Warner Brothers Sez: Remove Your Cancer Charity Auction Right Now

Unbelievable. Someone gets a bunch of very well known comic artists to produce work for a children's cancer charity, the auction goes live on EBay and then some douchebag lawyer goes on a DESTROY IT NOW rampage. From Evan Dorkin (who provided one of the pieces):

The letter from e-bay that Thomas received states that it was the use of DC copyrighted characters that got them noticed and squelched the auctions, although I wonder if it was also the use of the Superman silhouette in the listings (and perhaps the accompanying text alluding to Superman?) that got them noticed. Only a corporate lawyer or a complete cretin could think that constituted DC's involvement or approval, but, that's life in the big wide business world. Cripes. You'd think someone could let this go, for a cancer-related charity, it's a limited deal, and there are hundreds of other DC-related fan art and pro commission auctions on e-bay set up for personal gain that they don't bring the hammer down on.

I think it's bullshit, and I know it's easy to have a knee-jerk "corporations suck" response like this, but, well, this sucks. If Thomas Denton overstepped his bounds, he was being naive, and he was trying to do a good thing that really isn't going to hurt poor Warner Brothers/DC, and someone in a suit could have made this right with a little work. Or quietly tossed in some bucks to the charity to cover the deal and been heroes about it even while stepping on someone's good efforts. I know, it only works that way in the movies.

It is bullshit. And it's one of the many, many, many reasons why I'm glad I don't work in the arts anymore, be it music, paint or film. Because for every smart and decent thing a creative individual does, there is always some idiot higher up the food chain blundering through life with insanely stupid actions like this, without any thought to the possible consequence of, oh, I don't know, bad PR such as articles entitled "DC Comics Hates Kids With Cancer".

Dumbest freaking thing I've seen all day. Enjoy your shitstorm, Warner. You have truly earned it.