Carlton Mellick III

This all started when a friend of mine (we’ll call him Joe), who had just come into some money through his commercial mortgage business, approached me about investing money in the then titled Dead Bitch Army graphic novel project. He knew that I was trying to salvage the project after my original deal with now defunct Indie Godz Publishing died when the company went under back in ’05. The arrangement was that Joe would give me creative control to do things the way I wanted. He would get his money back on the back-end, and that would be that. Being a comic geek himself, he could say that he contributed to a graphic novel, and it would help to move my career forward. Then he brought this complete idiot (a restaurant owner who we’ll call John) onboard. John started pressuring Joe and behind my back they created MakeUFamous Productions (MUF). Trust me, the name makes me cringe too. Their new goal (fantasy) was to now put together graphic novels out of existing books with the intention of getting some kind of movie deal in the end. Now, their only part in creating the Hollow-Eyed Mary graphic novel was to sign checks. I adapted and wrote the script, hired all the artists (penciller/inker, colorist, letterer, pinups and cover-artist, and editor), and directed the entire project from start to finish. Since they had no knowledge of or experience with the publishing, or movie industries, they wanted me to help them do this. I balked (nicely) about this from the beginning, starting first with the ridiculous name (MakeUFamous) that I, as a serious writer, didn’t want to be associated with. This was only supposed to be a financial contribution on their end for which I was grateful, and did my best to produce a quality product that would hopefully ensure that they made their money back. Secondly, I had already written a screenplay for Dead Bitch Army (which they all knew about and were fine with at first) that I planned to try and sell once the GN was released and hopefully made some noise. John sort of blew off the graphic novel until we started to get positive feedback based on the finished pages.

Joe and I met with a rep from Devil’s Due Publishing in NY and struck a deal (it was he and I who made the initial contact with most of the interested parties, mind you). Suddenly there was interest from producers, first Tony DiDio (Toolbox Murders), then Riyoko Tanaka (The Ring remake & The Uninvited), and finally Mark Holdom (Brown Bunny). Now, all of a sudden John’s brother (who we’ll call Jack) is involved. Then they bring another “money person” (who we’ll call Sue) to the table, who also has no experience in publishing, but did produce a documentary a few years ago that I never heard of.

Next, they tricked Joe so that now he only owns a 25% share of the company and once that happened they started making all sorts of ridiculous demands. They then tried to tie me up with contracts and strong-arm tactics to pressure me into signing over my script, and to give MUF (which is now John, Jack, and Sue) complete creative control over all of my work. When I said “no,” and (again nicely) stated my reasons why, John and crew took it personally and retaliated by first trying to cut off my communications with any potential producers/publishers, then by trying to circumvent the development process with Devil’s Due (which is why the GN didn’t actually come out when it was supposed to) and finally by putting pressure on Devil’s Due to ban me from signing at ComiCon.

John then tried to have my name taken off the book, and was actually planning to go to ComiCon and sign as the author until the attorney that I was forced to hire put him and the rest of MUF in their place. Unfortunately, they’re so drunk on “Hollywood Wannabe” juice that they can’t let go of the fantasy.