Definition of creator: One who creates.

Charlier and Giraud created BLUEBERRY, not their offspring.

Charlier did create his offspring without Giraud; therefore Giraud has no say in the adventures of Charlier's offspring

Charlier's son did not create BLUEBERRY; therefore, his rights do not supersede Giraud who did. UNLESS there was an agreement prior to all of this commenced and it is in writing and it is a legal document.

If the above is not the case,the non-creator has no leg to stand on.

SDC

Mark:

I read enough "Imaginary" stories to know that alternate time-lines don't always turn out that differently. But, someone usually dies heroically. And I read enough time travel stories to know that you can't change the past.

Now, what does Blue Kryptonite do?

Samuel Catalino
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>>Charlier's son did not create BLUEBERRY; therefore, his rights do not supersede Giraud who did. UNLESS there was an agreement prior to all of this commenced and it is in writing and it is a legal document. If the above is not the case,the non-creator has no leg to stand on.>>

You state this as if it's a law, but it's not.

Charlier did co-create BLUEBERRY, and Charlier's rights in the character were willed -- by him -- to his son. Phillipe Charlier did not steal those rights; he was given them by a man who (a) owned them, and (b) had the power to give them to his son.

You're right in saying that Charlier's rights don't supersede Giraud's. Conversely, Giraud's rights don't supersede Charlier's -- unless there's a document signed by the creators to that effect. That's inherent in the idea of equal ownership.

One of the battles fought in the name of creator's rights was to make clear the idea that as a creator, nobody can simply take your rights away from you. You have to sell them, give them away, or in some other way actively and knowingly dispose of them. Thus, Marvel Comics cannot take character rights from a creator without that creator's consent -- not any more, at least. And Giraud can't simply take his ex-partner's rights in the character away from the man his ex-partner chose to give them to. Those rights were J.M. Charlier's property. They weren't temporary -- they were permanent, and the only way they become not-his anymore is for him to knowingly transfer them, whether by sale or gift or some other method, to someone else. And he didn't give them to Giraud; he gave them to his son.

If we are to respect creator's rights, we have to respect them even when the creator chooses to do something with them that others may not be happy about. Otherwise, they're not rights.

kurt

I can appreciate Kurt's argument from a moral standpoint, but a moral obligation is not a legal obligation. SHOULD Moebius continue Blueberry in his own image? Perhaps not. CAN he? It would seem that way. In the end it will be the court of public opinion that judges the work, just as it would likely see Blueberry World turn to a commercial ghost town.

If someone is collecting names for a Sugar and Spike trade paperback petition, sign me up:

Timothy J Miller

Timothy: How about a series of 96-page young adult size (about like Dark Horse or Viz manga) paperbacks? In color, with bookstore distribution via Little, Brown?

Is that what you want? Well, so do I. Now, to convince Paul Levitz.



[This message has been edited by Jim Hanley (edited 07-05-99).]

What an odd place to find discussion of Sheldon Mayer. Someone start a new topic about him so I don't have to load this monster up again....

Anyway, there are at least 200 pages of SUGAR & SPIKE stories which still haven't been published in English. And several thousand which haven't been published in English for over 30 years, which is almost the same thing, given the price and availability of back issues.



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Bob Heer - bg549@torfree.net - www.geocities.com/area51/dimension/1428
--
"I is givin' Churchy a blindfold test to sell him a comical book."
"A blindfold test? Why, he can't see the comic book that way!"
"An' you be surprised what a big help that is!"

Kurt Busiek,

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>>You state this as if it's a law, but it's not.<<


Actually, I was establishing my initial comments as a premise, not a law. You read more into that then was there.

True, it passed on from father to son. But what passed on from father to son? Certainly, any royalities would be due to the son by the new stories Moebius would produce. Did veto power pass down as well over anything Moebius could do?

Timothy is correct that your point is a moral one, so I ask you this question: Is it right for J.M. Charlier's son to deny Moebius's right to work and earn a living from his co-created character? What if this could have been a petty quarrel between Charlier's son and Moebius and this is the result of it?? Now if this was a disagreement between Charlier and Moebius, then that is a horse of a different color....

I guess that is why everything should be in writing.



SDC




SDC

Samuel Catalino
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>>Did veto power pass down as well over anything Moebius could do?>>

Whatever rights the father had, the son has. The father owned those rights, and you can't simply seize them against his wishes. He picked who he wanted 'em to go to.

So if JM Charlier could refuse to allow a BLUEBERRY album that he hated, Phillipe Charlier can as well -- and, for that matter, Giraud could, too, both before and after Charlier's death. It's not a right Charlier has over Giraud, it's a right they both share.

>>Timothy is correct that your point is a moral one -->>

And I've got to admit, I love the argument: Hey, it's immoral, but he can probably get away with it! Isn't that the kind of thinking we've been trying to see an end to, from large publishers? Why should it be adopted among creator-ownership folks?

>>I ask you this question: Is it right for J.M. Charlier's son to deny Moebius's right to work and earn a living from his co-created character?>>

Giraud doesn't actually have a right to work and earn a living from BLUEBERRY. He has half that right; the other half was vested in J.M. Charlier, and is now vested in Phillipe.

>>What if this could have been a petty quarrel between Charlier's son and Moebius and this is the result of it?? Now if this was a disagreement between Charlier and Moebius, then that is a horse of a different color...>>

Why? If Charlier Pere could deadlock any plans to do a BLUEBERRY project, even out of simple pique, then Giraud doesn't have a right to proceed without the approval of the other half-owner. And if Charlier Pere had those rights, then they can't be taken from him by force -- they can only be transferred willingly. And he willingly transferred those rights to his son. So his son now has them.

kurt

Kurt --
"I think that if I showed any likelihood of distributing copies of the stuff, and thus "publishing" it, I wouldn't be allowed to have it."

That's why I offered an in-kind trade rather than money. But you're probably right anyway.

Mark --
"I am reminded of a proposed reprint project that someone at Marvel once described as "the kind of thing that everyone who's on the comp list says ought to be done." I'd love to see it but if it were my money on the line, I think I'd suppress that love until market conditions change a bit."

In the comic book market as it stands today, you are absolutely right -- which is why my suggestion (Gladstone-style albums, marketed through regular bookstores not as "comics", but as "books for beginning readers") involved taking it out of that market and out of the traditional comics format.

This, of course, touches on what everybody in comics, especially those sitting on huge piles of reprintable stuff, should be doing -- i.e., thinking outside the box, trying to dream up ways of selling comics that don't involve the only little corner of the entire world's entertainment industry where superheroes are considered "mainstream".

If it were my money on the line -- and if I had Time-Warner's marketing clout to put the books pretty much where I wanted them -- I would reprint Sugar and Spike in a heartbeat, and I would market it as described. And I probably wouldn't even bother to solicit it through Diamond.

And that would be just one of the many ways I'd be repackaging old comics and trying them in new markets, with new formats. Throw enough stuff at the wall, and maybe some of it will stick. Risky, perhaps, but it beats the hell out of just riding the downward spiral.

On the other hand --
"Frankly, I think the future of classic reprints will not be on paper but on CD-Rom and other digital delivery. And once someone figures out the proper way to do it, we'll be deluged with hoary funnybooks in that format."

I agree, and am waiting patiently for the deluge. But -- what's to figure? Scan 'em in, set up a user interface that allows people to page through stories or go instantly to the beginning of any story, and shove it out. Simple and direct. It's when people try to get fancy and use all the capabilities of the new media on material that was designed just to be paged through, that they run into problems.

EricR --
"I wonder why this kind of thing doesn't come up in prosaic fiction. You don't see other writers making a big fuss about not being able to write Hannible the Cannible stories, or stories with the lead character of Nueromancer, or how about someone else's take on Nabokov's Lolita, or Hal and the gang from Infinite Jest etc etc."

It does. New "Little Fuzzy" stories were commissioned long after H. Beam Piper's death. A sequel to Gone with the Wind was published several years ago. And one of the reasons Cervantes eventually killed off Don Quixote was because other writers were doing stories about him.

JM --
"To me, there is no other FLASH GORDON than Alex Raymond's. But I'm not mad that Kurtzman & Barry got to do some either."

I don't much care for Raymond's version, personally. Very pretty, but no real substance. To me, the definitive Flash Gordon is the Dan Barry daily strip, especially when written by Harry Harrison. What luck that both our tastes can be accommodated, eh?

Kurt again --
"I don't want to end up in exactly the situation we're discussing here, so I took steps to prevent it, before the first word was written or the first line drawn."

And what could be a better way of handling it than that? We actually disagree only in one area -- in the absence of such an agreement, what should be the default? You say creative control passes down with other interests; I and others say the surviving creator assumes it. But we all, I believe, agree that if the dead creator's true wishes can be ascertained with certainty, as they will be with your creations but can't with Blueberry, they should prevail.

Quack, Don


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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW FOR LIBRARIES
P.O. Box 55148
Phoenix, AZ 85078

Kurt,

Cut BLUEBERRY in half with a sword!


SDC