Hell On Wheels

Out of the thousands of comics I've read in my life, I've only read one Ghost Rider comic. It was in Marvel Treasury #18, in which Ghost Rider teams up with Spider-Man to fight a motorcycle-riding criminal named The Orb. The Orb's appearance was perhaps even freakier than Ghost Rider's flaming skull; he had a giant eyeball for a head.

I've never seen the 2007 Ghost Rider movie, starring the inimitable Nicholas Cage, either. I don't remember it having been a hit, but apparently it was successful enough to spawn a sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

Nicholas Cage has not aged well.

Ghost Rider is Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist who makes a deal with the Devil to become a super-powered motorcycling vigilante. There's not much to recommend the character beyond his visual design. And it is an awesome design! Ghost Rider is one of a subset of superheroes who received their powers from the Devil, including Spawn, Etrigan The Demon, and Hellstorm. One might think that using Satan-derived powers to fight evil would be a big conflict of interest, but maybe Satan has a slack legal team.


You know whose legal team isn't slack? Marvel Comics. Over the past two decades, the value of superheroes as intellectual property has skyrocketed exponentially as they have been licensed for video games, merchandise, and especially to Hollywood. The Batman and Spider-Man films showed that superheroes could become the basis of massively lucrative franchises, and 1998's Blade showed that even an obscure character could provide fodder for a successful media adaptation. As major media alchemy has turned these old leaden characters into gold, companies like DC and Marvel have faced legal challenges by the characters' original creators, or their estates, trying to get a portion of the profits generated by these characters, or complete ownership of the characters outright. None of these efforts has been successful. The courts have fairly consistently found that these characters were created under work-for-hire conditions, meaning all rights to the characters and stories are owned by the corporate publisher. Marvel's paychecks to their freelancers included a 'legend of assignment' printed on the back; by signing their check to get paid for their work, writers and artists would also be signing a contract waiving all claims to ownership.


The latest lawsuit has been by one Gary Friedrich in an attempt to claim ownership of the Ghost Rider character. Friedrich was the original Ghost Rider writer in 1972 and claims to have been the sole creator of the character, though editor Roy Thomas and artist Mike Ploog dispute that characterization. Friedrich never really had a chance of winning; writers and artists with much stronger cases have failed. Probably he was hoping that Marvel would offer a quick settlement to avoid a lengthy lawsuit and negative publicity.

Gary Friedrich was wrong. Marvel fought and, of course, won; the judgment coincidentally coming down just days before the new Ghost Rider movie opened. But Marvel didn't just defend themselves. They also counter-sued Gary Friedrich. Friedrich had been attending comic book shows, promoting himself as the creator of Ghost Rider and selling prints of the first issue of Ghost Rider and other artwork. Marvel sued him for copyright infringement and won a settlement of $17,000 in compensation for his revenue of sales from unlicensed material. In addition, he is prevented from even saying that he is the creator of Ghost Rider.


At any comics show, and all over the internet, you will find artists selling image of characters whose copyright they do not own. Some are aspiring artists, and some are current working professionals. This is a a way of garnering attention for the former and a significant supplementary income for the latter. And at every comic con you will find elderly men selling prints of characters they dreamed up decades ago, for which they were paid a modest page rate and which have earned their corporate publishers millions. These prints are clearly unauthorized merchandise, but for the most part companies like DC and Marvel have turned a blind eye to the practice. Until now. Many of these artists are now, understandably, shitting their pants. Marvel executives Dan Buckley and Joe Quesada have assured them that there's no reason for them to worry: "We in no way want to interfere with the creators at conventions who are providing a positive Marvel experience for our fans. We want fans to speak and interact with the creators who wrote, penciled, inked, lettered , colored or edited their favorite stories. Part of that positive interaction is that a fan can walk away with a signed memento or personalized sketch from an artist." But there is nothing to stop Marvel from cracking down on the practice at any time, especially now that Marvel is owned by Disney, which has sued nursery schools for having murals of Mickey Mouse on their walls. 


Friedrich may have forced Marvel's hand. Maybe he refused a settlement, gambling that he could obtain full ownership. And once in court, Marvel may have felt compelled to counter-sue in order to enforce their claim of copyright. Still, it's hard not to see Marvel's action as a very blunt warning to writers and artists, past and present: don't rock the boat and you can sell your memorabilia, step out of line and expect a call from our Legion of Lawyers. 


Legally, Marvel is in the right. Friedrich's Ghost Rider comics were done under work-for-hire, and he did later explicitly sign away any claims to copyright (He signed an agreement waiving any claims to ownership of the character in exchange for being considered for further freelance employment ... he was never actually employed by Marvel again.). And the prints he sold were unauthorized merchandise (not to mention, they were prints of other people's art.) 

But still ... Marvel is a hugely profitable entertainment company, now a subsidiary of an ever huger corporation. Gary Friedrich is a lone old man, in poor health, unemployed, bankrupt, and reportedly on the verge of losing his house. Forty years ago, he had an idea for a character. Over the past few years, he made $17,000 selling drawings of that character. The first movie of that character grossed over $230,000,000. Could not Marvel have passed along some small percentage of that to Gary Friedrich? 


Around the same time that Friedrich was writing Ghost Rider for Marvel, Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams created a villain for DC Comics named Ra's Al Ghul, and Len Wein created a minor supporting character named Lucius Fox. These characters were created under the same work-for-hire conditions, but when they were used in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, O'Neil, Adams and Wein were all compensated. DC Comics has its own fraught history with creators' rights, but here they did right. Len Wein also created Wolverine, the most popular of Marvel's X-Men. He has said he has received more payment for creating Lucius Fox than for Wolverine. 

Which IP do you think is more valuable?

Gary Friedrich's situation is unfortunately not unique. Every year, there are reports of older writers and artists who are in financial straits at the end of their lives, as the characters they created generate more and more revenue for the companies that own them. There had been a Paypal donation site set up by writer Steve Niles to raise funds for Friedrich, but I can't find it now. However, there is still The Hero Initiative, a worthwhile organization that helps comics creators in need.

Draw a Dinosaur Day

Apparently, today is International Draw A Dionsaur Day. I had no idea this day existed til now, and it's too late for me to knock one out, so I'll just re-post this drawing of a Barosaurus fossil I did at the American Museum of Natural History a few years ago.

You can click on it and make it bigger, if you'd like.

Krampus!

I can't believe I never heard of Krampus before now. I just heard of him last week, and since then I've heard him mentioned like five or six times.

Krampus is the anti-Santa Claus. Whereas I was told that naughty children only received a lump of coal from Ol' Saint Nick, in Alpine folklore they are visited by Krampus, who whips them with sticks and chains, throws them into a bag or basket, and drags him to his lair to be punished and/or eaten.

Here he dispenses his Yuletide vengeance upon three class naughty children from the comics. Re: Dennis the Menace, unlike the current sanitized comic strip, he was originally just as much of a little shit as Bart and Calvin.

Return to Spring Street Studio

I've been chock-a-block busy with work for the past month or two, so it's been a helluva long time since I've been to a life drawing session. Even longer than it's been since I've updated this blog. I've got a break these days ("break" = "unemployment"), so I got myself back to the old Spring Street Studios this afternoon. I was afraid I was going to be wicked rusty, but these didn't turn out so bad. I was drawing way bigger than I usually do, because I ordered a sketchpad online and accidentally ordered a much larger pad than I usually use. These are on 18"X24" paper, and drawn with a Conté pastel pencil, which is also a change-up for me.

Garments

One thing that's always been a particular challenge to me is drapery. I've been trying to figure out how clothes lie on the figure, and how to depict folds and draping. I never figured out how to draw clothing out of my head, probably because I learned to draw by copying super-heroes, whose costumes are basically body-paint.

So here's some drawings of dresses. They're copied from photographs. I don't know who the designers or photographers are. Sorry, designers and photographers. They're not fashion illustrations. I don't really get fashion illustration, with their exaggerated, elongated figures and simplified silhouettes. I mean, a lot of them are cool drawings to look at, but I never quite see the connection between those stylized drawings and the actual clothes. There are no folds in those drawings! And folds are what's fun to draw, though super-complicated to figure out.

 

Holy Houses Pt. 2

More recent drawings of churches.

 A little church out on Long Island. I pass it on my way to my adjunct teaching job. It reminds me of New England.

 West Village

 West Village

 Downtown Wall Street area

Nestled amongst the court buildings near City Hall

Holy Houses Pt 1

I've been drawing a lot of churches lately. Not because I have any interest in what goes on inside them, but because I want to practice my perspective drawing, and a lot of these buildings are really interesting, challenging subjects to draw. When I went looking for them to draw, I was surprised to realize just how many churches there are in New York City. When my parents moved to North Carolina, the first thing I noticed right off the bat was that, down there, there's a church building about every five yards. Maybe it's because this city is so incredibly dense, the multitude of churches (and former churches - converted to other uses) is not as apparent. But there really are a shitload of them around, all over.

A lot of them are really simple, humble buildings (which I, non-believer though I am, believe suits the original conception of 'church' more closely than a grand cathedral), and some have some amount of architectural design applied to what is basically a simple, utilitarian structure. But there are so many with really interesting, complex shapes, planes, and forms to draw. A lot are too much so. There's a church in my neighborhood that I've thought of drawing, but it is so tremendously complex in its gothic complexity that it's hard to take it all in, but less draw it. I may just start sketching it piece by piece.

The Soldiers' Monument at Trinity Church, Lower Manhattan, on Broadway. When I was finishing this drawing, a group of about a dozen little Japanese school girls walked by, saw it, and started saying, "Woooowww! Woooowwww!! WOOOOWWWWW!!!!" Then they all pulled out their phones and cameras and started taking photos of the drawing.




Our Lady of Vilnius. SoHo, near the Holland Tunnel.

Tifereth Israel Town and Village Synagogue. Strangely enough, while there are also plenty of synagogues around, not a lot of them aren't particularly interesting architecturally. I drew this one in the East Village sitting on the sidewalk outside a Duane Reade. A woman saw me drawing and told me that she likes to sketch as well; that it's a calming, meditative, and therapeutic activity for her. I knew what she was talking about absolutely.

Third Church of Christ. Park Ave. Not sure why it's called the 'third' church. Wouldn't you want to call your church the first church of Christ? It reminds me of this diner in a small New Hampshire town where I used to work. It had a sign out front that read "Second Best Breakfast In Town!"

St. Cornelius Chapel, Governor's Island. There are all these unused buildings out there from when it was an active Coast Guard station with a permanent resident community . . . an empty theater, an abandoned little stripmall, a leftover Burger King, etc.

The Shrine Church of St. Anthony of Padua. West Village. The oldest existing parish founded for Italian immigrants in the U.S. As I drew this, two Franciscan Friars were sitting nearby, chilling out with their dog. One of them was on the phone trying to score tickets to some concert. Several times, people - younger people - stopped by to talk and ask about religion. The friars didn't seem too interested in engaging with them. I was under the impression that the Roman Catholic church had a real problem with an aging and declining membership in America, and I woulda thought that it was one of the main jobs of these friars to try to recruit new members and bring back lapsed ones, but perhaps I was mistaken. Or maybe they were just on a union break.