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<\/p>\nLast month I wrote a column about how excited I am that Aliens and Predator will be arriving at Marvel.\u00a0 It will be cool to have new fans for old properties find a ton of excellent old, and (hopefully) excellent NEW books.\u00a0 Should be a no-brainer, right? If you haven\u2019t seen them, there will be a TON of Marvel\/Alien crossover covers in January done by some artists who are clearly inspired by the license. Woo.<\/p>\n
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The DAY, the literal DAY after I wrote it, the cover was released?\u00a0 leaked?\u00a0 for the Greg Land cover for the first Aliens Omnibus.\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t be a big deal, right? Wrong.\u00a0 It turns out Greg Land borrowed almost all of the imagery he used for the cover from other artists or sources.\u00a0 The biggest victim was an Australian artist named Tristan Jones.\u00a0 He did an Aliens series for Dark Horse and a bunch of covers after that.\u00a0 His work is excellent, and Marvel has no interest in using it.\u00a0 That\u2019s not the best, eh?<\/p>\n
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He noticed that very specific parts of Land\u2019s drawing lined up with very specific parts of some of his work.\u00a0 You can see below, you can look at the fine articles on Bleeding Cool or Comic Book Resources.\u00a0 This was going to be a mea culpa article, and the swipe was going to be the focus of this column. (There\u2019s lots of reading out there if this is of interest.)\u00a0 Why change it up?\u00a0 Things got worse.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019d have apologized for making a mistake about here, and suggested that you can still get this work with a clear conscience by buying the version with the reprinted cover.\u00a0 Can\u2019t do that now. You see, in addition to not pulling the Land cover, clearly cribbed as much of his work seems to be, Marvel had an extra little asterisk at the end of this particular situation:\u00a0 They would not be paying royalties to the original writers and artists who worked on the reprinted Dark Horse material.\u00a0 This was confirmed by Mark Nelson, the Aliens artist who started it all for Dark Horse back in 1988.\u00a0 He posted on Facebook that this was the case, and he\u2019d know, because the other cover being used for the omnibus is his.<\/p>\n
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That would have been enough to write about.\u00a0 Marvel is owned by Disney.\u00a0 They\u2019re doing quite well financially, even with a pandemic rolling.\u00a0 Surely, there\u2019s enough petty cash to parcel out to the people who had the original contracts to do the work, right?![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.grahamcrackers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/DANA-WRONG-300x226.jpg\")
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Just today, science fiction novelist Alan Dean Foster came out to say that Disney has been doing the same thing with him, and presumably other creators as well, with work acquired during various purchases or mergers.\u00a0 They get the benefit of the work, they are not obligated to take on any of the contracts as originally written.\u00a0 Can you imagine?\u00a0 You write for years, Disney buys the companies you wrote for, and your work is now just their work no matter how your contract was negotiated?\u00a0 This shows the incident with Nelson and his Aliens work is not a fluke, but the company line.\u00a0 Its wrong , and its leaving creators wondering if this isn\u2019t an attempt to change the rules of ownership.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t much to be done about it at the consumer level, besides making choices and voting with your dollars.\u00a0 With an industry that has a complicated past about paying creators for the value of the work created, it really seems we should be past this sort of thing in 2020, instead of soaking in it like some acidic Palmolive for the past five years.<\/p>\n
The SFWA, or Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America did get some good press today bringing this issue to light, but Disney hasn\u2019t responded.\u00a0 Hopefully, that\u2019s a \u2018yet\u2019 waiting to happen.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got a winter of Cubs ownership crying poor to deal with.\u00a0 I can\u2019t take it from Disney too.\u00a0 They can do better, and should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last month I wrote a column about how excited I am that Aliens and Predator will be arriving at Marvel.\u00a0 It will be cool to have new fans for old properties find a ton of excellent old, and (hopefully) excellent NEW books.\u00a0 Should be a no-brainer, right? If you haven\u2019t seen them, there will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-managers"],"yoast_head":"\n