A different take on the Ghost Rider controversy.

[nefrekeptah]

As most already know, Gary Friedrich has lost a lawsuit against Marvel, which means that he has lost the right to call himself the creator of Ghost Rider, he owes seventeen thousand dollars, and he can no longer sell artwork, which was apparently his only means of gaining money.

Most people, when they heard the news, immediately went to Friedrich's defense, calling it yet another example of creator's rights being trampled on by the soulless conglomerate.





Oh, and I should mention that Ty Templeton has a place where you can donate funds to Friedrich so he can pay his settlement.

Comments

[citygod]

I thought this was excellent. And the discussion in the comments section is well worth reading too.

[glprime]

Yeah, I'd heard grumblings before from older (less heated) fans who were pointing out flaws in the more classical take on the events. This just sums it up well.

It's just a sign that there are a lot of relationships with these branded characters and their influential writers/artists (and even those not as influential) that aren't well resolved as far as monetizing the creations and see a fair shake for all involved.

I still shout out "Bill Finger, you dicks!" whenever I see a Batman property and the credits mention Bob Kane solely as the creator of Batman.

[biod]

So I'm NOT the only one who does that. That's a relief.

[espanolbot]

I do have a strip from the 50s or so in which Bob Kane talks about how he created Batman, Robin, the Joker etc. and how he draws all the strips.

It's an amusing piece of lies, especially considering Kane's heavy use of ghost artists.

[q99]

Hm, I didn't realize he was selling prints of art someone else did.

[brooms]

neither did i!

tbh, this is making me feel bad for just running with the kneejerk reaction of grr big greedy company trampling the little guy.

[filthysize]

Well, Friedrich's a writer, not an artist, so all the GR merchandise he was selling had to be someone else's work. He wouldn't be able to make a living selling Ghost Rider t-shirts with just his dialogue on it.

[katzedecimal]

Indeed, me neither. Seems to me that's a very important tidbit of information that's been left out.

Is there something some of you would like to say to Marvel?

[the_phantom]

I have a feeling there won't be too many comments on this post.

Re: Is there something some of you would like to say to Marvel?

[mrstatham]

Not really, no. Regardless of some of the fact in the case, Marvel were still just sold for nearly 4 billion dollars, as I recall, and now have the legal team of Disney on their side. A hundred thousand dollars is nothing to them, and they still have a track record of treating people like shit.

[brooms]

oh wow. i was raging at marvel so hard, this is informative. thank you!

[his_spiffynesss]

So Gary Friedrich was more Rob Ganito than actual victim. Now I'm kind of sorry I donated money to him.

[citygod]

While I agre with Ty (who's very sympathetic to Freidrich), it's also worth reading Neal Adams take:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/13/neal-adams-addresses-comics-industry/

hard to argue with that.
And isn't it horrible that Marvel don't even follow Warners lead, with their attitude to incidental characters in the Batman movies? Ed Brubaker got a cheque for Nolans Dark Knight using a minor character he created for GCPD. He said it was a total surprise, didn't even know the character was being used.
Thats the least that Marvel could do for Friedrich, and all the other Ghost Rider creators. (Nevermind Wolfman and Colan, for their work on Blade).

[espanolbot]

Which character did they use? :)

[filthysize]

As I remember it, it wasn't a character. It was because they used some ideas as inspiration from "Batman: The Man Who Laughs" for Ledger's Joker and the GCPD Major Crimes Unit in the movie is directly inspired by "Gotham Central." DC has its faults, but they're pretty good at getting WB to pony up cash for the creators involved in the comics they give to filmmakers to use.

I'm sure he and Darwyn Cooke will be getting money for Nolan's take on Catwoman, too.

[stubbleupdate]

Also, didn't Len Wein make more money from Lucius Fox being in The Dark Knight than for creating Wolverine?

[citygod]

Not sure, he didn't mention in the interview but I assumed it was either a minor cop (perhaps one or the cops who took the Jokers bounty) or it's the scenario that filthysize describes (below).

[mistervader]

That's true, but given that he sued back in 2007, there was no way to give oit money for a movie that wasn't released yet at the time, I'm guessing.

It'd be nice of Marvel to give a share ofthe pie to Friedrich and co., but I figure a court case in progress prevents any generosity altogether, lest they be considered bribes.

[citygod]

Good point, but Marvel haven't paid ANYONE with movie money - I don't think John Byrne has seen a penny from the X-Men movies, and they recreated some of his panel designs!
Still haunt's me to think that Dave Cockrum was in his death bed in a Vets hospital the same weekend that X3 had a $80 mil+ opening.

[mistervader]

Welp, therein lies the rub. I can only speak about the situation at hand, but yeah, if Marvel traditionally doesn't give even just a pittance check to their creators, then yeah, even if they're legally in the clear, it's still a grade A dick move.

[kamino_neko]

What did DC do to Alan Moore last week? Is that about the Watchmen prequels?

[golden_orange]

Probably. Having not been following the Friedrich issue that closely, I'd imagine it also has to do with the argument that DC screwed Moore out of the rights for Watchmen as well; it was much debated when DC made the announcement.

[leoboiko]

It's not a time-bound strip; it works for any week you choose.

[causticlad]

The previous week's Bun Toons was about the Watchmen prequels (and Moore casting a Cthulhu death curse on everyone who reads them, only to be foiled by Dave Gibbons in a cassock and cross), so it's about that, yeah.

[shanejayell]

*lol*

Yeah, this reminds fans these issues are not black and white.

However I DO think Marvel shouldn't have countersued, if only because it's bad PR.

[sherkahn]

As opposed to??

[nomadicwriter]

Not that I know much about the legal issues, but from what other people have said, it's possible that if they didn't countersue, it could cause problems for Marvel down the line. Thanks to his lawsuit they've now been officially notified that he's selling bootlegged Ghost Rider gear (as opposed to whatever level of unofficial, "Illegal merchanise? Um... I guess our representatives were all looking the other way when they walked past that stand," deniability they had before). Failing to defend the trademark with a countersuit now would effectively be Marvel stating that they are fully aware Friedrich is selling Ghost Rider merchandise and they don't challenge his right to do so.

[rdfox]

Exactly. Under US trademark law, failure to defend a trademark means that all trademark protection is instantly lost. Which is why you'll never see a major intellectual property publisher ever *officially* acknowledge fanfiction or fanart; by doing so, they would be legally bound to either take action to protect their trademarks, or lose them entirely. (The *only* options are the C&D-followed-by-lawsuit process, or issuing a license to use the trademarks--this has come up in both the flight simulator and model railroad communities, regarding people using various corporate logos and liveries; after negotiations, the companies involved generally offered free licenses for the use of their trademarks to those distributing their work freely, while those who charged for it were able to get a license at a fairly nominal fee and tiny royalty, something on the order of a couple of cents per unit sold.)

As a note, Marvel *could* have easily demanded that Friedrich pay their court costs and legal fees (a common thing--when I pled guilty to driving on an expired license, I had to pay court costs that bumped my fine up by a full 50%), but it appears that they only demanded the minimum punishment, forfeiture of the proceeds from his illegal sales, plus his ceasing and desisting the practice of making said prints. It sucks for him, sure, but honestly, the way the laws are written, I think they were trying to be as gentle as possible about it. I don't know the details of the case, but I suspect they started with a C&D (which is normal practice; it's a semi-formal thing that, they hope, will result in an instant settlement without any significant costs involved); while I've never been C&Ded before, I have acted as agent for a friend who *was* C&Ded by Nintendo of America over a Pokemon hentai site, and even NoA didn't really want to take it to court--if he took the site down, they'd be satisfied and drop it immediately. (If anyone's interested, he ended up quickly negotiating a settlement with them that let him stay online, so long as he didn't use "Pokemon" in the URL and put measures into place to prevent it from cropping up on Google or other search engines if you searched *only* for "Pokemon," to prevent eight-year-olds from accidentally stumbling across it.)

So if Friedrich had agreed to comply with the C&D and stop selling his illegal prints, Marvel would have probably just let it go. (As a note, legally, if he was making *original* Ghost Rider art as fan commissions, he'd have been just fine, so long as he was charging for his time as an artist and the work done itself, rather than the character. This is how it's legal for George Perez, Adam Hughes, Amanda Conner, and other artists to sell con sketches and other commissioned art of DC and Marvel characters that are very much material that the companies would NOT approve of; they're charging the same price whether it's Starfire, Psylocke, The Pro, or your wife.)

[gerardotejada]

Bit they didnt fail to defend their trademark, they did win. I have too many friends working for lawyers to know things are settled outside the court more often than inside.

The countersuit was a dick move, until we know what happened outside the court room

[kusonaga]

My thoughts (almost) exactly.

[nyadnar17]

Amazing how much better pictures are for getting some concepts across than words. Don't think an essay could have represented this point better.

[ar_feiniel]

"It cost Marvel more than a hundred thousand dollars to defend themselves from these lawsuits. Should Marvel just eat that kind of money every time a freelancer gets the itch to sue them?"

Yes that's exactly what Marvel should do. US copyright laws are very unkind towards comic creators/writers/artists. Marvel has benefited from that for decades. A few hundred thousand dollars is nothing to them compared to the money they've raked in with these characters.

Defending their copyrights is fine. But countersuing was a dick move.

(That being said, this in no way diminishes my love for Ty)

[mrstatham]

This. To some degree, Friedrich should've seen it coming, given how big Marvel is, but at the same time, forcing a man who seems to have to resort to selling merchandise to make money to pay $17,000 is beyond ridiculous.

[dancesontrains]

MTE

[schala_kid]

This.

[gerardotejada]

I agree, he created the character, he should have creator's rights or co-creator rights at least.
The fact is creator (o creatorS) dont own their characters, It basically doesnt care who created Ghost Rider, the company owns It.

Neoliberal views (Austrian economist and Rand lovers) see everything as a "good", creators are "goods" you hire to produce more "goods" at the end of the day companies doesnt care about what they do but that they did it under the "company's comand", the big corporate man has the credit for hiring the creators, he owns them and their work.

Laws are made for counter the situation, but laws now are different that laws then, today the creators are safer cause they know what to do and how to do It. The lame excuse that sompeople still hold is that "nobody was forced to sign", I can assure you that not everybody has the PRIVILEDGE to work under the terms they want, they were forced to work under the circumstances they had.

Said that, to sue Marvel was a stupid Idea, they have the upper hand, the people that were around in the past arent even working there now

[eyz]

Ha! XD
Ty never ceases to amaze and amuse me XD

[blackruzsa]

I'm glad to see a more detailed take on this.

Still, even if Friedrich's probably more in the wrong than Marvel, Marvel is a huge, multimillion dollar company with Disney which is a multi-billion dollar company. He's still the victim, being the guy who has one less source of limited income where Marvel has hundreds of sources.

Marvel may have been right to do what they did, but Friedrich still got the short straw so it's not wrong to donate money to him, being one of those "starving artist" type writers who seems to be hard enough on money for a prints selling ban to be a big blow for him.

Responses to Ty's Argument

[captainamerica75]

http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/front-page-comic-news/55305-jean-marc-lofficier-consequences-gary-friedrich-decision.html

Thoughts?