The Creator of Deadpool Launches NFT
The Creator of Deadpool Launches NFT
Gm and Welcome to a new issue of Thndr Frens - the newsletter at the nexus of NFTs, entertainment, comics and animation put together by @casey_lau.
Welcome new readers: My Superhero NFT 101 Notion is here.
Rob Liefeld Enters the Chat
You know Deadpool, Domino and Cable thanks to their movies, comics and games. Created by Rob Liefeld, 30 years ago for Marvel Comics.
Now he’s announced that his delayed original NFT comic is launching this year.
The artwork for The Defiants appeared last April but he pulled the plug on it at that time, but now it seems the time is right to jump in and do this on the Makersplace marketplace.
Liefeld has made it public that he sold Deadpool to Marvel, and he gets 5% of all royalties on everything that has Deadpool on it - so from the movie to the toys to the underwear - he gets a piece of it. For a 20-something in the late 80s he seemed to have more foresight than a lot of creators today. But with this NFT he will be able to generate royalties on the blockchain for his new creations for decades to come depending of course on how popular the new comic is but a great collectible for his fans. End of the day, Liefeld is an important creator that can onboard more OG collectors into the NFT space.
Here is the drop page to bookmark - minting on January 20th.
I’ve been a huge fan of Rob’s since I was a little kid, I followed him when he decided to leave Marvel at his peak after creating X-Force and went with him when he co-founded Image Comics and launched his own 100% creator owned series called Youngblood (which he does not own anymore). His Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane has already jumped into NFTs with Steve Aoki (see issue 1), so you can imagine that I am excited about this and seeing comic book NFTs are going to be the next major vertical in the space.
Face front, True Believers, this is the beginnings of the next generation of comic books and what this newsletter is all about!
The NFT Future of Comic Book Art
Last week, the original art of page 25 from 1984’s Secret Wars #8 published by Marvel Comics featuring the origin of Spider-Man’s black costume (not its first appearance that was in Spider-Man #252) sold for a world record $3.3mm at auction.
Now 2 sides have emerged. Team Artist says that a portion should be given to the original artists where as Team Buyer says “no” - its like buying a house and no further royalty is owed.
As we now understand NFTS and smart contracts today, that original art can now owe the original artist a royalty in perpetuity on future sales if its set up that way.
To further connect this the original artwork of the first appearance of Miles Morales the star of “Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse” was done digitally by Sara Pichelli in Ultimate Fallout #4 and will never find a price until its one day placed on the blockchain.
This is opening up the minds of people as the auction house also recently started accepting crypto to bid in auctions throwing interest on where future buyers might come from.
This sale will hopefully change the world of NFTs and blockchain in comics especially for digital artists today as some of the work being done by artists on Batman and X-Men will only benefit long term from getting involved now.
The NFT Copyright Problem
When everything is decentralized, who do you sue?
This is a big thing with artists right now as lots of art has been put on NFT marketplaces that are not owned by the artist and sites like Opensea have not put any check and balances in place yet to stop it since its like eBay or Amazon in the early days of those sites this is bound to happen.
I am sitting on the side of the fence that this will be solved eventually, but as someone who lived in Asia and tried to license Spider-Man in China (!) it’s always going to be out there. Eventually the buyers will be educated enough to learn what is real and what is “fake” - but that this discussion is even happening is pretty exciting.
Just as the secondary comics world changed with the introduction of the “graded comic” from companies like CGC, which has its own blowback by purists, its only a matter of time before more comic artists get onto the NFT train as fans and collectors will demand this type of product from them especially those who work digitally.
Great stories on copyright issues in IP theft for NFTs:
Liam Sharp Shuts Down Online Gallery Because People Keep Stealing His Work to Make NFTs
NFT Theft is Still Plaguing Online Art Sites, Despite Fraud Detection Tool
Nifty News:
Toy Boogers NFT just announced an animated series with TIME. This is the second series that has been announced, Robotos is the first (See last issue)
Barbie has entered the Metaverse with luxury brand Balmain in hand via Mattel’s D2C brand Mattel Creations. Mattel is working with a new startup called MintNFT to produce the NFTs and when I typed this with 3 days to go on the aution they were sitting at around US$2K for each of them. It has now ended and they went for $12-$20,000 each.
View here at NFT.MattelCreations.com
A new strip from Macroverse was just airdopped to me so I thought I’d share the ABC’s of The Wallet.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are coming into the real world via a line of action figures from Superplastic - the people behind Kid Robot. While the toys will most likely not generate the prices the NFTs did they will definitely push up the value of the NFTs and the visibility of the community.
Fans of Hard Boiled and The Matrix concept designer Geoff Darrow will be happy to know that he’s coming back with a new series of Shaolin Cowboy comics and an NFT now open for bidding on Opensea!
…and finally:
Planet of the Apes humour via Bill Amend
Follow me on Twitter: Casey Lau
Follow my upcoming NFT project: The Devia.n.t.s.
