by James
1. September 2010 12:28
For those who haven't been following along at home, Bluewater has made a name for itself publishing both original comic book series (often involving celebrity creators or licensed properties) as well as unauthorized biographies of pop culture celebrities and other public figures. Previous subjects have included "Twilight" actors Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, musician Taylor Swift, and "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling.
There is however, a slight problem, being that JUSTIN Bieber and Lady Gaga are not happy that they have been immortalised in 2D form by Bluewater comics. The company has received cease and desists letters from the lawyers involved.
Here is a response from Darren G David of Bluewater:
We are 100% within our 1st amendment rights. We know our rights on this before we jumped into the biography world. These are 100% biographies on their lives. Bluewater has featured subjects like Taylor Swift, Kristen Stewart, Oprah, JK Rowling & Robert Pattinson. We reach out to all the celebrities and some choose to work with us and some do not. If they do choose to work with us, we donate ads and money to a nonprofit of their choice. We offered the same deal to Bieber's people.
These are not-poster books and as it was explained to the licensing lawyer, Kenneth Feinswog (who works for the licensing company). It tells the story of his life in 22-pages and we offered to send him a copy of the book before it went to print. We have been offered deals with poster books, sticker books and we had to turn them down because we know we do not have the rights to that. But doing an unauthorized biography we are in full within our rights.
It feels like they are doing this because our comic book got the same amount of press as the their book "Justin Bieber: First Step 2 Forever". Both are being released the same month as well as 4 other Bieber books. We choose Justin Bieber, because of how he is changing the music industry. This was a kid that posted his songs on YouTube to share with his family and became a superstar from that. This is a great story for kids to get inspired from.
Our book is no different from these books: "Justin Bieber: The Fever!" by Marc Shapiro , "Justin Bieber: The Unauthorized Biography by Chas Newkey-Burden", "Justin Bieber (Mini Bio) by Sarah E. Parvis ", "Justin Bieber: Singing Sensation (Big Buddy Biographies) by Sarah Tieck ", "Justin Bieber: Our World (Me & You) by Millie Rowlands". Our lawyer is in contact with Mr. Feinswog.