The Complete Zenith

[Jim_Campbell]

I realise ive just generated 2 spurious made up stats but care to put a different figure on either?

Don't be ridiculous. Intangibles are worth precisely what another party is willing to pay for them at the time they're in a position to make an offer.

(If, for example, Dredd 3D had been a box office juggernaut then there would now be substantially more interest than is currently the case but, absent a bidding war, rights would still only be worth what a potential buyer wanted to offer and what the potential seller wanted to let them go for.)

Cheers

Jim

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I realise ive just generated 2 spurious made up stats but care to put a different figure on either?

Don't be ridiculous. Intangibles are worth precisely what another party is willing to pay for them at the time they're in a position to make an offer.

(If, for example, Dredd 3D had been a box office juggernaut then there would now be substantially more interest than is currently the case but, absent a bidding war, rights would still only be worth what a potential buyer wanted to offer and what the potential seller wanted to let them go for.)

Cheers

Jim

Not to mention that the value of an intellectual property is normally directly linked to its performance. Often, and especially with a risky, unknown or unproven IP, the initial fee is low but there will be stepped payments or percentages of box office, if certain performance thresholds are met.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I can't modify the above post. I don't mean value. I mean the fee paid for rights to exploit an IP in a different medium.

[robert_ellis]

This whole ZENITH legal battle is a ruse to hide the publication of a Complete Big Dave volume... Look at what you could have won...http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plcp&v=MAgoEGwB-Fw

[opaque]

Is there a legal battle though?

Big Dave collection? Hell no. That is something that should never ever have been in 2000ad. One of the lowest points in my mind.

[robert_ellis]

I can see that if you prefer 2000ad as a pure sci-fi comic (with the odd barbarian) then Big Dave didn't fit in. But I loved it... Grant Morrison seemed amazed to see it when I got it signed.

[opaque]

I know a lot of people liked it and it certainly should have been published but that place wasn't in 2000ad.
I suppose back then there weren't as many places it could have gone. Even the Megazine would have been more understandable to me though.

Do like the bound volumes though

[Frank]

This whole ZENITH legal battle is a ruse to hide the publication of a Complete Big Dave volume... Look at what you could have won...http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plcp&v=MAgoEGwB-Fw

"You are awesome, Mark Millar. Ditto, Grant Morrison". That must represent the first interaction of any kind between those two for a decade, and I have to agree.

Another vote for the brilliance of Big Dave from me; the idea of representing Diana and Fergie as The Fat Slags alone was enough to secure the strip a place in my affections, but a zombie Bobby Moore leading the England team to World Cup glory against the Nazis seals the deal - both are great examples of the way the strip tested the logic behind the version of the world presented by tabloid culture by reifying it to the point of absurdity and destruction. Big Dave was Gillray, Cruikshank and Hogarth for the nineteen-nineties, and the idea that it didn't belong in a title that was home to strips as diametrically opposed as Halo Jones and Slaine is an odd one.

[JOE SOAP]

2000AD began with the assasination of Thatcher's fictional counterpart Shirley Brown, and Big Dave is closer to Bill Savage (after too many lagers) than he is to either Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog, plus, it's hilarious.  More than that, Steve Parkhouse belongs in 2000AD, on anything.

[opaque]

and the idea that it didn't belong in a title that was home to strips as diametrically opposed as Halo Jones and Slaine is an odd one.

I really hope you're not comparing Big Dave to the quality of Halo Jones or Slaine!
There have been several things over the years many people have thought shouldn't be in 2000ad as they thought it was crap. Doesn't mean other people don't or can't like it.
I just think it was in the wrong place at the wrong time, would have fitted in with some of the content of the Megazine more as I've said. Maybe it being in 2000ad meant it didn't get the audience it could have had elsewhere as well.  I wonder if someone has worked out the saleability of a Big Dave collection?

Anyway talking about legal issues. Has there been anymore talk of these legal issues anywhere? We bought all the Complete Zenith's. Did that spur someone on to bring a formal complaint or anything? Or are we just expecting things to go fine until they are then released later in the year?

[Jimmy Baker's Assistant]

I thought Big Dave was not very funny, with a broad streak of anti-English sentiment. Not that I ever read it again, so my memory may be hazy.

Still, it's a bit odd it's not in print. Wasn't the strip creator-owned?

[dweezil2]

Big Dave is as gloriously irreverent today as it was when it was first published and is as much a cultural time capsule as a strip like D.R and Quinch that preceded it and grubby urban horror show like Cadlegrave that followed it and as such deserved a place in 2000ad in my opinion.

[radiator]

Wonder if the Queen has read Big Dave by Mark Millar CBE?

[Frank]

Big Dave (had) a broad streak of anti-English sentiment.

Huh?

[IndigoPrime]

I never got Big Dave. To me, it felt like a third-rate Viz strip and was wildly out of place in 2000 AD. I'd happily have Parkhouse back in 2000 AD every week, though. (Also, at least Big Dave wasn't as bad, to my mind, as that dire garbage about a trucker—"The Driver"—that ran in Toxic, that a lot of people inexplicably seemed to love.)