Here is a tiny glimpse of what goes on here at the Tower.
Two weeks ago I got a message from someone in the United States -I thought I recognised the name but with my talent for forgetting and mixing names up I left it. I was told that my opinion carried a lot of weight and that there was a lot of respect for my work and integrity....
At this point I was suspecting an escaped lunatic but also wondering why, if all of this was true...I am in dire financial trouble?
I never, ever give out names -I spent 30+ years as a UK police forces wildlife expert as well as other work I'll not discuss. Althopugh I signed one specific document it never affected what I do. I was quite proud that one particular person stated to colleagues that "His word is more binding than the official secrets act". Which is probably a good thing as I could make a lot of money out of selling stories (I am my own worst enemy).
I still do not divulge names from people in business I deal with because I'm not stupid and business is business. Imagine asking me how to set up a new UK anthology comic and how to publicise it, etc. and then you see all the details across the internet so that your competition knows what you are doing and can get there first. Not good, right?
So I ask "Mr. D" how I can help. Well, it seems that Mr. D's company were thinking of producing a UK monthly anthology away from the licence held by another UK company -you see why this could get awkward. He wanted an assessment of the market and also wanted to know who best to not employ as he had heard about the arguments and so on and the last thing his company wanted was to employ people who would be at each others throats giving the Company a bad reputation. That list I sent straight away.
I looked at the word doc Mr. D sent me and what he and The Company wanted. I told him that it would be two weeks work and I needed to sort out the consultation fee (even the BBC paid me that!). I will quote here:
"Dan says the best we can offer is in offering (sic) you the possibility of some work once things are set up"
To those who do not know Biz-speak that means: "Do it all for nothing and maybe -maybe- we'll think of...." Yeah, that vague.
So I told Mr. D : "No" At that point there was a long gap before the next message -I knew the plan they had and what it entailed and there was even a comment about messages from the company being confidential so I pointed out that he had not placed that notification on any message. I could hear the squeak of his arse over the internet. So, I pointed out to him that I gave no info out on business dealings and that he was safe.
That was it. More of my precious life wasted. It gets funnier though since a couple days after someone using a throw-away message account contacted me and said that he worked for a pop media internet site (I checked and his name appears nowhere on it) and that he had heard that The Company were thinking of publishing in the UK during 2020 -could I confirm having heard anything about this?
Firstly, why come straight to me? Never even heard of the site he mentioned until I checked and I never had any dealings with them. Secondly, where had he heard this rumour? Thirdly, why did he use a false name? It was quite obvious Mr. D was having someone check on me and so I told him it was all news to me but, hey, is there any writing work going at his Pop Media site? He said he'd ask but never heard back and the mail account is closed. I did ask the site owner if he knew how I could contact so-and-so as I believed he had written for them...never heard of him.
Childish? Silly? Well when it comes to companies and money get ready for a real kindergarten.
Back in the 1980s I met with the late Robert Maxwell as Maxwell Pergamon Publishing (MPP) wanted to publish a line of comics and, quote: "Build a British comics empire that can leap across the Atlantic". I never have and never will divulge the full details of that meeting but a full plan was presented and seemed ready to put into action. However, I was in London and had just left Marvel UKs offices when I was greeted by a rather gruff man in a very expensive suit. As it turned out this man had been told I was visiting Marvel that day (I assume by someone IN the offices) and he wanted a chat. No, I was NOT going to get into his car and go "somewhere" but it was a nice sunny day so we took a walk instead.
This Mr. Y turned out to be employed by a man considered Maxwell's business rival, Rupert Murdoch. There was a lot of talk at the time that if Maxwell went into comics then Murdoch was going to take him on. It seems that Mr. Y had knowledge of what I had discussed with Maxwell from someone "in the company -an editor" and the punchline was how much would it take for me "to tell Maxwell to **** off" and set things up for Murdoch as "We have the best printing and we can go at short notice". At that point, somewhere in my tiniest of brain recesses a voice told me to tell him to "**** off" because thinking money was going to make me stab someone in the back...well, it just isn't going to work (now you know why I have no money!).
I politely told him that the offer was nice but that I could not jump ship (a very bad turn of phrase in the circumstances) unless Maxwell either tried to cheat me or pulled back from the project. "Well, the offer was made. I hope you don't regret refusing it" said Mr. Y as he walked off.
A week later Maxwell had "fallen off his yacht" and the crap hit the fan. I contacted the number Mr. Y gave me as MPP could not answer a straight question and finding reference to the project was "not a priority". Murdoch's organisation, through, I assume, a secretary, told me they did not know what I was talking about and that it would be pointless calling back. Oh they knew and I knew that they knew I knew and....anyway.
I began a lot of work, including on D-Gruppe, for Bastei Verlag in Germany and I have to admit that I was shocked when I discovered that the person who initially contacted me was THE top man at the company. I wrote a lot of scripts and other material and got strips drawn -John (Accident Man) Erasmus did a Deutscher Michael strip in colour. I was even preparing to visit Bastei when I visited family in Germany. But all contact stopped. I phoned to see what was going on but a secretary told me that there was no one at the company who could answer my questions. We are talking months of hard work. Months later I was talking to Gil Page Fleetway Managing Editor who explained that Fleetway had been purchased by the Egmont Group and that Bastei -at the time I referred to- had been purchased by Egmont. I later spoke to a former Bastei editor who confirmed what Gil had said: Egmont had taken everything over and editors were not allowed to contact people working on projects (I guess for business and legal reasons).
Then we had Looking Glass, an IPC Media and Fleetway/Egmont approved return of their (I say "their" though they had no copyright on the characters -HM Intellectual Properties Office) action heroes. Some 112 pages and then a complete arschloch of an IPC Intellectual Properties Manager contacts me to cease and desist using the characters. He was vague as he seemed to think that IPC characters and Egmont characters were owned by IPC...oh, and he also thought that MY characters in my own publications were owned by IPC so I told him to take me to court as I had everything I needed to counter sue his ass off. Then he "consulted IPC Legal" who were equally dumb-ass. Apparently, here citing "Legal", DC comics had successfully sued Marvel Comics to stop them using the Marvelman character because they owned the rights. Firstly, Time Warner, the owners of IPC Media at that time, did not own DC in the 1940s and 1950s when as National Periodicals, it sued Fawcett Publishing because Captain Marvel was too close to Superman. In the UK this made Mick Anglo turn Captain Marvel into Marvel Man (waaaay before Marvel even existed so any lawsuit from them would just have been time-wasting). I pointed out that his "Legal department" had Googled things and got them messed up.
The CEO at IPC sent me a letter to send to the IP man (in the same building as the CEO) stating I had full permission for the project. The IP man came back with the fact that the owners -Time Warner- over-ruled that permission. I got so fed up I told him where to go. It was at this point that he asked me whether I would put "together a list of all the characters owned by IPC Media"....he had no idea. The IPC Legal department had no idea. He had sent threatening emails, blocked the project and more and now wanted me to tell him what IPC owned? It came down to the fact that there were NO legal or other documents claiming ownership of characters as the characters were never copyrighted. I told him that it would take me two weeks of work but if IPC wanted me to do this for them it would be paid work. The IP man felt this was unreasonable.
Two years later I exchanged emails with someone at Time Warner and DC Comics over a project and mentioned the IP man. There was silence for a couple days then both got back to me: there was no record of their involvement in the matter and as far as they were concerned they had no real interest in the characters "because of legal reasons". My project should have gone ahead unhindered.
You see why the industry is in a mess?
So, after Mr. D (you remember Mr. D?) I hear from M. P. based in Belgium. Lots of chat about the mess Brexit will leave and blah blah blah so I then ask why he is contacting me? He mentions someone I do recall because that person was in the German small press and I had not heard the name for years. It seems that my "reputation" is such that I was the only person considered straight forward and honest enough to contact. It seems that, since 2015 (2015??), M. P.'s company had been looking at the UK market as a possible future base of operations to launch some books -having read an old British Comics Industry Annual Report of mine (the last I wrote in 2012). So the usual chat followed and a request for a publishing document -how to do "this" and achieve "that" and I mentioned that would take a good amount of time so mentioned a consultation fee.
"Don't you have all of that information to hand?" I was asked. I pointed out that I did but to update and make it relevant to their plans it will take a week or so. "Okay, we can wait a week" I was told and I said "So I will get a consultation fee?" And then: "We will need to discuss that and we'll let you know once we've seen what you have submitted"
"Do the work for NOTHING" is what that means.
Whether it is comics (my entries on Wikipedia keep getting taken down in the UK but I am on a number of US and European comic data bases) or wildlife (via my books or my work on technical papers) or other work I know that I do have a very credible reputation and that outside the UK I am far better known. I can list off at least four requests for information on comic creators this year and the number of such requests over the last ten years has increased. Where information I researched and forwarded was used I should -it is the must do in research- get a credit. Certainly if the information is used in a thesis it must be credited. Nothing. Some people ask for information claiming they are working on a book but are not -they just want to use the info on blogs.
For this reason, no amount of flattery gets me doing free work. You have a project or want to use my knowledge -pay me.
Why people working for big companies think I should work for free beats me -maybe they want to claim my work as being theirs?
So all offers accepted so long as you pay!
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