So, What About---

So, I've had a couple emails asking about the trollers/flamers from the old CBO site. I HAVE had attempts to get nasty things kicking off here but Blogger is very keen to stop that sort of thing once reported -and I do report these things and then delete them.

These people are nothing to me nor the comic community.

Right, nadger88 (really???) asked "What happened about your war with IPC over old characters?"

Okay, I had a dispute with one person who messed everything up and had no idea about characters or copyright and his pals in "Legal" were also very vague, wrong and tried to hide this by threatening to sue me for using my own characters.

                                                                                                                                                                                           So, I contacted HM Intellectual Property Office . This is the body dealing with such things. I presented the evidence in a letter as well as asked various points.  The letter was published on CBO at the time.  I did expect to be told that in some way I had ***** everything up and gotten it wrong.

 

Apparently, I had not. I read, re-read and then let a few others see the letter.

So, as the cause of all the problems no longer worked at IPC and I was discussing possible projects with the company I contacted THE highest person at IPC. No one is higher that the CEO. I put my points, etc., but without realising it also shot myself in the foot.

"I regret to advise you IPC Media withdrew from comic publishing thirty years ago..."

The original letter read "twenty" years but when I asked about this it was explained comic publishing stopped thirty plus years ago but IPC was licensing old characters such as Billy Bunter.  Wild Storm in the US had licensed characters for the Albion mini series, etc..

Great, so no problem using the specific characters -then I got my projects returned with a note "IPC Media has not been in the comic production business for thirty years...blah blah blah" I think I may have been responsible for the killing of my own projects though I'm pleased to say IPC Media really did have a "down" on comics so maybe not.

In fact, as I pointed out on the old CBO, I received a big package of photocopied comic strip work from the 1960s/1970s (unpublished).  I have no explanation for this but when I contacted IPC Media to find out a very irritated man told me he had been told to send them to me and I could "use them however you want. We don't really care. I certainly don't!"

So, I sent a letter to IPC but never got a reply. The line had been drawn under "We have NOTHING to do with comics".

I bear no animosity toward IPC Media and IPC Media bears none toward me -I assume my annoying them over comics isn't even a memory for them!