Rebellion buys classic comic archive

[Lobo Baggins]

Downthetubes has a list of what Rebellion have scored in their haul: Click!

I think we're going to have to wait for word from Rebellion before we know exactly what's what - Egmont Fleetway have always been so vague about what they actually owned I rather suspect that they never had a definitive list themselves (confusion over the ownership of Starlord and Tornado characters detailed further up the thread, and it took them a while to find out who Frankie Stein belonged to) and trying to work it out ourselves probably won't lead anywhere (I couldn't even work out if Rebellion always owned Diceman, even though it's mainly 2000AD characters...)

But this is going to be hundreds of strips - maybe thousands...

[IndigoPrime]

Oh well.  I guess I'll just wait until DDC does something with it.

Don't hold your breath.

Hasbro don't seem to care much about sites like Blood For The Baron hosting their old 1980s licensed strips from the UK like Action Force and Zoids, though

From what I understand, that's in part because no-one can figure out who owns the rights to Zoids. IDW looked into doing something with that (largely because of the Grant Morrison run, long out of print), but head brick walls to the point it was no longer viable.

the Computer Warrior tales would have to get approval from the DDC who would probably say they own the strip artwork etc., and from the companies who currently hold the rights to the videogames

If there's one industry messier the comics rights, it's videogames. Plenty of games are in legal limbo; many are 'owned' by companies that don't actually have the rights; others are owned outright by organisations that have no idea they have them. Even perfectly trackable trails of ownership aren't evident to the wider world. Ask people into videogames who owns Battlezone, for example, and many would assume the Infogrames incarnation of Atari, where in fact Rebellion grabbed that property a while back. (Which is probably why the new Vector Tanks hasn't been sued off of the App Store.)

[Dandontdare]

Downthetubes has a list of what Rebellion have scored in their haul: Click!

There's such a wonderful range of titles there, but it's the humour comics that stand out for me.

Indeed - I'd love to see some Krazy/Cheeky stuff - as a kid, these comics felt so modern after all those other comics featuring teachers in mortar boards, slipperings and slap up feeds.

PS - why did girls comics all have such unimaginative names?

[M.I.K.]

PS - why did girls comics all have such unimaginative names?

Because nicking the names of military aircraft didn't seem as appropriate.

[The Amstor Computer]

If there's one industry messier the comics rights, it's videogames. Plenty of games are in legal limbo; many are 'owned' by companies that don't actually have the rights; others are owned outright by organisations that have no idea they have them. Even perfectly trackable trails of ownership aren't evident to the wider world. Ask people into videogames who owns Battlezone, for example, and many would assume the Infogrames incarnation of Atari, where in fact Rebellion grabbed that property a while back. (Which is probably why the new Vector Tanks hasn't been sued off of the App Store.)

Yup - it's hellishly messy. Sticking with Computer Warrior for a moment, let's assume you're a publisher wanting to put out a modest first collection of the strip, starting from when it was titled "The Ultimate Warrior". First, you have to deal with the owner of the strip itself - apparently the DDC - then you have to start looking into rights issues for the games used in the strip:

The Ultimate Warrior - Zyklon Attack (we're clear here - this was an invented game, so no rights-holder to deal with)
Wizard of Wor - The First Test (assuming the developer didn't hold rights to this, the original publisher was Midway. Midway collapsed in 2009, and most of their assets went to Warner Bros. Assuming WB got Wizard of Wor, you have to then approach WB to discuss reprinting the strip and agree on any licensing fee)
Pastfinder - The Second Test (originally published by Activision on the C64 etc., so presumably Activision Blizzard are the point-of-contact here for discussing licensing)
Rescue on Fractalus! - The Third Test (developed by Lucasfilm Games, but originally published by Activision. If the rights to the game were reserved by Lucasfilm Games, they would have gone to LucasArts and eventually to Disney, after they bought out LucasArts with Lucasfilm a few years back. If not, you're talking to Activision Blizzard again)
The Great American Cross-Country Road Race - The Fourth Test (another one published by Activision, so assuming Alex DeMeo - the designer - didn't retain any rights it's another for Activision Blizzard)
Ghostbusters - The Fifth Test (Possibly the most complex - developed by David Crane and originally published by Activision, but the Ghostbusters franchise rights belong to Sony, Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis - or his estate now - Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray. Do you have to deal with them all or just the Sony etc. side?)

That's a collection around 150-170 pages long, IIRC, so not too substantial, but you're now looking at - best-case scenario - having to deal with:

The Dan Dare Corporation
Warner Bros.
Activision Blizzard
Sony et al.

Worst case, you could be looking at having to contact and negotiate with:

The Dan Dare Corporation
Warner Bros.
Activision Blizzard
Disney
Sony et al.
The various original designers, assuming they retained rights
Any other third parties who may have acquired specific rights to one or more of the games in the meantime

...and all that for a book which, even assuming you can get the publicity hook right and keep your production costs low, isn't going to be a seller on the scale of something like a new Dredd release and will likely not make a lot of money for you.

Even if all you have to do is get written approval from the rights-holders and you don't actually have to pay a licensing fee to anyone but the DDC, you still have that cost to take into account AND the costs involved in corresponding with the various companies.

...oh, and as there is apparently no existing film or art archive for this material, now you also have to pay for the relevant issues, scanning and clean-up to get usable print files to even get the book to print!

It's one of the handful of Eagle tales that always comes up when asking people what they would like to see reprinted - along with Doomlord, The Thirteenth Floor, Kennedy's Dan Dare run and a few others - but it's arguably one of the most difficult reprint prospects in all of British comics given the investigation, negotiations and costs involved.

[The Amstor Computer]

PS - why did girls comics all have such unimaginative names?

Because nicking the names of military aircraft didn't seem as appropriate.

VULCAN!
VICTOR!
VALIANT!
VALERIE!

[Professor Bear]

Downthetubes has a list of what Rebellion have scored in their haul: Click!

No Johnny Cougar?  You've spent your comic millions on SHIT, Rebellion.

[IndigoPrime]

it's arguably one of the most difficult reprint prospects in all of British comics given the investigation, negotiations and costs involved.

Hell, it was difficult enough trying to sort a feature on the bloody thing for Retro Gamer. In the end, it went nowhere, despite your sterling efforts and some scanning from a few other people. (That said, I do still have the Alan Grant interview, written permission from DDC, enough interest from RG, and an increasingly large collection of scans, and so never say never.)

[maryanddavid]

So where does this leave Hibernia Press? If they won't be able to republish any more of this old stuff, Rebellion could do a lot worse than subcontract some of the work to them, as they've always done a fantastic job with the repro and editing .

Thanks Dan!

Rebellion have been great, and while Richard and I scratched the surface of Egmont's archive, Rebellion have the resources and enthusiasm to mine it fully.
That was my intention when I did the first 13th Floor collection, to bring attention to all this great material.
And keep your wallets at the ready, there is more coming from Hibernia!

As for the Computer Warrior, a workaround might be to rename some of the games. Time consuming, but maybe less so than trying to tie down ownership.

[Professor Bear]

Bookend the reprint with new material so you can label the collection as "satire".  Worked for Cursed Earth and MST3K.

[Dash Decent]

No Johnny Cougar?

Maybe no Cougar but definitely the Leopard!

[Trout]

No Johnny Cougar?

Maybe no Cougar but definitely the Leopard!

Also, given the way indigenous peoples are increasingly (and correctly) speaking out on how they are depicted in fiction, something of a cultural appropriation minefield.

[johnfreeman]

[quote author = loki]1970 is the critical year, and sadly it's not quite as simple as January of that year, because Adam Eterno debuted in October 1970, but belongs to IPC.

I've truncated your post, but there still seems to be some confusion around Adam Eterno and the other characters who first appeared in Thunder. Noting that Andrew Sumner made the claim about Eterno in 2005, here's what happened later.

In 2007, I started talking to Egmont about possible digital comic reprints of some of their characters and the lists I was sent then by their legal department and in 2008 form the basis of this new article on what Rebellion now owns: http://downthetubes.net/?p=33494

At the time, aware of the "January 1970" agreement, I asked about THUNDER because of  its publication date (and because I like Adam Eterno). After some toing and froing, a representative of IPC confirmed that Egmont owned THUNDER and associated characters.

So as far as far as I'm aware, unless there was a subsequent change, Eterno is owned by Rebellion.

As your information is more recent, you probably have the right of things. Besides, I want an Adam Eterno collection, and Time were clearly not rushing to put one out, so it works out better on a purely personal level if Rebellion have the rights to the character.
[/quote]

Just to confirm - I've spoken with Andrew Sumner and Rebellion's ownership of THUNDER and characters is pretty much confirmed. (My list of who owns what is updated here: http://downthetubes.net/?p=33494). Andrew tells me that from memory (and it's hazy after ten years) IPC we originally thought they owned Eterno and then realised that he first appeared in '70 not '69, so they didn't. Hence the fact that his appearance in Albion is a non-specific nameless one!

[johnfreeman]

Noting the talk of ZOIDS above (published by Marvel UK) - IDW's Chris Ryall has been trying to identify and get a Zoids collection off the ground for years. As with videogames, it's a minefield.

[BPP]

IDWs 'zoids' to focus on talking plant pots because 'traditional Zoids don't work in the Americian market'.