Sunday, November 02, 2014

I'm there and I'm 23 years younger

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4 comments:

Tom Moon said...

Thanks for the interesting piece of trivia about the Russ Heath/Roy Lichtenstein connection Ellis. While reading more about this, I also learned that Russ Heath was the artist who drew those Roman soldier and Revolutionary soldier toy ads that were on the backs of comics between the early 60's and early 70's.

As a kid I sent away for the 102 Knights for $1.02 from one of those ads. When the set arrived, I was initially disappointed to see that the knights were two-dimensional pieces of plastic, 51 of them in black plastic, 51 of them in white - not at all what I had pictured. After a while though, my kid brain adjusted to the new reality and I ended up playing with them for many hours.

Sometimes I get the urge to fill out and send in one of those coupons, in the hopes that by some miracle the
company is still in business and will send me one of their last remaining sets sitting in the back of their warehouse.


Rickart said...

Thanks for sharing this. Situations like this and 100 million dollar movies based on comics created by obscure work-for-hire people "Gee, would it really kill you to funnel just a little bit of that money toward the people who originally created that stuff?" My understanding that Marvel has done that with some of the original creators (Bill Milanto for Rocket Raccoon, for example) but there was that big court battle with the Kirby estate for years. I guess the answer is mixed when it comes to Marvel. I follow Walt Simonson in social media... he hasn't complained at all about the Marvel movies (he's in the first one!) and has at least got name credit on the Thor movies.

BDMontag said...

At Comic Fest Neal Adams had a panel about his battles with the comics companies. (It was not supposed to be that subject, it was supposed to be your rights as a creator, but his stories were more interesting.) He covered Work for Hire and the Kirby estate. The Supreme Court was supposed to rule on the Work for Hire contract in context of the Kirbys. However, pressure from other publishers forced Marvel to make a huge monetary settlement instead of have the court consider it. Adams is convinced it is unconstitutional. (I missed the on-topic, first 10 minutes of the panel, so I don't know why it should be unconstitutional.) The Kirbys got their money, but Work for Hire never got thrown out of the legal lexicon. Laura Siegel Larson still has something going with DC and Warner Bros. I remember reading the Shuster estate settled separately from the Siegels prior to Man of Steel being released.

MrGoodson2 said...

I'm glad someone had a first hand experience with those army men. I wonder if you can get those on ebay. Probably.
I had the better ones mocked in the Joe Dante movie Small Soldiers. Wit the welded feet to the base.

The little strip mainly spoke to me as a final statement about getting to a certain age where the market quits asking artists to sharpen their crayons and produce commercially.