some good ones that have more "adult" themes? I don't mean porn, but like storylines that are more interesting than bam bam pow pow. Maybe more like a typical novel than a comic aimed at younger readers, if that makes sense?

Transmetropolitan. Basically cross Hunter S Thompson and Futurama. The blackest of black comedies. Likely to be a love/hate kind of thing... but it's one of the books that opened my eyes to what a non-superhero comic could be.

‘Fables’ is excellent :D

Others my favourites:

Alan Moore, ‘V for Vendetta’

Alan Moore, ‘League of extraordinary gentlemen’

Alan Moore, ‘Watchmen’

Neil Gaiman, ‘Sandman’(series, but packed into albums)

Frank Miller, ‘Give me liberty’

Mike Mignola, ‘Hellboy’ (series)

Masamune Shirow, ‘Ghost in the shell’

Yukito Kishiro, ‘Battle angel Alita’ (series)

If you're gonna include manga, Miyazaki's 'Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind' needs to be at the top of the list.

Add to the list

Frank Miller's Ronin

"Arzach" by Mœbius. "The Incal" by same and Jodorowsky.

Jodorowsky's worlds are a delight to read as are his films very unusual visuals in both.

I've only ever dabbled in caped heroes, so most (if not all) of what I listed is what you're looking for although Saga deserves special mention. I'd consider The Sandman (sadly DC) a must read. It takes a volume or two to really find its footing but none of it is bad. Something Is Killing the Children is good too.

There are comics to suit every literary taste. Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, is an examination of the medium in the form of a comic. Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is a dual memoir of holocaust survival and the creation of the book itself. Both are widely translated and available in public libraries.

You could use the Eisner Awards as a source of recommendations. Read the blurbs and preview pages of the winners and nominees, and select the book or series that appeals to you the most. For example, Ballad for Sophie was a recent highlight for me, and was nominated for four Eisner Awards.

DC has released a statement that Fables is NOT in the public domain.

> The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters, and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law and are not in the public domain. DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights.

From: https://twitter.com/zachrabiroff/status/1702433264458248218

"Three subsequent copyright filings list the copyright holder as Willingham, with DC's copyright transferred by written agreement."

Bill Willingham is listed as: "Authorship: text" DC Comics, employer for hire is listed as: "Authorship: artwork"

DC Comics is also listed as contact for: "Rights and Permissions"

From: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/9035/ownership-of-wo...

> Definition: To qualify as a joint work, each author's individual contribution must be inseparable or interdependent, and the authors must intend to be joint authors (17 U.S.C. s 101, Childress v. Taylor, Erickson v. Trinity Theatre, Inc.).

> Rights of use: Joint authors can independently exploit and license a work without consent of other co-authors, but have a duty to account profits to co-authors (House Report No. 94-1476 (1976), Goodman v. Lee, Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, etc.).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com