Four Horsemen Studios Mythic Legions

[Poe Ghostal]

BigBadWorkShop toes that likeness line a lot too. The Agent of Omega is a Silly Putty-newsprint copy of William Shatner, and the cancelled Wild Bill from that Voyagers line was a dead ringer for James Brolin. And I definitely noticed the Ph’shr Ryyce / Josh Brolin thing too.

 

[Damien]

Idk, AI names might be more pronounceable or memorable than mythic legions current approach of spilling alpha bits on the table


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I'd actually put money on an AI name being less unspellable/more memorable than some of their greatest hits.

I want to test these theories, but I refuse to even touch anything AI to find out.


I think what's always going to keep the waters muddy about the 4H is the argument about whether it's ethical for them to base their business model on stealing the IP from huge corporations, while we continue to ignore the fact that they also base their designs on artwork they stole from (sometimes struggling, sometimes uncredited/unemployed, and sometimes mildly professional) artists.
Forget the IP theft. Seriously. Just forget it. Look at it this way:

The Four Horsemen are the human corporation equivalent of 'Generative AI.' Period.

 

[fac]

I think it would be hard to prove in court that a toy facial likeness is based exclusively on a specific celebrity without some additional context, but that's just me. Putting a head that looks like Sly Stallone on a cowboy figure or a Roman soldier is different than putting it on a boxing figure. Lots of artists use an amalgam of different sources as inspiration - especially when drawing or sculpting someone very traditionally attractive. If this is an issue I need to throw out a ton of comics where the artists clearly used real people as their basic model for a character - John Byrne was pretty open about that.

Also, if Boss Fight had an issue with the figure, they would need to have the license holder address it anyway and not them directly - the licensee has reasonable expectations that the licensor will protect the spot in the marketplace the licensee is paying for against competing unlicensed product.

I do think it doesn't help that the whole "fantasy" aesthetic is so stereotyped now and overdone in the figure marketplace...armor, leather, shoulder pauldrons, earth colors, animal skins, horns - that's why so many companies are following that and just change the "species" for the look, they've almost run out of human options...

 

[docsilence]

Doc had me thinking about the original art versus fan art thing because of a discussion we had after a recent AT D&D session. Should I feel bad about commissioning a Magik from someone in Artist Alley? They wouldn't get my money otherwise.

Should I feel bad that I'd give a Magik comic a chance in a way that I wouldn't with an indie comic?

How about Marvel Legends? Hasbro does everything above board, yet Marvel never paid artists like Jack Kirby a fraction of their worth. You peel the onion back far enough, and you inevitably reach "no ethical consumption under capitalism." It's a moral hornet's nest. The whole thing makes me a huge hypocrite. I can't say I love it.

At least talking with my Artist Alley friends every year, they'll take a paid commission of a known character any time because it helps keep the cash flowing in - ESPECIALLY because, as you point out, they are so often NOT paid for their work by those big IP-holding companies. Cripes, the reason these guys are doing comic cons at 80 years old still taking commissions is because guys like you asking for Magik are treating them better than Marvel or DC.

No industry chews up and spits out talent like comics. And yeah, I feel like a massive hypocrite, too, at least with toys and comics. But at least I know I put actual cash in the hands of Chris Uminga for the Batman and Robin I have on my office wall and not a penny went to Warner Brothers. And don't even get me started on the annual "which comics legend needs a GoFundMe for his fucking cancer care because there's no safety net for these guys." The fact that I tabled next to Stan motherfucking Sakai and he's taking cash commissions and not sitting on a golden throne shaped like a samurai rabbit...

 

[Mint In Boks]

isn't it the same head?

It’s Ghost of Christmas Past (or the LegionCon Nymph) not Tharice

Edit: Holy shit… call me crazy, but I just went to see if I could tell who GoCP is based on I swear it’s based Amanda Seyfried (the eye spacing, nose flatness, lip shape, and face roundness lead me to believe so anyway) and now I’m wondering if Lacey Chabert or Rachel McAdams are hidden somewhere in the line too (I’m not joking, I was having trouble placing some of the hooded heads or heads sticking out of helmets without hair to help inform who they are, knowing Mean Girls is there go to might unlock some of that…)

 

[PantherCult]

Dang it, Wyldman beat me to the genius idea of just searching the Trademark office.

But in addition to Red Shadows, they do also have the Trademark for Roboskull and Skeletron

Interesting and good to know. I'm glad they were able to grab those before Hasbro woke up and renewed them. I wonder what would happen if the Roboskull folks tried to do a wave two with Goregills and Muton?

But I'll leave that conversation there since this is the Mythic Legions thread and we are talking about their coopting of IP .

I imagine there is less of an issue with a Conan homage than Sonja because Conan - the character but not the name - is in the public domain, so as long as you don't put Conan on your packaging or advertising you can use the character. Red Sonja is trickier... Sonya of Rogatino is public domain, but she is a 16th century crusader battling the Turks. The metal bikini clad Sonja who rubbed elbows with Conan was invented for Marvel Comics in the 1970's - though not owned by them - and thus all of those elements are not public domain.

I'm waiting for the 4H to introduce Wizard of Oz characters into Mythic Legions or one of the adjacent lines since the Baum novels are public domain.... a Scarecrow, a Lion and a metal man seem right in their wheelhouse.

 

[Poe Ghostal]

The other thing is it's an homage til the guy with the bigger legal budget decides it's not. I kinda wonder if MOTU does big numbers at the box office this year whether Mattel will decide to be more like Disney or Paramount. If Mattel got hardass about it there'd be some scrambling across the industry.

(The one C&D that makes me laugh years after it happened actually happened to a friend of mine - he made tee shirts "It's Janeway or the Highway" and Paramount sent him a C&D and he's like did they really trademark Janeway? They did not, but that doesn't matter if PARAMOUNT threatens to sue you.)

There was a big hullabaloo in publishing last week because all the big IPs getting made into movies right now are books that were fan fiction with the serial numbers scratched off and of course people were like "AO3 should run ads so fan fic writers can make money!" Where the only reason AO3 remains in existence is that they have STUDIOUSLY avoided monetization. I honestly don't know how those books got published with fake Adam Driver on the cover but hey, they made more money than did on my books so what do I know.

Feels like it shouldn't be necessary but everybody feels like they have to. I mean, WTF is this?

I’m curious about this publishing hullabaloo, and which specific IPs we’re talking about - I know about Fifty Shades, but wondering what others there are.

It's funny, the redhead from the head pack from a few years back is a perfectly fine Sonja stand-in, too, I've got her on a generic barbarian body.

(To be fair, if I've learned one thing as an IP owner it's that you actually do have to take action to defend your copyright/trademark - if you're sufficiently negligent it can become harder to protect it in court. It's why you'll see stuff like Homsetuck or Critical Role create fan art policies.)

Yep - it’s why all the Transformers instructions and media uses the phrase “convert” instead of “transform” - to prevent “transformer” from becoming a generic term.

 

[spinc]

While we're angry at 4H, I wanna add that I hate how they're doing so many exclusives these past few years. I don't live in the US and Mythic Legions are already hard to get here, not to mention overtly more expensive, since the official retailer that sold them in here stopped working or something. And they keep doing great figures that are impossible to get, like the Conan Barbarian figure last year, I was never able to get it. They sell them on Aliexpress for like triple the price, and most recent releases are simply not available anywhere now. The way they're selling these figures suck and I'm so tired of it, I've simply stopped buying their figures, even when I really actually would like to get them.

 

[Mint In Boks]

I think it would be hard to prove in court that a toy facial likeness is based exclusively on a specific celebrity without some additional context, but that's just me. Putting a head that looks like Sly Stallone on a cowboy figure or a Roman soldier is different than putting it on a boxing figure. Lots of artists use an amalgam of different sources as inspiration - especially when drawing or sculpting someone very traditionally attractive. If this is an issue I need to throw out a ton of comics where the artists clearly used real people as their basic model for a character - John Byrne was pretty open about that.

I want to make clear there’s nothing wrong with the Horsemen basing the faces off actors, as you noted most artist do it, it gets a little tacky when it’s Greg Land “and I trace a different O face every panel so the character looks different each time…” but I will always take “hmmm, Superman kinda looks like Bruce Campbell in this comic over” every man has the exact same face because the artist doesn’t use reference an learned one head.

I’m just saying Lohan is EXTREMELY LITIGIOUS, she lost the GTA5 case and that lady didn’t even really look like her! I’m 100% if she got wind of a “Red Sonya” that looked like her she would claim “I almost played Red Sonya in a movie (she was the “it” redhead for years, no way she wasn’t fan cast as Sonya in more than a few photoshopped posters) this is a figure of me!!!!”, and look, she’d probably loose that case too, but it doesn’t mean it ruin a few months of the 4H’s life having to deal with it.

(And if you want the “Sly’s head on a Boxer example” almost every male Elf in Advent of Decay is just their counterpart from Lord of the Rings and Vitus Prime is Brad Pitt as Achilles, Pitt is extremely litigious as well so that ugly ass 200X wet dread hair might save the 4H’s ass in court)

 

[docsilence]

I’m curious about this publishing hullabaloo, and which specific IPs we’re talking about - I know about Fifty Shades, but wondering what others there are.

The current hullabaloo (I love that this is the third use of this word in this thread) is over Heated Rivalry (allegedly a Steve/Bucky erotic fan fic) and the upcoming Love Hypothesis (the cover of which should have gotten Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver paid or the publisher sued into oblivion because it's INFURIATINGLY clear they used their faces since it's modified Rey/Kylo Ren fan fic), Mortal Instruments was Harry Potter fan fic first (the infamous Hermione/Draco shipping combo, which is also being used by ANOTHER big budget movie, Alchemized), plus of course Fifty Shades thing. "After" was Harry Styles fan fic (??!?!?!?) and City of Bones was more Draco/Hermione. Anyway, ALL of this is to say that a bunch of AO3 fan fic writers started complaining that if these other writers were making bag on fan fic they should monetize theirs and were told in publishing it's "for me but not for thee" - you can get away with it with a big publishing house behind you but you're fucked if you monetize fan fic on your own.

There's a shitton of other books that got options that are basically someone's wet dream about a couple of characters who did not bang in their respective existing IPs that have been optioned for Hollywood. We live in the special hell.

 

[Revox]

I’m a fan of the Red Shadows and Adventure Team, so I’m buying FMF’s Crimson Moon and Agents of Omega product, but I think hasbro is fully in the right to shut that shit down (and probably should have).

Eh, when someone swallows up the rights to something someone else created then does fuck all with them, I feel like they lose any moral/ethical right whatsoever. And no, the occasional red CoCo repaint every 6 years or so doesn't count in the slightest.

As to the main issue, is there anything stopping these guys from just releasing the heads on a Red Sonya of Rogatino figure instead? The dude's been dead 90 years now, no? Just release some 16th century armoured chick with some spare heads, bish bash bosh.

 

[thewyldman]

Eh, when someone swallows up the rights to something someone else created then does fuck all with them, I feel like they lose any moral/ethical right whatsoever. And no, the occasional red CoCo repaint every 6 years or so doesn't count in the slightest.

As to the main issue, is there anything stopping these guys from just releasing the heads on a Red Sonya of Rogatino figure instead? The dude's been dead 90 years now, no? Just release some 16th century armoured chick with some spare heads, bish bash bosh.

Tbf, they did fuck all with gi Joe for like ten years and the red shadows are lower than the pecking order. Ironically, we’re at the point in classified where they m ugh hot naturally be used.

They’ve always been free to make a Red Sonya figure, but they won’t because that version of the character isn’t popular and lacks the sellable features if red Sonja.


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[docsilence]

In the midst of being mad at/complaining about 4H, I just gotta throw in a funny comment - I got Fedex shipping notification for my Rising Sons order arriving tomorrow when their post about the all-in orders was today. I'm laughing like "that is a warehouse that could not WAIT to get that shit out the door and out of their way."

 

[Mint In Boks]

I'm laughing like "that is a warehouse that could not WAIT to get that shit out the door and out of their way."

Gotta make room to set up the tables to open up, pull out the offending heads, and reseal hundreds of Legendary Warriors before ZoloCon!

(Got my All-In shipping notice too, man, they kicking these out the door!)

 

[RichardSimmonsRobot]

Eh, when someone swallows up the rights to something someone else created then does fuck all with them, I feel like they lose any moral/ethical right whatsoever. And no, the occasional red CoCo repaint every 6 years or so doesn't count in the slightest.

As to the main issue, is there anything stopping these guys from just releasing the heads on a Red Sonya of Rogatino figure instead? The dude's been dead 90 years now, no? Just release some 16th century armoured chick with some spare heads, bish bash bosh.

Basically what Warren Beatty did with the Dick Tracy film rights to ensure no one plays Dick Tracy but him. Now he's geriatric and basically interviewed himself in a yellow coat and fedora to prevent the rights from lapsing every 10 or so years.

Could be parlaying that into a new film / universe, instead he's sitting on them just below his bedpan.