Sherry Leak Offical Marvel Sketch Artist MM3 Card
Now we can add the name of Sherry Leak to the growing list of eBay bans.
Sherry often works under the name raccoon-eyes. She uses the ebay name of coonic_studios and she is an official Marvel artist, have had her work inserted in the Marvel Masterpieces 3 trading card set.
She also worked on commissions and sold her original 1/1 artwork on eBay, now however she has been removed and is no longer a registered user.
:::::::UPDATE:::::
It has been brought to my attention that I was not clear about the ebay removals so now I want to make this very clear: The artists in question were suspended from ebay for 7 days not banned for life, in case I was not understood before. The suspensions are temporary at this stage.
::UPDATE::
Sherry Leak has contacted me and I have quoted her extensively in the next few paragraphs but before you read her comments it’s important to get a little background. Sherry is a professional artist who has worked on numerous card sets (listed below). Importantly Sherry is not a chancer, she is a skilled artist and she is a graduate of the Joe Kubert School of Art. She makes her living through her drawing and takes it very seriously, you can see more of her work by clicking the Gambit sketch card. When she contacted me today I felt it worth updating the article to let her add some of her own words to this mess.This is what she has had to say:
“I have worked on Marvel Masterpieces Series III Sketch cards. I’ve also done work for the Archie Comics March of Dimes Sketch Cards, and Legends and Lore Sketch Card Set by sadlittles.com I’m currently working on Dean Yeagle’s Mandy Sketch Cards and within the next month I will be work on 2 new card sets. One is called Zombie’s vs Cheerleaders and the other card set is based off of Moonstone characters such as the Phantom.
My only income is freelancing at the moment. So I draw alot and I work really hard. I have never been suspended from ebay, it was a surprise to me. I know of several dozen artist on ebay who sell original art. So why am I penalized and not them? Original art work of established characters is sold online and at conventions all the time. I did not claim to own the characters and I specifically stated this in all my auctions. I made sure to mention in the auctions that these were just fan art drawings, like a sketch you would typically get at a convention. So all in all I’m not particularly pleased to hear about the disney/marvel merge.
Its already difficult enough to be a artist as it is now it seems that it will be even harder now. I want to be optimistic but we’ll have to see how things play out. I will be going to baltimore comic con next month and I will have a table there, I wonder if they are going to have disney scouts there and start telling artist to take down there marvel art work? If people are already getting booted off of ebay this soon what will happen a couple of days, weeks, or months from now? Will getting a commission or a sketch card of established characters have to become a underground thing since disney is cracking down so hard?”
You know I think she just summed up everyone’s fear on this issue, what will happen and why are some being picked on while others are left to carry on?
So some questions about all this:
What about, as she mentions, convention sketches? Can comic artists now sketch Disney characters for fans?
It seems not at this point, if they are ever intend for re-sale. It may even be a problem for the artists to display or charge for these drawings.
How far is Disney willing to go?
Fairly far for those with any sort of memory for things like Howaerd the Duck, I guess I am pleased the Steve Gurber did not make it to see this, he thought Marvel and Disney were crooks. He may well have been right. That leads us back to Joe Quesada who said just yesterday that nothing was changing. I guess he was wrong..
Lets remember this is the same Joe who insisted on calling DC AOL Comics, and alluding to there impotence as a company with a comparison to a Porn Star who cant get it up.
Well he is now owned by Disney I doubt he will be able to get away with half as much trash talking as an employee of Disney Comics, they frown on that sort of thing…. You see it works a little like this:
Forced labour of children in china for slave wages to make shitty mouse toys for western children = good
Swearing or making generally rude comments = Bad…
Welcome to Disney please bend over.
They are going to change the company and from this first action it’s not looking like it’s for the better.
If you have any art for sale that is not “official” or has been sketched not only can it be removed but your eBay account can and will be suspended if it is, I understand from eBay that it is irrelevant to them if you have 1 out of 1000’s of items, they will pull them all. eBay fees become payable immediately. While no reports of comic sketch covers have hit the inbox yet I am sure it is only a matter of time unless Disney rethink this stance.
Sketch by TrevMurphy
TrevMurphy and Veronica O’Connell are two well know Irish Sketch card artists have also been shut down by Disney/Marvel and were the first we reported on.
There eBay account wolfhound-art is no longer active, and has been shut by eBay for breach of Marvel copyright, instigated it is believed by the new Disney ownership.
They had 100% rating with 425 positive feedback for all there transactions the last of which was left just yesterday.
Today they are not welcome. You can see the listings that have been removed can be found hear You will have to log in to see them as they are classed as “completed” listings.
They have been trading for a year and a half now on eBay and have a lot of Marvel traffic for the last four months, so this is not something new. There suspension is according to eBay for “at least” a week, possibly longer. While they have not worked on any official marvel sets they have done a fair amount of sketch work for other companies.
This is happening now and could affect anyone selling original or commissioned art featuring Marvel characters, so you can bet more will come to the surface in the next few days. There is no doubt this action has been taken because of a complaint from the copyright holders, simply put had it not been the listings would all still be active.
eBay takes no action if “normal” people complain, as demonstrated by the Brian Kong problem last week.
The email Veronica received read:
The rights owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the rights owner, Marvel Entertainment, Inc., notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law
However these cards have been available for many many years and in fact a lot of them still are, expect more to disappear shortly. This looks like the first change of many changes to hit Marvel. This could bode very badly for anyone taking commissions or selling comic art.
Wow! I think this is crazy. Will all unofficail fan art be policed because of this. Not even DC has ever done this and they are owned by warner Bros.
So since Disney hasn’t actually bought Marvel yet and the closed auctions were brought forth by Marvel, not Disney, how is anything in this article supposed to be believed? You should fact check a bit more before crying that the sky is falling.
Pingback: Marvel artists being suspended from Ebay - STATUE M A R V E L S
Hi Jay, what you believe is up to you but I put a lot of time into checking out my research and as I said I think it has to do with the takeover, the timing is more than coincidental. When you say “how is anything supposed to be believed” well a lot of what I reported came directly from the people involved, so I guess you could ask them or look up some of the facts I talked about.
Regardless of it being Disney or just Marvel, they are becoming one in the same and the former no doubt already has much influence on the later. I would never say the sky is falling though this is a blip, it’s noteworthy, but it’s a blip.
Actually both Marvel and DC have started a crack down on art from non-regular contributors. If I remember, Tom Derenick (I believe) has already had problems with it, as have others.
Lying In the Gutters covered this a couple times before they became Bleeding Cool.
And again, it comes down to copyright. Unless you actively work to protect your copyright, it can be argued in court that you forfeited it. So… any company that sees such art should be sending a cease and desist if they want to protect their intellectual properties.
And I doubt that Disney is working it on Marvel characters. But Disney is notorious at protecting their copyrights, so don’t be surprised if the crackdown strengthens post-buyout.
I find it hilarious when people post about things like this with righteous indignation. It’s like the pirates who cry when no one is seeding their torrents of pirated software.
FACT: Every single one of those images was of copywritten material. The person selling them on eBay has ZERO rights in this case. They do not own the images they are making money off of. Maybe if they were giving them away to friends and family I could see being a little miffed since they weren’t really hurting anyone, but when it turned to SELLING these images, they broke the law, plain and simple.
Frankly they should have cracked down a lot sooner and it’s every bit Marvel’s right to do so. There is no foul to cry here except on the part of the artists who were stealing other people’s work and making money off of it. At no point did she say that Marvel had approved her doing freelance work using their images, and without that no matter how many times you gave worked for them in the past, doing so without permission is theft.
This also has NOTHING to do with Disney mainly because the deal hasn’t even HAPPENED yet. It MAY be part and partial that Marvel is trying to make itself a nice, neat, tidy package for the buyout, but it’s got nothing to do with Disney as a parent company in the least….
I also take offense to the reports of “normal people” not carrying as much weight. eBay is a HUGE company. Sure, if they get an email from Marvel they are going to take more decisive action on it, but they will eventually get to and answer emails from anyone and everyone else as well, and if you had YOUR artwork up there being ripped off by someone else, they would pull it as soon as you could prove that image was yours and you owned the rights to it. This is not Marvel (or Disney) keeping the man down. This is Marvel doing what it had the right to do all along.
The article however is a major Chicken Little Overreaction. They stole images that did not belong to them and tried to make money off of those images. This is against not only eBay’s rules, but also against copy right laws across the board. The fact that they got caught does not make ebay OR Marvel the bad guy in this situation.
Ok Liam, I think even you need to be able to see the difference between an artist who creates (create being the operative word) an image and a “pirate” who steals software and distributes it to others, they have made nothing new but simply stolen someone else’s work. You are also failing to see any culpability on Marvels side which is short sited, as they in the past have actively promoted sketched of there characters buy other artists. You seem very sure that it has nothing to o with Disney but no one (as the article infers) can be completely sure of that one way or the other, so really your engaging in the same speculation everyone is.
I am intrigued that you take offence to the eBay comments, I can only assume one of two things, you work for eBay or you have very little practical experience with them. I suggest you go and read the Brian Kong article, hell read it on many sites, and try reporting a few things yourself on eBay, they have no interest unless you are the copyright holder and they do NOT respond to you email unless your counting the auto response which says they will not be responding to your email. This issue could effect a much wider range of topics in the card and comic industry, and could potentially shut down a lot of convention work for a large number of people. You see it as an over reaction and other see it as worthy of discussion, while still others see it as a direct effect on there working lives. The fact is I am happy to post anyone’s comments both positive and negative, and I respect your entitlement to your opinion even if I don’t share it.
oh and by the way… your FACT is wrong try checking them from time to time, NOT every item these guys had listed was of copy-written material, some of it was simply work of there own creation, those were ended as well.
Hi Todd so nice of you to respond. I am not attempting to do anything of the sort she worked for marvel, creating art, hence she is a marvel artist, I am not rationalizing anything just stating what has happened. I have no intention of “assigning motives” to your comments, or dismissing them, you are completely entitled to your view. It’s a shame you feel the need to be quite so insulting but hey it’s the internet right so I guess you can say what you like. Again your right about the grammatical error, I made that in a response to another comment. It happens, my apologies to those it bothers, but my meaning is clear enough I think, and I will not change it now lest your comment not make sense to those reading later. .
I would point out two things for you and other to consider however:
1. I never stated that this was an article about copyright or trademark infringement, nor was it meant to be, it is discussing what can only be described as a serious change in policy from a company that at one time actively promoted it’s fans not only to draw it’s characters, but also to seek out other artists to draw full comic covers for them. The timing of this change is curious, and it has had an impact on people. I talk about that impact, and I wonder what the knock on effects may be of a more stringent enforcement.
2. I don’t think anyone has had a tantrum, if the topic so offends you then please feel free not to read it I’m sorry you find it all so trying, it is your choice, but personally I hope you do stay. Obviously Marvel/Disney owns these characters no one suggested differently. They have however changed they ways in which they enforce that ownership and they seem to be very selective about it as well.
Again I welcome criticism apparently even extremely patronising criticism it would seem. It is good to have you around though perhaps you can become my new de facto spelling and grammar check, I would almost pay you for it.
The simplest explanation could be that the board says “Marvel” on it. I had something drawn on the back of a Marvel board once and Kinkos wouldn’t make me one lone copy of it. Stupid part was I put a piece of white tape over the name, handed it back to the guy and he made me my copy. His ass was covered. He didn’t see the name nor did he have the right to peel that tape off my property.
You know a lot of artists have said this, if you remove the name Marvel from the listing it should be fine but then I have seen several others listed right now using the marvel name that seem to be just fine. I have also not had any information about other artists being removed so I am starting to wonder if these are simply isolated incidents. I guess time will tell.
I work in the office of one of the MM sketch card artists. Their contract specifically states that they are agents of the sketch card company (either Upper Deck or Rittenhouse) and NOT employees of Marvel. Many artists claim to be “Marvel artists,” and many believe they are, but on paper, in a contract that they signed, they are very much NOT, just as the guy who drew Spidey for a sneaker company or artist who put a picture of Spidey on a fruit snacks box is not a “Marvel” artists, but a subcontractor/employee of the licensed company.
I’m not saying this makes the crackdown fair, I’m just clarifying the point.
Thats interesting Mark, if you read what Rich Johnston has put in his update about this same story over at http://www.bleedingcool.com it becomes even more so. According to one of his sources at marvel this has nothing to do with Disney and more to do with the art. They said the art was “sub par” on these and so that was the reason beyond the reports. That would infer that they are, if not happy, at least tolerant of the others. Thanks for the info on the contract specifics thats interesting if not a little expected.
That is interesting — as it’s obvious she’s an artist who was approved by (at least) Upper Deck, and the cards were approved by Marvel (as when the guy I work with sends in his cards, the licensee reviews, and a contact at Marvel reviews — either has the ability to say “violates rules” — no smoking, drinking, nudity, etc — or “subpar art” — and they’re not shy about saying that and kicking individual cards to the curb).
Also, there is certainly much more crappy Marvel related [fan/aspiring artist] artwork on eBay — I wonder what their beef with this was? The volume it was done in? The poses (one of their mandates is “no overt sexuality,” FWIW)?
Wow, I’m a little surprised at the indignation here. Just because it’s a big company like Marvel, it’s alright to make money off their characters without approval? What if tomorrow some guy started making unauthorised prints of, say Scott Kurtz’s PVP characters, and started selling them, and Scott opposes them, will people still cry hoarse?
It is a weird situation, I guess that overt sexuality might be it, but then I have seen a lot worse. You know I think it comes down to someone made the call on the day right or wrong, but I think the Disney conspiracy idea is overblown. Your right about the crappy Marvel fan stuff though there really is a TON of it around the place. I think this might just be a bizarre blip in the Marvel policy of looking the other way.
I read about 6 -7 different blogs about this thing this morning.. Wow lol.
Let me just say that showing fuss about this issue, is in bad form and I doubt any license holder would appreciate it on any level. I’ll explain.
First of all, every artist out there who decides to work a commission or sell/auction on popular sites like ebay, any type of unlicensed material, MUST be able to expect and accept the repercussions if they happen to get caught.
A wise and seasoned artist would understand the game here regarding the selling of unlicensed material to begin with even before drawing it.
It was an unspoken understanding between company and artist to handle this as swiftly and unproblematic as possible. And if they decided to pull down your auction, you’d have to accept it and not make a big deal of it. That’s the unspoken nod of approval. “You can get in the club, but if anyone asks, I never met you in my life”.
It’s a sketchy situation (pun intended)
However, it seems like many artists have allowed themselves to grow comfortable and act almost as if it’s completely ok on an illusive legal level.
And that’s really not the case, unfortunately.
Though Marvel, DC and a few others have had that UNSPOKEN (which means “Don’t talk about it in any shape or form”) understanding about doing convention sketches and selling commissions or auctioning off unlicensed items, it doesn’t mean its been legalized.
Therefore, if the artist chooses to take the risk and ends up getting caught, you cannot hold Marvel or anyone else over a hot grill, about it.
It’s simply the nature of the beast. Nothing personal, really.
Another thing is, some of these artists do tend to get out of hand and way too comfortable by listing not just two or three unlicensed materials, but SEVERAL at one time. Sometimes ranging from 15 to 20 unlicensed pieces per account, per week, being auctioned on a site dedicated to serve and protect major copyright holders like Marvel. Go ahead and laugh with me now. Because it is funny. 😀
And to me, that’s like a sniper using a flash light instead of a laser scope to target a sale. DUhhrrr! Come on. 😀
I don’t believe Disney had anything to do with suspending these fine talented artist’s accounts. If that were the case, I truly believe many non licensed material would have been pulled down in a matter of a few days.
To artists who are reading this… please don’t be upset about this supposed “crack down”. Disney hasn’t exactly merged just yet.
Instead, understand it for what it is. And making a bunch of blogs about this is not a good idea either. Especially when some facts aren’t exactly consistent. Some are saying these artists were banned while the claim was actually “suspended” temporarily from their accounts.
These blogs are only bringing MORE attention to to a probable situation.
Best keep quite, thank your blessings Marvel, DC and any other licenses out there, have allowed it to go on for this long for some of you out there who were dependent on their copyright material to make your income. *again…just an unspoken agreement* No harm no foul. But if there’s a crack down, better not be in the vicinity! And if you become a victim of a crack down, don’t fight them back.
Now, let me also say that it is very unfortunate, these turn of events for these very fine artists. I don’t like Disney myself lol. In fact, I dislike them very much. But in terms of Marvel cracking down on artists as a regular practice for whatever reason Marvel has, etc… again, it was an UNSPOKEN understanding.
Barking like angry dogs about this… Not a good idea.
SHhhhhhhhhhh…
And for god sakes artists, don’t go openly admitting that you’re now going to start drawing unlicensed DC commissions and sales. Stop shooting yourselves in the foot and be quiet! lol… I read on another board someone said “im gonna start doing DC now”.
lol…nice one champ. What else do you want to tell the world? 😀
-Peace
I’ve heard of Marvel and DC cracking down on artists selling unlicensed prints containing their characters. Are you guys sure these artists weren’t suspended because they were selling prints of work containing Marvel characters, and not just originals? I know a lot of artists do this on ebay, and I believe it falls into a whole different classification copyright wise than selling an original 1/1 piece of art. If not, then this will become a slippery slope of epic censorship type proportions. As an artist, I should be able to do my interpretation of anything I choose, and sell it to whomever I choose. Would Campbell’s Soup get ebay to ban Andy Warhol if this were the sixties? Seriously.
-Randy Siplon
So, I guess Marvel and DC are pirating other people’s characters, ie Thor and other Greek mythology, because they are thieves too huh?
Why don’t all you wanna be artist get a real job, instead of recreating other peoples characters and selling them off on Ebay? I’d be pretty damned angry if I created a character and some “ARTIST” decided they were going to use it in their “Artwork”. That’s just lazy art. Create your own characters and when someone rips them off and sells makes money off of your creativity, then we’ll see how much you like it.