"My apologies to the crew of the Serenity fan film Bellflower --
Recently, we made a truly unfortunate mistake regarding the use of art from a fan film in one of our comics. We would like to make an apology to the artists and the filmmaker who were affected by our error.
While preparing to draw Serenity: Float Out , artist Patric Reynolds researched ships from the ’Verse online, and mistook some ships designed for the fan film Bellflower for canonical ships. The ships were designed by John Douglass, S. E. O’Brien, Sam Osbourne, and filmmaker Mark James. Their work is terrific, and completely professional, like so much of what the Browncoats do, so no one realized the mistake.
We understand that this was a serious oversight on our part. We want to assure everyone that this is not a usual occurance, and we will make sure to be more careful in the future.
Please accept my most sincere apologies, on behalf of Dark Horse and artist Patric Reynolds."
-Scott
They really want to spread the word about this oversight. Grapevine says Scott also apologized publicly at the Browncoats meeting on the last day of San Diego Comic-Con.
I'm furious over how some of the people acted over this!
ReplyDeleteAfter going to thebellflower.com, which then let me to a thread about it in fireflyfans.net, it's clear that some of the people working on this (specifically the usernames "Tilk" and "Magus", did not do it "for the love of Firefly" like they claim, but to get their names out there.
The discussion started on thebellflower.com and everyone seemed to be very grateful and honored to have their ships used. Then, once the user names "Magus3D" and "Tilk", who I understand is Mark James, showed up, suddenly they were yelling about being "screwed over" and "how legal action would be taken". "These people should be ashamed," exclaimed Tilk.
That was, of course, before Scott Allie contacted them and suddenly they're thanking Dark Horse, kissing their ass, and blessing them. Clearly, they're just excited that their names will now be in the next issue of Buffy and and upcoming releases of this comic.
I think it's clear. On the fireflyfans.net page, Magus says "I didn't do any of this for the money...I did it to get my name out there, and make a few contacts" and now he has his name out there.
And speaking of money, here's what Tilk had to say on Whedonesque.com:
"We at the bell had pleadged that not one cent would ever be recieved for this film. and money offered, has been re-directed by the party offering, to cancer research."
but Magus said something a bit different on thebellflower.com:
"it's nice to know my work is in the official 'verse an' all, but it would've been nice for them to at least ask... maybe a credit? a token amount of cash... I would've donated half to cancer research?" HALF? BUT WAIT! I thought you said you didn't do this for the money!
If they were real Firefly fans, they shouldn't have caused such a fuss in the first place. They didn't create Firefly, therefore, they were already using someone else's idea. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just the point of the whole thing.
Where is their apology to Scott Allie for acting so rude about the whole situation?