This was posted on Bleeding Cool Comics blog
This is important for its ramifications as BCC points out:
Steve Bissette posted on Facebook;
Look, I TOLD everyone once the Marvel vs. Friedrich judgment was cast, we’d be seeing Marvel/Disney going after every creator that emerged in their legal department bullseye. Case in point: Marvel/Disney issued a CEASE & DESIST letter against ELAINE LEE & MIKE KALUTA for their creator-owned, Epic-published STARSTRUCK.
Elaine Lee wrote, this morning: “Look, I’ll say it now. Kaluta and I, just week before last, received a letter from a Marvel/Disney attorney, challenging our rights to Starstruck, a project that was briefly with Marvel/Epic, supposedly their creator-owned imprint, almost three decades ago. Since then, we’ve been published by Dark Horse and IDW. This has sent us rummaging through 30-year-old documents, looking for proof that we own what we own. We’ve found several letters that back up our claim that the rights were returned to us, and things seem to have quieted down, but we are still looking for more “just in case.” You don’t screw around with The Mouse.
I’m currently doing an interview for a new book on women in geeky professions. They asked me to give advice to young women starting out. My advice is do your own thing. Keep the rights to your work. If you sell your work, make sure you get Hollywood money, not comic book money.”
Got that? Marvel/Disney, attacking the creators of the only creator-ownership line they’d launched, post COMIX BOOK.
The Marvel/Disney legal machine is capable of ANYTHING in the name of “we own it ALL.”
Now, the odds are that this is a clerical error on Marvel/Disney’s part, and hopefully there will be an apology on the way. The Epic imprint offered a very attractive creator owned contract, which saw work such as The One, Groo The Wanderer and Marshal Law switch publishers with ease. Let’s hope those creators aren’t similarly targeted…
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Sadly, they may well be targetted if the rumours are true. Nothing 100% confirmed now but Disney purchased Marvel the bought Lucas’s property and here is one rumour that NO ONE seems to want to publish on comic blogs “because of possible ramifications” (they all cover DEC and Marvel!). Last month, an unnamed team from Disney met board members from DC Comics. Why? Rumours -rumours- are that Disney is looking to “expand its entertainment empire”.
True? DC were, apparently, quite brusque with a blogger who asked them if this was true.
Go guess!
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