October 29, 2013
Assembled Extra: Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space Announces End To Series Due To Platinum Deal
Megan Rose Gedris, a one-time Prism grant winner and the creator of the webcomic
I Was Kidnapped By Lesbian Pirates From Outer Space,
announced yesterday via a widely-reblogged tumblr post that she would be bringing
Lesbian Pirates to an end. She cites the fact that the property is owned by Platinum Studios and the deal she struck with that company won't allow her to pursue the creative options she'd like to regarding that work. Gedris' comic was a finalist in 2006 in Platinum's "comic book challenge." That led to the contract being offered along with the availability, at least initially, of an on-line platform for her to publish webcomics based on that work.
Six issues of a print comic book version came out from Platinum in 2008-2009. However, it looks like there's been little to no traction on behalf of Gedris' work since that time: she says that all subsequent work on-line was done by her without any sort of recompense, out of love for the characters and milieu, and a potential outcome that saw those characters returned to her control. Moving the property into other media has proven even more frustrating despite the cartoonist apparently laying significant groundwork for a handful of such projects. Gedris describes in that initial essay a feeling of benefiting the company by giving them a property whose continuing popularity they can claim as their own. Gedris' choice to stop working on
Lesbian Pirates keeps them from taking credit for an active, popular work. It also allows her to focus on projects over which she has greater control and might see some reward.
Gedris describes the reaction to her post
here. Gedris has made the material she'd done on-line available in a way that fans might seize copies of all of that work before the operation is suspended.
Gedris would have been a teen when she entered that contest, and this seems to be a classic case of someone signing a contract they would never sign in hindsight, and refocusing energies as a result. She urges young creators to not make simply getting published an overriding virtue, and to legal help in negotiating contracts.
posted 12:10 am PST |
Permalink
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
Full Archives