Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and characters

[starscape]

Do Egmont own the rights to Sweeny Toddler? Dredd and Toddler have crossed over before, of course (see below), but now they could have a proper showdown!

Yep,they do.

A Collected Leopard from Lime Street for me.

[colcool007]

I have put my take on myblog.

I hope some of you enjoy it. It took a while to dig out my Action The Story of a Violent Comic book.

[big bad bri]

i wonder if this news is going to be in any of the national papers tomorrow?

[philcom55]

...If it is the name of Roy of the Rovers will swing it: one of the few British comic characters everyone's heard of!

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Do Egmont own the rights to Sweeny Toddler? Dredd and Toddler have crossed over before, of course (see below), but now they could have a proper showdown!

Whoopee-1985.jpg

Mega-City One could be invaded by a whole bunch of Whizz-kids and Chip-ites

[comixminx]

I have also put my take on it on the Jinty blog: https://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2016/0 ... opyrights/

It includes a request for suggestions - I know there have been plenty already, eg Leopard of Lime Street as above. Let's let Rebellion hear our thoughts

[big bad bri]

paw broon, Rebellion had to do exactly that scanning and clean-up to produce their Misty reprint that's due out in Sept. So it won't put them off - but it clearly is going to add to the time and cost.

what reprint is this i couldn't see nothing on amazon i would get this as i missed the misty reprint egmont did a few years ago only being able to get buster.perhaps that's why egmont sold the rights as they wasted a massive opportunity with those 4 reprint comics.

[davidandrewsimpson]

Big Bad Bri

I looked on Amazon (both UK and USA) and it's on both of them. Adding Pat Mills' name might make searching for it easier.

[SID]

With any luck - and according to what's reported on the BBC site - we might see new versions of old comics, or new compilations, on the shelves once again.
But bear in mind that a lot of the pre-1970 originals for many weeklies were chucked, or at least "disappeared" ,and just don't exist any more, so were Rebellion to gain access to pre-'76 material, in some cases they'd have to make do with re-scanning existing hard copies of comics or use the multitude of scanned material that exists. Much like the BBC are currently doing with off-air, amateur recordings.

The pre-1970 material is still owned by Time Inc, so unless Rebellion do another deal with them, it won't happen. The current deal is with Egmont, for acquisition of post-1970 material.

Interesting enough, Lew, Time Inc cannot own all the pre-1970s material else Rebellion wouldn't have Roy of the Rovers. So it would be interesting to see what material Rebellion does actually have.

No doubt, they would start by producing graphic novels of existing material but wouldn't it be great if they brought back Action or even Battle. Imagine a weekly or monthly containing new stories of Roy of the Rovers, Johnny Red, Dredger, Doomlord (or does the Dan Dare Corporation own him?), Hookjaw, just to name a few.

Then of course there's the humour comics and they have a wealth of characters to use if they wanted to bring out a comic to rival that of The Beano and Toxic.

The mind just boggles.

[Lew Stringer]

With any luck - and according to what's reported on the BBC site - we might see new versions of old comics, or new compilations, on the shelves once again.
But bear in mind that a lot of the pre-1970 originals for many weeklies were chucked, or at least "disappeared" ,and just don't exist any more, so were Rebellion to gain access to pre-'76 material, in some cases they'd have to make do with re-scanning existing hard copies of comics or use the multitude of scanned material that exists. Much like the BBC are currently doing with off-air, amateur recordings.

The pre-1970 material is still owned by Time Inc, so unless Rebellion do another deal with them, it won't happen. The current deal is with Egmont, for acquisition of post-1970 material.

Interesting enough, Lew, Time Inc cannot own all the pre-1970s material else Rebellion wouldn't have Roy of the Rovers. So it would be interesting to see what material Rebellion does actually have.

Roy of the Rovers is an exception as it was acquired by Egmont years ago. As I explained on my blog, they also owned some pre-1970s Buster characters which have also been sold to Rebellion, but that's it. So there's no likelihood of a Weary Willie and Tired Tim collection anytime soon, or a revival of Radio Fun.

Here what I posted on my blog in response to someone who'd always thought that Egmont and IPC were the same company...

It's complicated, varszava, but IPC and Egmont have always been separate companies unrelated to each other. Several years back, the rights were divided and Egmont got all the post-1970 characters, but there are exceptions. Buster is more complicated because it started in 1960 but the rights to characters were divided between IPC and Egmont.

From IPC publisher Andrew Sumner a few years ago....

Here's the list of the 28 Buster characters that are owned by Egmont Fleetway, not IPC. (Edit: So presumably are now owned by Rebellion):

Buster
Buster and the Big One
Wonder Worm
Rent-A-Ghost Ltd
Clever Dick
Faceache
Football Madd
Ivor Lott and Tony Broke
Chalky
Tomboy
Bluebottle and Basher
Mummy's Boy
X-Ray Specs
The Winners
Jack Pott
Toys of Doom
Back-Tracker Jack
Thunderbolt the Avenger
Galaxus the Thing From Outer Space
The Skid Kids
The Wizard of Football
Crabbe's Crusaders
Fishboy Denizen of the Deep
Pete's Pocket Army
Marney the Fox
Sammy Brewster's Secret Ski-Board Squad
The Leopard from Lime Street
Astounding Adventures of Charlie Peace (but this does NOT include rights to the Charlie Peace character, who was a real bloke and therefore in the public domain)

[Lew Stringer]

By the way, it's always worth checking out Down the Tubes for news and updates about British comics. Here's a link to a story relevant to this topic:

http://downthetubes.net/?p=33494

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Then of course there's the humour comics and they have a wealth of characters to use if they wanted to bring out a comic to rival that of The Beano and Toxic.

This has got me excited

[philcom55]

Given IPC's tendency to retitle and reprint so many old humour strips during the 1970s Rebellion will need to be extra careful with this material.

[David McDonald]

Its great news, these characters are now in the hands of a publisher who publish weekly and monthly newsagent distributed comics.

They know what they have bought, but it going to be a mammoth undertaking to to a stock count of exactly what they own and digitise, it really is years work.

For British comics fans, here come the good times (in a while!!)

[johnfreeman96]

Its great news, these characters are now in the hands of a publisher who publish weekly and monthly newsagent distributed comics.

They know what they have bought, but it going to be a mammoth undertaking to to a stock count of exactly what they own and digitise, it really is years work.

For British comics fans, here come the good times (in a while!!)

Absolutely - this also opens up other possibilities, too, and not just comics.

Here's my list of what Rebellion now owns: http://downthetubes.net/?p=33494 - but this almost certainly only scratches the surface. Let's hope they make a full list available to save further scratching of heads here, on Facebook, the 2000AD forum...