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Stan Lee Media sues Marvel

Stan Lee Media sues Marvel

Oh, how I love financial and legal shenanigans. Stan Lee Media has one of the messier histories in the dot-com boom and bust, with tales of stock manipulation and attempted bribes to Bill and Hillary Clinton by partner Peter Paul. And it looks like we aren’t done yet.

Fresh out of bankruptcy, Stan Lee Media, Inc. filed a $5 billion lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment yesterday in US District Court in NY. In the suit, as reported by Marvel, Stan Lee Media claims it is shares co-ownership of some of Marvel’s superhero characters.  Marvel says the suit is without merit.

The suit claims that Stan Lee throughout his employment with Marvel retained the co-creator rights to all his characters, and in August 1998 when Marvel terminated Stan’s employment, he regained those rights. Stan then went and formed the dotcom firm Stan Lee Media as a way to tap into the Internet boom, and on October 15, 1998, he signed over not only his creations to the new firm, but his likeness as well. Then in November, 1998, Lee individually entered an employment agreement with Marvel, signing over his Marvel characters and likeness to Marvel, despite having already signed over the rights to Stan Lee Media. The suit claims Stan Lee Media informed Marvel of their contract and that Marvel "independently and/or in collusion with Stan Lee, intentionally concealed the material terms" of Marvel’s new agreement from Stan Lee Media, the public and its own shareholders, and that Stan Lee Media is entitled to 50 percent of all revenue going back three years and going forward 50 years. (By law, they can only go back three years, not as far as 1998.)

To make matters even more confusing, Stan the Man himself is no longer affiliated with the recently emerged from bankruptcy Stan Lee Media. In fact, Stan and his current company, POW Entertainment (makers of Who Wants To Be A Superhero?) is suing the principals in Stan Lee Media alleging that they illegally took over his former company and infringed on his trademarks and copyrights. Stan has said that, “I do not support this action and believe the suit to be baseless.”

What hath Knight Rider wrought?

How did we get to this story before Warren Ellis did? A man has been found who likes having sex with cars.

The details of mechanic Chris Donald’s alleged romantic vehicular liaisons have been unearthed by The Sun, so take it with a grain of salt. In addition to a large number of cars, Mr Donald claims to have also done the dirty with two boats and a jetski.

"Mr. Donald apparently says that his sexual fetish may have been triggered by formative childhood experiences watching Knight Rider. ‘When I was a young boy I used to see human qualities in cars,’ he says. ‘As I grew up I noticed I was having feelings towards cars and they began catching my eye in a certain way.’ "

Brings new meaning to Super Pursuit Mode, don’t it? We can imagine the dialogue now. "Michael, it’s time for a turbo boost…"

Celebrity News: Prince busts Bill-O

Celebrity News: Prince busts Bill-O

ComicMix wouldn’t be much of a website if we didn’t do at least one story about Anna Nicole Smith, and this one’s a doozy.

Prince Frederic von Anhalt, husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor, has sued Fox News and their big star Bill O’Reilly for defaming him when O’Reilly said he was a fraud for claiming he could be the father of the late late Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.

According to Reuters, on the February 22th episode of The O’Reilly Factor, Bill-O said "Look, this guy’s a fraud. We know he’s a fraud. But let’s – what I want to talk about is – he’s done. His credibility is – is finished."

Get this. Prince Freddy is suing for "at least" $10,000,000.00 in damages because people give him dirty looks when he goes to the grocery store.

Damn, I don’t know who to root for here. I went to journalism school just in the hope that, someday, I would get to use the names Prince Frederic von Anhalt, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Bill O’Reilly, and Anna Nicole Smith in a sentence. And now I’ve done it twice!

Life is good.

 

Coldplay hot on Iron Man

Coldplay hot on Iron Man

According to the website 24dash, Coldplay’s Chris Martin has been playing a mean game of catch-up since his wife, Gwyneth Paltrow, was cast as Pepper Potts in Marvel’s upcoming Iron Man film.

Martin is said to be a huge Iron Man fan, and has spent big bucks buying up hundreds of Iron Man issues "to help Gwyneth research her character." Now you see, Nick Cage, there’s your ready made excuse — you should have gotten Lisa Marie a part in a comic book movie instead of selling your collection.  Ah well, hindsight is 20/20.

Somebody or other supposedly told the website Absolute Now: "Chris is like a big kid with this. He’s ordered a whole stack of comics which he says are for Gwyneth to help her get into the role but in fact he’s spent more time reading them than she has."  We could find nothing approaching this quote on the Absolute Now site, although they’re strenuously covering Paltrow’s strenuous exercise routine in her quest to be "in perfect shape" for the role.  I seem to recall as Pepper Potts has never been drawn as that much of a stick figure…

After Hours tries suicide?

After Hours tries suicide?

Reality?

Our latest ComicMix Podcast discusses big things at the Sci-Fi channel, anger towards Marvel’s Captain America stunt, and we reveal the astonishing inside low-down on After Hours comics and their new "reality" comic about… suicide? Timeline swoops down on 1976 and Superman Vs. Spider-Man #1.

All this and Logan’s Run – with George Perez, no less – on ComicMix Podcast #14, available by clicking on this here button:

Star Trek gay episode finally unlost

Star Trek gay episode finally unlost

David Gerrold’s shelved gay-themed Star Trek episode, "Blood and Fire", is being filmed by the folks at Star Trek: New Voyages, a fan-supported continuation of the original series that has already had appearances by George Takei and scripts by D.C. Fontana.

New Voyages is gearing up to begin filming its fourth episode in June, and it will be an updated version of Gerrold’s "Blood and Fire", both in switching from TNG era to TOS era, and in themes that can be discussed in 2007 versus 1987. The gay characters in this version are Capt. Kirk’s nephew, Peter Kirk, and his boyfriend, Lt. Alex Freeman.

This is not the first time gay characters have appeared in the Trek franchise. Bart Faulwell has been a crew member of the da Vinci in Star Trek: Corps of Engineers since its inception.

Comics – because it’s there

Comics – because it’s there

Via Lisa at Sequentially Speaking, Joao Garcia climbed Mount Everest’s north side eight years ago, and has decided to tell his story via comics, publishing a limited, 2,000-print adaptation of his Everest story book A mais Alta Solidao (The highest solitude), illustrated by Ricardo Cabra.  Read his interview with ExplorersWeb here.

This appears to be something of a trend among Portuguese creative folk; a few days ago ExplorersWeb interviewed artist Antonio Coelho about his climbing experiences.  Both interviews are well worth scoping out for the copious numbers of illustrations therein.

Impaling Bush

Impaling Bush

You’d think with the release of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic book yesterday, we would have had some mention of it on the site. After all, we know that every time we say Buffy the Vampire Slayer we get a lot of extra traffic to the website, and we aren’t above shameless Google-boosting. (Buffy! Buffy! Buffy!) But we couldnt find a timely hook, other than all the traditional press coverage.

Until we came across this: "The American Secret Service have launched an investigation into one of the candidates for the presidency in 2008 – after he pledged that as President, one of his first acts would be to impale President George W. Bush. The candidate in question is Jonathon ‘The Impaler’ Sharkey, and he is running as the only self-described satanic vampire candidate who has so far entered the 2008 race. Sharkey’s pledge to impale President Bush, he makes clear, will only come into effect if he is actually elected to office."

My favorite line from the piece: "But a legal expert is unsure if a case could be made against The Impaler. ‘Under the First Amendment, what it boils down to here is whether or not he’s a vampire who wants to impale the president,’ law professor Neil Richards of Washington University in St. Louis told the Chronicle. ‘I guess the question is, if he’s a vampire, why is he the one staking people? Shouldn’t he want to bite the president and feed on him?’"

And yes, it gives us an excuse to run this Alex Ross painting. Alex Ross! The Google hits just keep on coming!

South Korea comics controversy

South Korea comics controversy

Last month, blogger Tim Leong reported about South Korean comic author Rhie Won-bok, who wrote in Meon Nara, Yiwoot Nara (Far Countries, Near Countries), his so-called educational comic book series about different countries, that "The Jews are the invisible force that controls the U.S."  At the time, Rhie stood by his words, adding, "I wrote the chapter to let people know that you can’t understand the U.S. without knowing the Jewish community."

Now that he’s actually met some members of that community, he’s singing a different tune.

AP reports that Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center met with Rhie at Gimm-Young Publishers’ offices in Seoul, confronting him with copies of the early 20th century Nazi magazine Der Stuermer to show its similarity to caricatures in Meon Nara. Also present was Richard Choi Bertsch, a member of the National Korean-American Coalition, who condemned the book’s content, as well as raising questions about drawings of African-Americans (something Cheryl Lynn has noted on her blog and at the Black Panel at NYCC), prompting the publisher to pledge an extensive review of the entire series.

"I’m sorry to see things like a frog in a well," Rhie has now admitted, referring to a traditional Korean saying that a frog in a well is unaware of the larger world outside. "In the future, I will write books in a more responsible way."  In addition, Gimm-Young has agreed to translate into Korean a book by the Wiesenthal Center that aims to reveal anti-Semitic mistruths, as well as sending officials to the U.S. to meet with Korean-American and Jewish communities. 

So they can, you know, actually get to know them before writing about them.

Doonesbury animations hit the Web

Doonesbury animations hit the Web

Remember when Doonesbury’s Duke ran for president back in 2000? For some of us, that no longer seems like such a weird choice.

Evidently, Garry Trudeau and the folks at Universal Press Syndicate feel the same way, as they have started to make available free of charge their short animations from the "Duke 2000 — Whatever it Takes" campaign. According to Editor & Publisher magazine, six videos will be uploaded twice a month through 2008 to Doonesbury.com and YouTube.com.

In the March 4 Doonesbury, Duke (based upon the late author Hunter S. Thompson) disclosed his campaign videos would appear on the Web. "This is incredible — one click to immortality! What a great tool!," he said. Duke’s son replied "Dad, you can’t put that up! Are you crazy? How many people have seen this?" Duke stated "Only a couple million — I just posted it."