Archie Comics gets sued AGAIN

[armlessphelan]

http://www.tssznews.com/2016/08/03/a...ent-in-comics/

Haven't seen this anywhere but Sonic boards/forums. Thoughts? Honestly, I can't be arsed to pick a side. The creators thought they were doing standard work-for-hire, Archie thought the same, then Ken Penders found out otherwise because of that Bioware game and now we have this mess. Bad management all around.

[codystarbuck]

Erm, I'm not so sure about this. I have trouble believing that SEGA didn't have some pretty sturdy language in licensing contracts and that Archie, with that many years experience in publishing and extensive experience in work-for-hire agreements, didn't cover their bases. This sounds more like a money grab by someone with an overly ambitious lawyer. Of course, until you see evidence presented in court, it's pure speculation.

[GreenLanternRanger]

Did Archie just solely hire lunatics to write their Sonic comics in the 90's? Cause from my understanding the current Sonic comic team are actually pretty good at their job, yet all these old ones are sueing Archie & SEGA to win back the rights to dirrevative characters that don't really matter to the Sonic franchise as a whole anyway. I mean from what I understand Archie can still use characters from the video games and cartoons, so they can use all the ones that matter, who cares if they don't use some crazy ex-writer/artists oc's.

As for rights though, I would assume any character made for the comics would belong to Archie & SEGA.

But yea, why sue a small publisher for characters you made decades ago? I mean seriously, Archie is not a rich company by any means. So really I don't see a point to any of this unless the creators of these characters just wanna make more stuff with em, by why make stuff about lesser OC Sonic characters without any actual Sonic characters in it? Seriously just makes no sense.


Edit: Honestly someone should just throw these Fulop & Penders guys in an insane asylum. Archie shouldn't have to put up with stuff like this. I hope they win the case, I would hate to see Archie lose money over stupid stuff like this. Especially when they just got the All-New Archie line going strong.

[Brave Sir Robin]

This Penders guy is suing Sega, EA and Archie. He is also defending a Declaratory Action against Archie to determine the ownership of all these characters. Penders says he owns them. The companies of course do not agree. I agree that Codystarbuck that these companies would have to have strong copyright language in their work agreements or otherwise they would get sued every day or not own any of their own characters worked on by a freelance.

[alton]

Did Archie just solely hire lunatics to write their Sonic comics in the 90's?

As for rights though, I would assume any character made for the comics would belong to Archie & SEGA.




Edit: Honestly someone should just throw these Fulop & Penders guys in an insane asylum. Archie shouldn't have to put up with stuff like this. I hope they win the case, I would hate to see Archie lose money over stupid stuff like this. Especially when they just got the All-New Archie line going strong.

Again the rampant open hostility towards creators who may or may not win this case anyway. The company is always right and the worker is always wrong. Like codystarbuck says until it hits court this is all rampant speculation. Gaiman went up against Image a small company and won and that is OK. Let some poor wage slave do the same and he is yesterdays dirt. What Penders is doing is exercising his rights win or lose and what he does with the creations if he wins is his business.

[Cmbmool]

Again the rampant open hostility towards creators who may or may not win this case anyway. The company is always right and the worker is always wrong. Like codystarbuck says until it hits court this is all rampant speculation. Gaiman went up against Image a small company and won and that is OK. Let some poor wage slave do the same and he is yesterdays dirt. What Penders is doing is exercising his rights win or lose and what he does with the creations if he wins is his business.

Yeah, but he still loses some of the fans that he made thanks to those characters. I mean some fans blame him for the recent Sonic Reboot.

Myself included since some stories ended on a cliffhanger or two that may never be resolved.

[GreenLanternRanger]

Again the rampant open hostility towards creators who may or may not win this case anyway. The company is always right and the worker is always wrong. Like codystarbuck says until it hits court this is all rampant speculation. Gaiman went up against Image a small company and won and that is OK. Let some poor wage slave do the same and he is yesterdays dirt. What Penders is doing is exercising his rights win or lose and what he does with the creations if he wins is his business.

Well they are using their freedom poorly. Suing over derivatives of a pre-existing franchise they created for a licensed comic is just stupid.

Are they entitled to royalties for their work? Of course they are. Should they flat out own characters they created for a pre-existing property? No, no they should not.

Yeah, but he still loses some of the fans that he made thanks to those characters. I mean some fans blame him for the recent Sonic Reboot.

Myself included since some stories ended on a cliffhanger or two that may never be resolved.

Wow, that sucks.

[hedgehogvampire]

God, seriously again! What the hell, Archie. The weird part the dude is suing for characters that aren't even being used any more. This sucks, what the heck was going on with Archie in the 90s? First Penders and now this dude? Sonic is one of my favorite comics, it already had to go through a reboot because of nonsense like this if the comic ends because of this I will be beyond angry. Now I have no idea how legal stuff in comics work but if this person wins the law suit what could they possible do with these characters? Those characters are more or less Sonic characters, the only people who will recognized them would be people who read the comics. I could understand being paid for royalties but for the actual characters themselves thats stupid. God I hope this person loses, and that this just goes away.

[skyvolt2000]

If they are not being used anymore-let them go.

I mean Priest got back Xero from DC and Dan Jolley got Bloodhound back as well.

Sometimes it comes down to the lesser of two evils.

Why fight over guys you are not using or can easily replace.

I mean what can those creators do with those characters once they got them? Especially if they had huge roles in Sonic. You can't mention Sonic in any books and would pretty much be creating an all new chracter.

[Cmbmool]

God, seriously again! What the hell, Archie. The weird part the dude is suing for characters that aren't even being used any more. This sucks, what the heck was going on with Archie in the 90s? First Penders and now this dude? Sonic is one of my favorite comics, it already had to go through a reboot because of nonsense like this if the comic ends because of this I will be beyond angry. Now I have no idea how legal stuff in comics work but if this person wins the law suit what could they possible do with these characters? Those characters are more or less Sonic characters, the only people who will recognized them would be people who read the comics. I could understand being paid for royalties but for the actual characters themselves thats stupid. God I hope this person loses, and that this just goes away.

They're not being used in the comics anymore, but the stories were reprinted previously before Archie put a stop to it.

[alton]

Yeah, but he still loses some of the fans that he made thanks to those characters. I mean some fans blame him for the recent Sonic Reboot.

Myself included since some stories ended on a cliffhanger or two that may never be resolved.

Now this makes sense and I understand where you are coming from. I am not trying to disparage Archie entirely but I quite frankly avoided Red/Dark Circle like the plague because you could almost predict the lack of business acumen and under capitalization would cause problems with any roll out of Red Circle/Dark Circle. I know how you feel from the perspective of recent abrupt cancellizations of Deathlok and War Machine over at Marvel leaving everyone with unfinished storylines. After the Gaiman deal and the Schuster settlement at DC and Friedrich given a second chance by the judge to pursue his claims over a version of Ghost Rider you could almost see this sort of thing coming. As far as what the claimant will do with derivative characters is God's own guess.

[alton]

[QUOTE=GreenLanternRanger;2270375]Well they are using their freedom poorly. Suing over derivatives of a pre-existing franchise they created for a licensed comic is just stupid.

Are they entitled to royalties for their work? Of course they are. Should they flat out own characters they created for a pre-existing property? No, no they should not.
Tony Isabella who apparently has control over Black Lightning/ Gaiman/Joe Simon's Fly which Archie returned the rights to I believe are just a few examples. These are few and far between unlike the screw job Marvel gave Kirby. I suspect this has more to do with a " please buy me out " deal than anything else rather than winning control over the characters themselves. Who knows these days?

[SneakyLookingSort]

Wow, this is like taking that "Original character do not steal" joke to the next level.

[omegafix]

I hope Archie goes under, Screw them for canceling Mega Man

[hedgehogvampire]

I hope Archie goes under, Screw them for canceling Mega Man

Well I hope they don't, since I still buy comics from them.

But yeah, it totally sucks that Mega Man was cancel.