Bill Willingham confirms his relations with DC have reached the fallout point
The creator of the Fables series has announced he's turning it into public domain property, because, in what's surely no surprise, based on his allegedly conservative politics, they've turned against him, and I'd guessed it could happen a few years ago, when he was willing to take issue with their retcons to Robin-3, and a character he created himself in the mid-2000s, Bernard Dowd. So now, he announced he's letting go of his copyright for Fables and letting it become public domain. But, there's stuff here anybody aware of where they were going with their mainstream superhero products, if anything, could take issue with:
That said, I have no doubt they were hoping to milk Fables as a franchise for all it's worth from a woke viewpoint: besides potential video game licensing, there's always a chance they'd want to force in LGBT propaganda of the worst kind. Something writers working with public domain material will surely want to do themselves, unfortunately. So, you can't really blame Willingham for wanting to cancel his copyright regardless. Because the chances DC themselves would exploit it to the max for wokeism are pretty high, and likely revenge against Willingham for speaking out against their forced changes to characters in Robin. It's worth noting that most of the characters in Fables were drawn from fairy tale characters already in public domain, so in a way, it could make some sense that now, the 2002-2015 series could all but enter public domain as well.
As surely expected, however, DC's not accepting Willingham's maneuver so easily, according to Engadget:
This'll probably make independent creators think twice in the future about getting projects published at DC. And they should. What it makes clear is that DC, if not pre-2000, has definitely become greedy corporate-style post-2000, and it's ill-advised to arrange to be published there, no matter how much easier it might be to arrange for talented artists to contribute to your project. It does remind me, that nearly 2 decades ago, artists/writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray conceived a character called the Monolith, which was originally published under the DC label, and even had a guest appearance in Hawkman in 2004, but they'd negotiated their contracts to have the character returned to their ownership, and that's what happened later in 2013. The difference, however, is that Palmiotti/Gray's series was a failure, as opposed to Fables's success, resulting in at least 2 spinoffs. So I guess that could explain their attempts to rob Willingham blind, and possibly even to merge Fables with the DCU proper. Something that hasn't worked well since the end of the 1980s, and with so much wokeism now affecting even DC, that's one more reason why it'd be bound to end tastelessly.
So, congratulations to Willingham if he wants to take what legal steps he can to avoid having his creation-based-on-classics turned into an artistic cesspit. But that's about all I can say in his favor, since all these years, I don't think he's ever convincingly apologized for the storylines he penned in Batman, which were part of the wakeup call that made me realize I'd have to bail out of any further reading of DC products going forward. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's other people out there in the know who'll find it hard to feel sorry for Willingham that he ran afoul of the troubles he's facing now. And if he didn't want to be cheated like this, how come he agreed to do a Batman crossover with Fables? Those kind of ideas are pretty old hat by now, and far from producing blockbuster sellers.
1) Practicality: When I first signed my creator-owned publishing contract with DC Comics, the company was run by honest men and women of integrity, who (for the most part) interpreted the details of that agreement fairly and above-board. When problems inevitably came up we worked it out, like reasonable men and women. Since then, over the span of twenty years or so, those people have left or been fired, to be replaced by a revolving door of strangers, of no measurable integrity, who now choose to interpret every facet of our contract in ways that only benefit DC Comics and its owner companies. At one time the Fables properties were in good hands, and now, by virtue of attrition and employee replacement, the Fables properties have fallen into bad hands.I don't know about Doyle, but when Willingham goes so far as to lionize DiDio as a gent, despite all the harm he did to the DC brand - and let's not forget Willingham's part in that when it came to Batman: War Games/Crimes - that's certainly not doing much to win over anybody rightfully alienated by even the sight of Stephanie Brown being tortured with a drill by Black Mask, and Dr. Leslie Thompkins originally made to look like a crackpot who'd let an innocent girl die, supposedly to teach Batman lessons. Why, doesn't DC's continued employment of Eddie Berganza as an editor - only firing him after an expose 6 years ago - count as a contradiction of the whole notion they were competant even in the early 2000s, when Willingham first had Fables published under their Vertigo label? Willingham's doubtless correct about DC ripping him off, but that's still no excuse for whitewashing all the worst mistakes they made artistically. And "good hands"? Please.
Since I can’t afford to sue DC, to force them to live up to the letter and the spirit of our long-time agreements; since even winning such a suit would take ridiculous amounts of money out of my pocket and years out of my life (I’m 67 years old, and don’t have the years to spare), I’ve decided to take a different approach, and fight them in a different arena, inspired by the principles of asymmetric warfare. The one thing in our contract the DC lawyers can’t contest, or reinterpret to their own benefit, is that I am the sole owner of the intellectual property. I can sell it or give it away to whomever I want. [...]
Too many things to list exhaustively, but here are some highlights: Throughout the years of my business relationship with DC, with Fables and with other intellectual properties, DC has always been in violation of their agreements with me. Usually it’s in smaller matters, like forgetting to seek my opinion on artists for new stories, or for covers, or formats of new collections and such. In those times, when called on it, they automatically said, “Sorry, we overlooked you again. It just fell through the cracks.” They use the “fell through the cracks” line so often, and so reflexively, that I eventually had to bar them from using it ever again. They are often late reporting royalties, and often under-report said royalties, forcing me to go after them to pay the rest of what’s owed.
Lately though their practices have grown beyond these mere annoyances, prompting some sort of showdown. First they tried to strong arm the ownership of Fables from me. When Mark Doyle and Dan Didio first approached me with the idea of bringing Fables back for its 20th anniversary (both gentlemen since fired from DC), during the contract negotiations for the new issues, their legal negotiators tried to make it a condition of the deal that the work be done as work for hire, effectively throwing the property irrevocably into the hands of DC. When that didn’t work their excuse was, “Sorry, we didn’t read your contract going into these negotiations. We thought we owned it.”
That said, I have no doubt they were hoping to milk Fables as a franchise for all it's worth from a woke viewpoint: besides potential video game licensing, there's always a chance they'd want to force in LGBT propaganda of the worst kind. Something writers working with public domain material will surely want to do themselves, unfortunately. So, you can't really blame Willingham for wanting to cancel his copyright regardless. Because the chances DC themselves would exploit it to the max for wokeism are pretty high, and likely revenge against Willingham for speaking out against their forced changes to characters in Robin. It's worth noting that most of the characters in Fables were drawn from fairy tale characters already in public domain, so in a way, it could make some sense that now, the 2002-2015 series could all but enter public domain as well.
As surely expected, however, DC's not accepting Willingham's maneuver so easily, according to Engadget:
DC, however, has disagreed with Willingham and his interpretation of their contract and copyright law. "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," the company told CBR in a statement. "DC reserves all rights and will take such action as DC deems necessary or appropriate to protect its intellectual property rights."I may not have a high opinion on Willingham, but I won't take DC's side on this either. Yet they're nothing compared to the insufferable Heidi MacDonald of Comics Beat, who exploited this whole issue for additional anti-Israel propaganda, not unlike what she pulled 2 years ago:
While much of the comics industry has responded with a “you go, guy!” for Willingham standing up for his rights against what sounds like some ham-handed creative unfriendly from DC Comics, he’s also come under fire for his anti-woke views, and past anti-Palestine, anti-abortion storylines in Fables.I recall she boycotted Willingham for about 5 years after Fables' cancellation, and only spoke again about the whole topic when it was revived for a Batman crossover, so this latest, pointless smear against somebody she likely doesn't even know personally is no surprise, yet does make clear she was never suited to work at DC herself over 3 decades ago. If she's not a parent herself, nor married, that's one more reason why she's got no business whining about Willingham taking issue with abortion. This is truly repellent, and amounts to little more than hatemongering/virtue signaling. It's not like I literally care about Willingham's work, since he did little to win my confidence, but MacDonald has once again performed the inexcusable, and once again demonstrated her own irrelevancy as a news writer.
This'll probably make independent creators think twice in the future about getting projects published at DC. And they should. What it makes clear is that DC, if not pre-2000, has definitely become greedy corporate-style post-2000, and it's ill-advised to arrange to be published there, no matter how much easier it might be to arrange for talented artists to contribute to your project. It does remind me, that nearly 2 decades ago, artists/writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray conceived a character called the Monolith, which was originally published under the DC label, and even had a guest appearance in Hawkman in 2004, but they'd negotiated their contracts to have the character returned to their ownership, and that's what happened later in 2013. The difference, however, is that Palmiotti/Gray's series was a failure, as opposed to Fables's success, resulting in at least 2 spinoffs. So I guess that could explain their attempts to rob Willingham blind, and possibly even to merge Fables with the DCU proper. Something that hasn't worked well since the end of the 1980s, and with so much wokeism now affecting even DC, that's one more reason why it'd be bound to end tastelessly.
So, congratulations to Willingham if he wants to take what legal steps he can to avoid having his creation-based-on-classics turned into an artistic cesspit. But that's about all I can say in his favor, since all these years, I don't think he's ever convincingly apologized for the storylines he penned in Batman, which were part of the wakeup call that made me realize I'd have to bail out of any further reading of DC products going forward. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's other people out there in the know who'll find it hard to feel sorry for Willingham that he ran afoul of the troubles he's facing now. And if he didn't want to be cheated like this, how come he agreed to do a Batman crossover with Fables? Those kind of ideas are pretty old hat by now, and far from producing blockbuster sellers.
Labels: dc comics, golden calf of LGBT, history, indie publishers, msm propaganda, politics, sales
