Rebellion buys classic comic archive

[Dandontdare]

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 .

[Mute77]

I'm interested to see what rebellion would do with Charleys War. The titan hardcovers are really good...

[Robo-K33F]

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 .

David at Hibernia Press was one of the first people that I contacted after the deal was signed. We have a great relationship with him (he has just recently written an excellent feature that will be included in the 2nd Dan Dare book) and I'm sure that we will be collaborating further in the future.

[IndigoPrime]

See, this is the reason why it's so great to have a company like Rebellion owning this stuff. \o/

[Prodigal2]

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 .

David at Hibernia Press was one of the first people that I contacted after the deal was signed. We have a great relationship with him (he has just recently written an excellent feature that will be included in the 2nd Dan Dare book) and I'm sure that we will be collaborating further in the future.

Fantastic.

[Prodigal2]

Frankie Stein first appeared in Wham! In the 60,s

That was it! Down the Tubes has an article up on the acquisition, and there's an explanation of the situation as it seems to be currently understood at the end:

As we've stated many times here on downthetubes (your best source on this is our interview with former Time UK, then IPC staffer Andrew Sumner), IPC and Egmont cut a deal on classic comic character owner ships some time back. For the most part, any character published before January 1970 by Fleetway Editions is owned by Time UK (previously IPC). So titles like Lion and strips such as "Trigan Empire" are owned by them.

Comics such as Thunder, Battle, Misty and characters such as Roy of the Rovers – one exception to the "1970" rule, along with Buster comic and some of its characters – were, until now owned by Egmont, because for the most part they were first published after 1970.

The Dan Dare Corporation owns Dan Dare, some – but not all – original Eagle characters, and most characters published in the 1980s Eagle, although ownership of some will, I imagine be a matter of discussion, given later comic mergers.

DC Thomson has its own massive library of comic titles and characters, including Beano, Sparky, Commando, Bullet, Bunty, Judy, Jackie, Warlord and more.

If you're at all confused by the situation, then you're not alone. During licensing discussion I once had with Egmont, their lawyers weren't even sure what characters or comics they owned – Starlord being one example that they thought was theirs, which of course had merged with 2000AD.

The confusion also led to problems for the team on TOXIC some years back when they sought to revive Frankie Stein – only to discover IPC owned that brilliant Ken Reid creation, because the character was created before 1970, even though his adventures continued in various titles well beyond that year.

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. There was an excellent interview with IPC's Andrew Sumner back in 2005 when the Albion miniseries from Wildstorm temporarily revived several of the characters detailing the breakdown of who owned what. I'm not sure that as a new poster I can include a link to another site, but if you search for his name, Albion and IPC, you should find the interview (there are two, but the relevant one is titled Comics and Crumpets volume three). The most relevant text is this bit:

IPC and Egmont Fleetway finally agreed respective ownership of intellectual property rights in the mid 1990's. Which is why the (mostly terrible, except for Peter Hogan's Steel Claw) 2000AD Action Special, which was published in 1992 was a complete mistake. Fleetway didn't know at that time that they didn't own the rights to those characters.

"The short answer is that IPC Media own all of the classic 1950's and 1960's IPC characters (and I'm talking about adventure characters, humour characters, sporting characters and the girls' comic characters), Andrew reveals. "That includes the intellectual property rights for every company that it absorbed along the way (Odhams, Amalgamated Press, etc) – including magazine brands, comic characters, registered logos, etc.

"The actual ownership rights work like this," Andrew outlines. "With one or two specified exceptions (which I'll get to in a moment), IPC Media owns every IPC comic character created before 1970. Egmont-Fleetway owns every IPC character created after 1970. So, IPC owns Lion, Valiant, Pow, Tiger, etc and all their respective characters, while Egmont-Fleetway owns Cor!!, Action, Battle  and all their respective characters.

"The exceptions to this pre-1970 ownership threshold for IPC are 26 specifically-named characters (including the Leopard of Lime Street and a bunch of humour characters such as Buster himself) that featured in Buster — which was still being actively published by Fleetway when the IPC/Fleetway agreement was made. So the creation date does not apply to these characters and they are owned by Egmont-Fleetway.

"The other small exceptions are Dan Dare and Roy of the Rovers, who have both been sold off to other concerns a long time ago (a chronic mistake by a previous  IPC administration, in my opinion)."

In terms of the previously mentioned Look and Learn and Trigan Empire, the other Down the Tubes interview with Andrew (titled Albion Man) clarified

DOWNTHETUBES: IPC recently sold rights to Look and Learn but you retained the rights to some key strips, such as Trigan Empire. What was the reason for this?

Andrew: Trigan Empire is a valuable slice of steady-earning intellectual property for IPC, we'd be crazy to sell the rights on to a third party. As I've said before, if I could nip back in a time machine and undo the work of a previous administration, I would never have sold off Dan Dare and Eagle.

The Albion guys found my website helpful when they were doing their research for the series, so Andrew and I communicated a few times, which is when he confirmed that Adam Eterno remained with IPC, and he also clarified who this referred to:

The exceptions to this pre-1970 ownership threshold for IPC are 26 specifically-named characters (including the Leopard of Lime Street and a bunch of humour characters such as Buster himself) that featured in Buster — which was still being actively published by Fleetway when the IPC/Fleetway agreement was made. So the creation date does not apply to these characters and they are owned by Egmont-Fleetway.

Here's the list of the 28 Buster characters owned by Egmont Fleetway, not IPC:

Buster
Buster and the Big One
Wonder Worm
Rent-A-Ghost Ltd
Clever Dick
Faceache
Football Madd
Ivor Lott and Tony Broke
Chalky
Tomboy
Bluebottle and  Basher
Mummy's Boy
X-Ray Specs
The Winners
Jack Pott
Toys of Doom
Back-Tracker Jack
Thunderbolt the Avenger
Galaxus the Thing From Outer Space
The Skid Kids
The Wizard of Football
Crabbe's Crusaders
Fishboy Denizen of the Deep
Pete's Pocket Army
Marney the Fox
Sammy Brewster's Secret Ski-Board Squad
The Leopard from Lime Street
Astounding Adventures of Charlie Peace (but this does NOT include rights to the Charlie Peace character, who was a real bloke and therefore in the public domain)

So anyone on that last list is presumably now included in the rights Rebellion has purchased.

Charlie Peace!!

I am on the verge of a involuntary bowel movement.

I remember reading about Leah Moore and John Reppion pitching a post Albion Charlie Peace time travel story where he goes back to his Victorian version to try and reason with him.

If we really don't have Charlie then please don't tell me as I am on Fantasy island here.

[Tjm86]

I'm interested to see what rebellion would do with Charleys War. The titan hardcovers are really good...

Except for the missing poppy on the third volume!  Let's see - the briefly touted box set?  The French version with colour pages?  An artists edition (I know, seriously wishful thinking).  The Centenary of the end of the First World War would be a nice time to do something special but yeah, Titan did set the bar quite high.

[johnfreeman]

Also working out dates - Frankie Stein - first appearance 1973 - yay!

Grimly Feendish - first appearance 1964... aww

Fantastic news, although I suspect that actually figuring out and negotiating exactly what they've got the rights to is going to take months of work - good luck, Robo-Keef!

I think Frankie might be an odd case, but I can't recall the details - David?

Gutted if Leopard from Lime Street not in this deal, likewise Billy's boots - which originated in Scorcher in the 70's prior to merger with Tiger. But generally this is fantastic news

At the moment, I'd just err on the side of caution and assume most stuff post-1970 is potentially in and wait for something more official from Rebellion - the bits and pieces I've read over the years could be out-of-date now, and there may be more in the deal than it seems.

Frankie Stein is owned by Time UK - Egmont tried to revive him for TOXIC but ran foul of ownership. No idea why if post 1970. There are some grey areas.

[johnfreeman]

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.

[loki]

[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.
[/quote]

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.

[Colin YNWA]

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 .

David at Hibernia Press was one of the first people that I contacted after the deal was signed. We have a great relationship with him (he has just recently written an excellent feature that will be included in the 2nd Dan Dare book) and I'm sure that we will be collaborating further in the future.

Just want to join the chorus of approval for this post. Well played all concerned and I do hope David can be involved in whatever way is practical.

[Dash Decent]

Frankie Stein is owned by Time UK - Egmont tried to revive him for TOXIC but ran foul of ownership. No idea why if post 1970.

Frankie Stein originally appeared in the 1960s, so he stays on the IPC Media side of the line.

[Dash Decent]

Rebellion, we also need a collection of the Bad Time Bed Time stories.

Thanks!

[auxlen]

Just to add my wish list....would love a collection of Scream.

[Woolly]

Many thanks to Rebellion for keeping Hibernia involved in this. Thoroughly decent of them, and the right thing to do.
(Oh, and thanks for buying all those comic rights as well!)

Now, wheres my complete Oink! collection, Rebellion?