A circle around Pat Mills' characters

[Matt Timson]

Um... Fence sitter?  To be honest, I was simply fortunate enough to be too lazy to follow what was happening in this instance.  I'm reasonably sure I'd have come down on the side of general piss take otherwise.

In fact- put me down for a telling off anyway.  I probably deserve it for something...

[Art]

The Vampire Street Team bought you out with bookmarks and shiny buttons, didn't they?

[Matt Timson]

Just remind me- is the group hugs and mutual back patting us or them?

What were the choices again?

;)

[Artificial Idiot]

The Vampire Street Team bought you out with bookmarks and shiny buttons, didn't they?

What?! No unpublished tat? Tsk, I wouldn't have accepted anything less!

[Richmond Clements]

Seems to revolve around either slagging someone for making a living writing stuff, or not slagging him.

[Funt Solo]

Did someone mention choices?

http://images.somethingawful.com/mjolnir/images/cg04052005/rivetz1.jpg" />

[Matt Timson]

Well... I can't be bothered to read what I've missed, but as a charter member of the Big Three (of which there are five*), I think I'm pretty much duty bound to take the piss out of any outsider.

At the very least, I'm morally obliged to scoff at anything FATC has to say- based on the automatic assumption that whatever he has to say will annoy me at best and make me want to punch him in the face at worst- which is actually a marked improvement, I might add**.

Hey ho...



*yes, I know I always point this out- but some people are easily confused

**no offence  :)

[PiggyMitchell]

I think there's probably background issues at play here, but I'm not party to them. I've never met Gordon, talked to him or read him, so whatever the issues are seem to reside squarely with him. I'm not going to worry about it. I wish him every success with Caballistics and other projects.

To the guys who said it felt distasteful, all I can suggest is trying being on the receiving end, or worse, being the partner of the guy on the recieving who isn't used to vindictive little potshots. Not too pleasant. Do you take it to heart when you wake up one morning to see the amount of bile spilled forth here? You bet.

As to the Obsidian Throne - Vlad von Carstein, the GW character in the book the website is designed for sits on an Obsidian Throne. His castle has a raven tower etc etc etc. It's called a marketing tool. The whole thing is designed to appeal to readers of the series - I don't see what is so surprising with that.

I'll say this - honestly - I loved Slaine growing up, I thank Pat Mills for shaping a part of my childhood, and I am honoured they approached me to do this. In the same way that I am honoured to write something for Star Wars, for Dr Who, and other franchises that made me the guy I turned out to be.

I would have loved to read a Pat Mills original Slaine novel - as the creator you KNOW he has insight into the character another writing will never be able to capture. I accepted that when I signed on. I'll do my best to deliver a great read. If I fail, I fail, it won't be for want of trying. If I succeed, well that'd be great.

But now guys, I am going to leave you to it. Anyone who wants to ask about Slaine can just drop me a line via the website, I am more than happy to answer if I can.

[Noisybast]

So, er, nice one lads.
Bullying's ace innit?
I'm glad you guys let me hang around with you - It's great to be one of the gang...

[Matt Timson]

You'll never be in my gang- not so long as you're spoiling my art collection...

;p

[Noisybast]

Heh heh heh. Mine, I tell you!

[davidbishop]

Hmm, an interesting debate, even if it's wandered off on many tangents. Me, I've happily disinterred the corpses of other people's creativity for a 70,000 Black Flame novel. These days so many people have had their dabs on Dredd, the ownership issue is not so vexed - besides, we all know Wagner does it best. For my Dante novels, Robbie Morrison gave his approval for each of the plotlines, so I felt that gave them some vestige of authenticity. As to Fiends, Alan Grant performed massive rewrites on the original GFD scripts at the time. Who's the true creator of the strip? Gerry, because it was his mad, mad, mad idea in the first place. But IMHO Alan deserves a lot of credit for honing that into a much loved serial for the weekly - not to mention Carlos for his stunning art.

One question about the Mills ring-fencing of creations concept: does the artist who co-created these characters also get the claimed power of veto?

To put another side of the argument, I had an experience recently where I found myself in exactly the same position of Pat. In 2003 I wrote a Doctor Who audio for Big Finish called Full Fathom Five. It introduced a new Doctor, one with a markedly different approach to life from what had been done before. As part of the contract, I allowed Big Finish to exploit that Doctor in subsequent productions - something for which I would receive no royalties and no recognition as the creator of the character. A year later, another emailed to say he'd been commissioned to write a short story for a Big Finish anthology featuring the Doctor I'd created, and would I be willing to read his story to check he'd nailed the characterisation.

It irked me that I hadn't even been invited to pitch for the short story anthology, let alone that somebody else was writing a character I'd created and that only I'd ever written before. But the writer in question didn't know that and wasn't responsible for choosing who got to write for the anthology. Rather than throw my rattle from the pram, I accepted the situation and offered the writer a few pointers of how to tweak his characterisation of my Doctor to get it nearer the mark. But it still irritated the hell out of me.

So, I've got sympathies with almost everybody in this debate...

davidbishop

Link: http://viciousimagery.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://viciousimagery.blogspot.com/

[Jim_Campbell]

"One question about the Mills ring-fencing of creations concept: does the artist who co-created these characters also get the claimed power of veto?"

That's a fair point, and one I've wondered about repeatedly when Pat starts banging on about his rights.

I mean, would Nemesis ever have been popular enough to get a full series if the original one-off had been drawn by Workman-like-Jobbing-Spaniard instead of benefitting from the deranged talents of Kev O'Neill?

Personally, I don't think so. So - would Pat have been prepared to bury the series at the end of Book III, if Kev had said "No-one draws this but me, and I'm not doing it any more" ...?

How about if only Pat's then-missus had been allowed to draw Slaine - another series dead in the water.

That particular aspect of Pat's position whiffs of hipocrisy to me - "I demand that these rights be extended to me, when no-one else gets them, and they don't extend to my co-creators."

Just a thought ...

Cheers

Jim

PS - Like Mr Bishop, I'm not unsympathetic to the other side of the argument, having had a series I helped create then handed over to another creative team without even the editorial courtesy of telling me it was happening. However, as has been eloquently discussed earlier, them's the breaks with work-for-hire ...

[Matt Timson]

Now THAT is an excellent point.

[I, Cosh]

I heard Pat married Massimo Belardinelli in a proper Earth-ceremony.