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Ouch, take painkillers now.

Turns out my neighbour suffered from an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm rupture. If I hadn't have been there for him he would have died. He is still 50/50 at the moment but fingers crossed.

Even after saving his life why do I feel shit and sick to the stomach when it is mentioned or I relive the events.

Perhaps when his odds get better then I will feel better in my self.

It'll just be shock - you did well there as my grandma lost a brother and sister to aortic aneurysms. They are quick and brutal, so even getting him to a point where his odds are 50/50 is an achievement (poor odds are better than none). So focus on that, because it is something to be proud of.

Two girls one cup is tame in comparison to the transgressive movies to be found in my friend's dad's personal video collection. My friend, now a semi-famous 'rock star', came home from visiting his dad one weekend with one that featured two girls, some live eels, then in rapid succession eel masturbation, eel death, vigourous shitting, a flying pan, some cooking in a sauce i frankly wouldnt want, and eel-eating.

I wouldnt show that to my nan.

I saw something similar the other day, I wouldn't want it shown to me to be honest. I have the link around here somewhere...

I'm disappointed no one has included:



There is also Captain ☠☠☠☠:

Ack!  Sorry Richmond, dunno where I got Emperor from.

Free in packets of breakfast cereal .

Isn't there also a life-size version in the foyer at the Nerve Centre? If memory serves CF got photos of it when he... "visited" (i.e. cased the joint).

• Hilary Robinson - she used characters she'd created and published elsewhere, so 2000AD never owned them (you'd have thought they might have specified this early on in their negotiations, the contracts must have been pisspoor then) but they didn't find out until they wanted to yank her off her titles. What I'd like to see if Medivac getting properly finished and reprinted.
• Grant Morrison - information is skimpy as the ambulance chasers are all over this but it seems like some (or perhaps) all of the Zenith paperwork is missing. This doesn't seem a unique situation

In TPO, Hilary Robinson says she "had never signed a document assigning her copyright to Fleetway", and that was why her solicitor was able to make a successful case that she had only granted Fleetway "a license to publish the work."

Yeah it is TPO I'm pretty much getting my information on this from too.

As Chris Denton suggests, it does make you wonder if Alan McKenzie got the idea from her.

Possibly but he couldn't emulate her strategy without publishing the characters beforehand and I suspect Fleetway's legal team might close that loophole after that mess.

The simplest explanation is that he kind of drifted into writing from the editing side and no one thought to make him sign a new contract, after all you are often rewriting material (as Alan Grant was doing with Harry Twenty) so there must be some kind of contingency where you release the material you add to be published automatically as part of your editing job. So there is less of a black and white line as you might think. If you were also writing under a pseudonym it might possibly fall within the editor's contract. Of course, the person who should have got him to sign a new writer's WFH contract was himself so...

I think you're right about 'Zenith', I think it's the case that if Grant Morrison ever signed any similar thing, there's no evidence of it. It is odd that Really and Truly appears to belong to him as well. Didn't he and Mark Millar plan to use Big Dave in Loaded, but it didn't happen? I assume they must therefore own that strip too?

Yeah that whole area is awfully complicated and a little... opaque. It might be the answers are out there waiting for us to dig them up but it might be no one wants to be too specific at this stage because Zenith is at stake and that is quite a big prize.

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As I understand it the problem in all these cases is that there was an "unspoken agreement" that the publisher owned all the rights to 2000AD strips, but no actual paperwork to back this up.

Not really. It is tricky to know in all cases as there is often not a lot of information to work with (I think Alan McKenzie didn't contribute to TPO so we don't really have his side of things, is that right?) but the reasons are different:

• Hilary Robinson - she used characters she'd created and published elsewhere, so 2000AD never owned them (you'd have thought they might have specified this early on in their negotiations, the contracts must have been pisspoor then) but they didn't find out until they wanted to yank her off her titles. What I'd like to see if Medivac getting properly finished and reprinted.
• Grant Morrison - information is skimpy as the ambulance chasers are all over this but it seems like some (or perhaps) all of the Zenith paperwork is missing. This doesn't seem a unique situation, if I remember correctly Pat Mills was just given Dinosty and the Terra-Meks episode rights out of the blue because of missing paperwork and he seems to think he could shake others loose, like Charley's War (but he decided to get it reprinted rather than spend years trying to pry it loose) and possibly Third World War. Now the assumption is he'd have had to have signed all these documents at the time or his work would never have been printed and paid for, but it is down to Rebellion to prove they own it.
• Alan McKenzie - this is a trickier one because we don't really have much information on this but I think as far as he has said he signed no paperwork and if so this would seem to be awfully remiss of the legal/financial department.

Other ownership angles - Rian Hughes and Grant Morrison seem to own Really and Truly, but do we know how or why? Garth Ennis (and co-creators) was given ownership of his Crisis work in return for writing Helter Skelter. Any others?

What it might be worth doing is digging up what we can about who owns what in dispute cases or ones where they are now creator-owned, just to see how the land lies - this has come up a number of times in different threads and so we might as well get everything we know collected in one place. It might mean we can ask better questions when the opportunity arises too.

I have no idea, however, what McKenzie is hanging on for. It could be that this is a point of principle, but if so it's a tad bizarre given as editor he could presumably have introduced creator-owned strips if he'd felt so strongly about it.

Reading between the lines of when McKenzie challenged me on this point in Thrillpowered Thursday, I have assumed that he plans to use the character again in some other medium.  Maybe he's planning some novels with the character...?

I think there was some talk of a TV series at some point, but Harry Potter has probably pissed on the chances of this happening, although it may be the TV and film industry is cynical enough that this might be seen as a hot property in the search for the franchise to replace Harry Potter - it has an Englishness that doesn't rely on a fantasy version of the boarding school system, which is a plus.

Simon Spurrier is now firmly in charge of the Whitechapel forums and is keeping the Remake/Remodel challenge going, so you have one week to redesign the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet. I thought it worth posting as a) we should help a droid out and b) the best efforts get posted on Bleeding Cool so it will be seen by quite a few people:

http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=10127

Oops my ignorance is showing! I'm a bit out of the loop. I am stuck on a prison colony after all! it would be a cool project, do you know how to get in contact with the powers that be? Just to say hey let them know I'm about.

Well by a happy coincidence #cough# I am a script consultant on Zarjaz. The editors Rich and Bolt are on these very forums and will probably stumble across this anyway but I'll PM you their email addresses.

After going through a few changes (and losing Batman) this is out in September:

www.amazon.com/Holy-Terror-Frank-Miller/dp/193727800X/

Previews:

www.bleedingcool.com/2011/07/21/violent-video-trailer-for-frank-millers-holy-terror/
www.bleedingcool.com/2011/07/21/see-the-first-five-pages-of-frank-millers-holy-terror/

Now, best of all, Pat Mills has given his thoughts:

"Just watched a small sample of Holy Terror – Frank Miller's latest. Looks fantastic – as long as i don't put my Marshal Law hat on (which is difficult). I gather its perspective is the right-wing war on terror. If so, presumably it will patriotically ignore the well-documented and proven terror that the USA (and the British) military is inflicting on the world. If so, Frank's huge talent is that he gives right-wing heroes a really cool image – I always find them really compelling – whereas Tom Clancy-style heroes – especially in game form – are usually so transparently "John Wayne for the 21st century", that their pernicious effect must be limited. Living in a military town, I have a little knowledge of the human cost of producing such super soldiers – and it's a high price and far from glamorous."

    "I got a lot across in Marshal Law and continue to do so in Savage and occasionally in Requiem, but the current right-wing perspective is so loathsome it needs challenging head-on. There's so much story material to draw on, it just needs the right window dressing/disguise to make it acceptable, popular and entertaining to a mainstream audience . I guess that's my speciality; certainly in the past I was inspired by Frank's dramatic techniques to create alternative heroes with a very different world view to his, notably Marshal Law, which was generally a full-on attack on US militarism. Somehow that seemed appropriate. But the fact I haven't found an outlet recently is really bugging me."

    "For anyone who identifies with me here, I promise I'll do my best to find it. The current establishment world view is just too disturbing, too all-pervading and too dishonest to go unchallenged."

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2011/pat-mills-the-right-wing-and-frank-miller/

When Pat works out his best angle of attack (I'm hoping for more superheroes in warzones, perhaps you could even work it into the Marshal Law universe, or some kind of future war parody, a bit like Starship Troopers) I'll be up for buying whatever he has to sell.

Frazer Irving has popped up over on Tumblr:

http://frazerirving.tumblr.com

Emperor: If only that were the case! Doing a comic in 2000ad would be a definite career highlight! I think I need to do some more comic stuff before that happens tho!

That's why I suggested Zarjaz, a great way to hone your talents drawing the characters from the Galaxy's Greatest Comic, for the Galaxy's Greatest Fanzine.

I'd imagine it'd be simple enough to run a query through Barney.

A special online exclusive episode of Panel Borders – in an interview recorded at Oxford's Caption comic book festival in 2010, comics journalist Matt Badham talks to 2000AD artist P.J. Holden about his work, from his formative years combining art and computers to getting his first Judge Dredd assignment and his most recent projects.

http://panelborders.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/panel-borders-the-art-of-p-j-holden/

The question of the third best lost strip is more vexing. Eliminating the Hilary Robinson material on grounds of quality are we left with Dan Dare? Or is there something else I've overlooked?

Brigand Doom. The early stuff anyway

I wouldn't really count Dare as "lost" as a deal could be struck, as you say Rian Hughes managed it with the Revolver Dare. The only problem is when you start splitting the rights and money there might not be much to go around so not much of an incentive to collect it other than for posterity's sake (I can't imagine the earlier reimagined Dare would appeal to a lot of the hardcore Dare fans).