ESeffinga

Or to put it a different way, if this approach was adopted across the board, a company like DC could go on CAF, pick out their favorite Batman commissions from any artists they liked, and publish a book of them. They wouldn't have to pay any creators anything. Or find Batman shirts made by just about anybody on the internet, and make shirts, and mugs and keychains and whatever... and pay no one. Take some fan art and put it on the cover of the next issue of Batman. Saves them the cost of paying a pro artist. Etc and so on.

Of course it does, and mike doesn't dispute that. The point is that they took a work they didn't pay for, to make a mass-produced item for sale, which is highly unusual for a large company. Normally they pay (very small) fees or at least make creators aware, and often comp them copies of the final product. I've heard of cases of DC or Marvel printing t-shirts, or mugs, or statues or whatever, using art they did already pay for and own (i.e. art from a cover used to make statues, or shirts) and not alerting the artists. It makes for unhappy artists of course, but there's nothing legally wrong with that. They own the trademark and the copyright for the work. And in fact, the last part of that youtube video is pertinent. If Mike used their character, then legally they could say he forfeits any other rights he has to the work he created, potentially speaking. In this instance, DC certainly owns the trademark to be sure, but not the copyright outright. Or it's hazy. As the creator of the work in question, that would normally be owned by Mike, unless paid for, or some other agreement made. Since what they did quite clearly copied a work he authored. Even if they own the character. Which is what make it hazy and unusual. But since they own the trademark, he seems like he's simply surprised they didn't say hey, we are planning to use this before making it, marketing it, etc.

OK, so based a bit on what is discussed above, but with a twist... DC has a new Batman statue coming out. It's based on a painting by Mike Mignola, featuring Mike's Batman Gotham by Gaslight version of the character. Here's the rub. Mike didn't do the painting for DC. In fact, it was a private commission for a collector. What's more, DC never contacted Mike to let him know they were using the piece to make the statue. So Mike did a commission for a collector, which he acknowledges is a DC character. And even though the Batman design used for the statue is his own variation, DC owns that too, since they published the Gotham by Gaslight book, and clearly Batman is all theirs. Mike doesn't do commissions like this for folks very often, if at all any more because he is very protective of his own characters. He doesn't mind fan art. Or even so much when other folks draw Hellboy as commissions and sell them to collectors. He is less happy when people do their own Hellboy art and sell it as shirts or mugs and stuff. So, here we have a case of DC taking a private commission from artist to collector, and using that art to make a statue for sale to the public without even saying, hey man, we're making this a product for sale. I'm having a hard time ever remembering anything like it happening before. Sure, sometimes after the fact, a company will ask an artist if they can use a commission as a cover, or the artist even will offer the art to the company to be published as a cover after the fact. But at that point the company pays the artist publishing royalties. It's all on the up and up. Mike's response on Facebook last week when he saw it seemed to be that he wasn't angling for anything, since he knew it was DC's character and all. He just seemed shocked they hadn't at least contacted him to let him know it was coming out. So sure, comic companies don't usually go after artists over trademark violations over commissions, it's one of those unspoken (so far) understandings that artists have with the comic companies. But I'm unaware of a time when a company has just outright used a commission without checking with the artist first. I'd be really curious to hear DC's side of things.

After seeing the whole thing, I can say it's nothing that folks that follow just about any art market fairly closely hasn't already surmised for themselves, but it is interesting hearing some of the major "fine art" players put it into their own words. I wish they'd delved a bit deeper in the topic, but then as they sort of get at... transparency is something many players in the art market are trying to avoid for obvious reasons. Digging deeper would have been really fascinating, but highly unlikely. In truth, I was surprised at how candid some of the folks interviewed actually were. I just wish there'd been more to it. I suppose for someone who isn't already deeply familiar with the inner workings of the art market, it might have been more revealing. I'd say it is great for folks just getting into art of any kind. There are economies of scale at play, but scale down millions into thousands, and many of the viewpoints expressed in the doc are very applicable to comic art.

There is a new documentary on Nexfilx called Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World I’m still in the middle of it, and it’s decent. The interviewees present various viewpoints and there are some heavy hitters and quite a few familiar faces, with a good variety of art presented. Primarily about contemporary art, the marketplace, money, auctions, etc.

Agreed!

Patience is a Virue!

I just anted to say thanks to Felix and DWJ for their fun little giveaway for Christmas day yesterday. It was such a lovely gesture, and congrats to the winners. And if you don't know what I'm talkinga bout, sign up for Felix's mailing list so you don't miss out on fun stuff like this. He and his artists always manage to find fun little ways to expose his artists to new audiences and make things fun and keep their audience engaged as well. Looking forward to seeing what they cook up in the New Year, and what the podcast brings us!

Love it!

That is one spiffy Thor page!

What if she has an itch on the back of her knee? The mind boggles. I would just about kill to be able to see one of those constructive criticism letters from Toth to Liefeld about his work. It doesn't exist, but in the alternate reality of my mind (different alternate reality that the one in which people are shaped as above), surely there is such a thing just waiting to be discovered? And not for nothing... there was a time around say 2000 when Liefeld's work was dirt cheap and NO ONE would go anywhere near his table at SDCC, where I thought it might be funny to buy one of his super jacked up pages for a couple hundred bucks, just to break out at parties and the like. Looking back now that I am older and more mature, part of me thinks that sounds cruel. The other part still thinks it'd be funny.

Since Howard is being so unhelpful... Back scan:

I can't ever say I've counted myself as a Kyle Hotz fan, but I have seen some neat pieces from him over the years and have to say, that's a pretty dang cool one.

I did so so poorly. Weak I tell ya. Weak!

I started to post a response the other day, decided against it. Then stewed on it a bit, came back, saw the thread had doubled in length and have just read all the various comments. The following is simply my personal take on commissioning, and also what I see in this instance. Personally I can see this through a lot of different perspectives, and I think more or less everyone has good points throughout. Ultimately at the end of the day, finding a resolution that satisfies this group is irrelevant though. What matters is finding a resolution that satisfies yourself. Whether that resolution happens internally, or in collaboration with Howard is between you both. The rest of us have no real dog in this hunt. When the computer is off at night, it’s you and your piece. I’ve not seen anyone mention it yet, but from what I can see in the posted photos, it looks to me like the “pasteups” are on artist’s white tape. Not on art board that was glued on. Maybe my observation is wrong in that, but that’d probably bother me if for no other reason that that artist’s tape (if it’s the stuff I’m thinking of) is crazy aggressive and not terribly conservation friendly in the long term. It wouldn’t surprise me to see piece of that tape grow a yellow halo stain around it over the next 15-25 years. Again, this is just if it is what it appear to me to be (I see the jagged edges on either end and I think the serrated edge of a tape dispenser. Now if that is also part of Howard’s working process, and widely known, well then that’s just how that guy creates work, and even though it’s not ideal, a guy’s working method is his working method. Why hire a guy who cuts trees up with chainsaws to come cut a tree down in your yard and tell him he can only use an axe? However, if it’s not widely known that his originals have passovers, etc, and there are no other examples of that cropping up in his commission work, then yeah, I could see saying something to him about it. If no other way than just saying hey, I got in the piece and was surprised to see you taped over the foot and drew on the tape. See what he says. Anyhow, aside from my own archival hangup regarding the tape… My first blush response is, the best reason to commission an artist is because you love their work in general, and you ant to see how they will interpret a visual. And the best results come from letting them be the artist they are, using the methods that best yield the result they want. Getting to the happy place is a matter of knowing who you are commissioning and what you are asking them to do, from THEIR perspective. Every artist is different, and some are very adept and open to being a trained monkey/hired gun, doing tricks for a customer for a buck. If I ask someone to draw a super specific scenario (not talking recreations here, but a totally new scene)… it leaves little for the artist to actually be an artist on. When I read briefs by certain folks about what they are asking for, it really sounds like they have a pre-defined visual in mind. To me, this is the worst possible way to commission a piece of art You can give an artist a specific scenario with a checklist of demands that need to be met, and they will work at it until it is what you were intending it to be. And in my opinion they tend to be the artist’s least good work. Creation by committee tends to yield the most static boring results. The other approach is to be in love with an artist’s work, give an artist a general idea and let them run with it in their own way. I personally feel this yields the very best commissions, because the artist is free to create. They are not trying to reproduce some specific visual I may have in my head, but to create a new visual based on a very loose idea or even just a suggestion of a character, etc… it allows them to be who they are and do what they do. Which is generally why I like them in the first place. IMO telling an artist you don;t like they way they have drawn this part or that part, is questioning that artist’s voice. Making art is all about making choices. SOM are good, and some are bad. This is where the crapshoot of commissions comes in. The same as a musician making a spontaneous solo up on the spot, or an athlete, all can have a good or bad day. You don’t way, you didn’t knock it out of the park today, so I’m not going to pay you. They get paid to do the best they can on the day they are creating. That’s it. So maybe Chaikin had a good game going (the female figure), and then hit a bad run on PS or something? I can’t say. Personally I don’t have a big issue with PS, his hat, etc. To me it all looks stylized a certain way. you may not like the way Howard chose those stylizations (not talking about the pasteups so much as the linework and shadow fills, but those were his artistic choices. As for the pasteups (tapeups) if I’m honest, i can’t recall seeing someone do that before on commissions. Published work, sure, but most folks know commissions are going on the wall, and tend to try and deliver a more “expected” final finished product. But then as a fan of weird art processes, to me it’s just quirky and wouldn’t personally be a deal killer. I’d be surprised, but possibly amused. BUT I can clearly see where others wouldn’t be so accepting of it, or would even be downright livid. I could totally understand it. But that’s neither here nor there. Some folks are saying let it sit for weeks and then see if it’s an issue later when seen fresh. I think that’s a different kind of mistake. If I’m saying something to an artist, I’m saying it on the day it arrives. Saying it 3 weeks later makes it seem like buyers remorse. Asking about it now at least alerts him to your disappointment about it’s condition on arrival. But the thing is, if it’s me, I know commissions are a shoot. I went though years of that stuff, and I can say 2 month turnaround is pretty phenomenal for a “name” artist. There are a great many such artists that owe people for years (decades) before getting around to finishing work. Not that that is OK or should be accepted as the norm, but let’s just say it comes with the territory. So you may think of Howard having cut corners on the piece in a rush to beat your deadline of before his trip, and he might see it as having bent over backwards to conscientiously get you your piece before he left, knowing that sitting on it might have meant many more months of waiting for you. Looking at the female fig, I think it’s clear it wasn’t a rush job. Depending on how Howard does work these days, he might not have given the pasteup bits (I still think it’s tape) a second thought. It might be as natural as some artists whipping out the whiteout bottle, or the white gouache and brush. I can say, going in making demands isn’t the way I’d tackle it. I’d just let him know what you love and what you found surprising, or a bit off. If it’s the paste overs, he may at least understand if he hears where you are coming from. The hat… to me that’s just you being nitpick about what kind of hat you wanted him to draw and how he should have drawn it. Every artist interprets characters differently. You start telling him he doesn’t know how to draw certain things, and it increases chances of the defenses going way up. If you talk to him about the paste over stuff and he sounds like he wants to fix it for you (some artists really want commissioners to be happy and will go the extra mile for them), then you chat about the and maybe ask about the choice of filling the hat with shadow. maybe he had a reason for it? Or maybe he reassesses it and decides he wants to make it right? Either way you gotta feel him out and see if he gets super defensive. In that instance, some artists might way send it back for a refund, just to get rid of someone they see as being a needy pain in the butt. Is that justified? Some would say never. Me… like I said, I’ve seen some things. Some folks are just not possible to please, because again, they have very clear preconceived ideas of what a (insert artist name here) piece would look like if they drew a very specific thing. And in closing, when OP ran his idea past him, and Howard said he didn’t think he could pull off the face he wanted, that was the first red flag. Telling him to do his best is a pass to do exactly that. With all of it. So if I hunan idea past someone and they aren’t super excited right off the bat, I either change it up until we hit on something we are both excited about, or I don’t move forward at all. I definitely don’t ask them to proceed knowing they were uncomfortable with my request. That’s just my .02¢. -e.

Yeah, Mick's always been a solid guy in my experinece, both buying art, and commissioning pieces. Both were a number of years ago, but I still see him around from time to time via social media, and he seems as easy to reach and as engaging today as ever.

-2

Sounds like overpriced garbage to me. I would take that money and buy a piece of actual original comic artwork with Stan's signature on it as well. There is plenty out there. That is my opinion.

Thanks for posting that article. Sums things up pretty well. His typography-as-storytelling skills were always my favorite bits of Cerebus.

Murphy can and should get whatever he can for his work. I 100% support that for any artist. Being an artist is hard work, and most never make it. That said, comparing oneself to Frank Miller (or any other comic art luminary for that matter) without having done anything Milleresque (i.e. completed genre/artform defining work) .... I don't have any respect for that. Let others toot your horn, or be the Beatles and THEN call yourself bigger than Jesus. Not that Miller is Jesus, or the Beatles... You get where I'm going with this.

I LOVE this!!!

I'm no Norem expert at all. In fact I've only seen a handful of his pieces over the years. But even I can look at the eBay and the Heritage scans, and say I'm pretty certain that the eBay piece is from a different hand. It can't even be a prelim. The person painting that eBay piece was clearly looking at and struggling with copying the shapes of the actual final image. It's pretty easy to spot a practiced hand and seeing how they are working things out in their prelims, vs seeing someone trying to ape something after the fact. That hand wrapped around the sword hilt is a dead giveaway. What's more, the medium is all wrong. From everything I've seen, Norem is using heavy illustration board to paint on. The eBay piece is on primed canvas. Super toothy stuff. Look at Norem's pieces. Granted, I've only seen what is probably a very small portion of his output, but between the hack copying, the wrong medium and substrate, poor choices in color, lighting, reflection, not to even get into detail and overall painting technique, etc. are enough flags that i'd personally I'd steer well clear if this was an artist I was into, barring some kind of blessing from the man himself... and even then, it's such an amateurish example, I'd skip it anyway and keep looking for something that better reflects his actual skillset.

Haven't had any issues with Safari, Chrome or Firefox really. Using it on a mobile device can be a bit bogged down and I've had it time out a few times on a tablet and phone, but that's probably been due to connectivity/speed issues and not site specific problems. Just ran a couple quick searches to see if CAF results were popping up, and sure enough, I see more stuff in the searches from CAF. Cool!

I watched these. Was fun to see the original parties participate. I watched this doc about essentially the same thing a while back as well..,