Legal Matters

It would probably be fair to say that a lot of people were snickering a bit when it was announced that Jazan Wild (real name Jason Barnes) was suing Heroes for similarities between his carnival plot and theirs:

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, lists similarities including a carnival that can magically appear and disappear to collect protagonists, a young boy who develops special abilities, a carney or hero running through the woods chased by a mob, a circle of mirrors tied to the key plot, similarities in dialogue, and more.

As anyone who has been reading comics or watching tv for more than, oh, five minutes can attest, none of those elements are particularly novel or special. Fact: we edited a carnival story once ourselves and at least one of those elements was in it.

Heroes is cancelled, a surprise twist in the Siegel vs Warners legal battle and video from the Doug Wright Awards.

Via Colleen Doran comes word that htmlcomics.com has been shut down by the FBI. The site was a very popular online library of unauthorized comics scans, with hundreds of thousands of issues available at the click of a mouse:

The Comics Journal has run a statement from Eric A Chase, attorney for Christopher Handley, the Iowa man who pled guilty to "possessing drawings of children being sexually abused." The statement lays out the...

Over at Blog@ Jeff Trexler decodes some court filings which suggest that DC/Warners MAY expect the Superman case to go to trial. They've let go of their previous attorneys (who worked on...

Whatever you do today, read these essays by Charles Brownstein, Jason Thompson, and Carl Horn on the Christopher Handley case. Searching high and low, it is impossible to find an actual crime that has...

In yet ANOTHER case of stealing, artist Vera Brosgol noted via Twitter that Hot Topic had totally ripped off her T-shirt design. Brosgol's drawing had been created for Erika Moen's birthday. As Valerie D'Orazio...

Last week, we reported on some legal troubles for Diamond Distribution owner Steve Geppi, including what appeared to be a $500 million lawsuit filed by the heirs of Archie artist Bob Montana. After looking...

In the Kevin O'Neill interview we linked to earlier, he made reference to the troubles surrounding LOEG: Black Dossier, which nearly didn't get published by DC and arrived without a planned flexidisk due to...

It's been no secret over the last year that Steve Geppi, the owner of Diamond Comics Distribution, has had some money problems on his other business ventures, including Gemstone, his now-dormant publishing arm and...

Christopher Handley, the manga collector from Iowa who pled guilty to possessing child pornography, has been sentenced to six months in jail, followed by three years of supervised release and five years of probation....

Nick Rodwell is a lawyer and the second husband of Fanny, the widow of Hergé, the world-famous creator of comics icon Tintin. As such, he's the manager of the Tintin estate. He's also, it...