This is a story full of fairy tales. In some ways, it even resembles one. And yet it also proves that, in the real world, things rarely end happily ever after. A few days ago, Bill Willingham, the father of the celebrated Fables comic book series, announced that he was sending his most cherished work to the public domain, that is, to everyone. That’s only fair, since that is also where he got the main characters of his stories, from Snow White to the Wolf, from Pinocchio to Prince Charming, who were then relocated to modern New York. In this tale, the hero has long-faced mistreatment at the hands of the villains, DC Comics, the owner of Vertigo, which publishes the work in the United States, and its executives.

“If I couldn’t prevent Fables from falling into bad hands, at least this is a way I can arrange that it also falls into many good hands,” Willingham wrote in an online post in which he decried the label’s repeated attempts to take over his creations and opposed them with this final extreme remedy. But the company responded that it considers itself to be the true owner of the series.

In a statement published by the specialized media IGN, the company threatened to take “necessary action” to defend its rights. Thus, the end of the dispute is uncertain. But it is unlikely that everyone will end up happily ever after.

In the meantime, in a new post, Willingham celebrated the massive support he received. In fact, for the moment, he has declined all interview requests — he did not respond to this newspaper’s request, nor did the publisher — arguing that he preferred to spend the next few days working on new artistic projects. Meanwhile, the dispute continues.

Fables is one of the most celebrated graphic novels of the last 20 years, and it has spawned spin-offs and a video game adaptation (The Wolf Among Us).

This situation also touches on a key issue, namely, the intellectual property rights of characters and works, especially in a sector where, for decades, dozens of cartoonists and screenwriters have accused comic book giants Marvel and DC of pressuring them to cede their ideas and accept commissioned contracts.

Willingham sums it up as a policy aimed to make creators sign “work for hire” agreements and crush them. All of this makes a gesture that was already intended to make a splash even more resonant.

Indeed, the battle over intellectual property is as old as contemporary comics: the copyrights for Superman, Batman and The Fantastic Four all have unresolved disputes and complaints from Jerry Siegel, Bill Finger and Jack Kirby over the contemptuous treatment they suffered. And heavyweight Alan Moore has been lamenting for years that DC took away his ownership of famous works like Watchmen.

Along with prestige and principles, tens of millions of dollars are at stake, especially now that the film industry has become interested in comics.

“When you sign a contract with DC, your responsibilities to them are carved in stone, where their responsibilities to you are treated as “helpful suggestions that we’ll try to accommodate when we can, but we’re serious adults, doing serious business and we can’t always take the time to indulge the needs of these children who work for us” the Fables author wrote on his blog. Following the impact of his original message, Willingham posted two other texts. He maintains that he had thought about sending his work into the public domain when he passed away, but that “certain events” have changed his plans: among them, he lists the changes in management and attitude at the top of the publishing company; the multiple breaches of obligations such as consultations about covers, artists for new plots and adaptations; DC’s forgetfulness when it came to pay, which forced him to demand invoices of up to $30,000; the suspicious frequency with which the publisher attributed it to “slipping through the cracks” (to such an extent that the author insisted that they stop using that expression); and the time and chances he gave them to respect the pact, renegotiate it or even break it and consensually separate.

A detail from the cover of the first volume of Bill Willingham’s comprehensive collection of ‘Fables’.

“Shortly after creating Fables, I entered into a publishing agreement with DC Comics. In that agreement, while I continued to own the property, DC would have exclusive rights to publish Fables comics, and then later that agreement was expanded to give DC exclusive rights to exploit the property in other ways, including movies and TV.

DC paid me a fair price for these rights (fair at the time), and as long as they behaved ethically and above-board, and conducted themselves as if this were a partnership, all was more or less well. But DC doesn’t seem to be capable of acting fairly and above-board.

In fact, they treated this agreement (as I suppose I should have known they would) as if they were the boss and I, their servant. In time that got worse, as they later reinterpreted our contracts to assume they owned Fables outright,” Willingham laments. Hence, he concluded that “you can’t reason with the unreasonable.”

Having ruled out a lawsuit as too expensive and time-consuming at 67 years of age, he found a more creative solution: if they prevented him from owning his works and benefiting from them as he was entitled to do, he would not let the publisher do so either. Or, at least, everyone could use the comics as they wished. But the label was quick to clarify in its statement to IGN: “The Fables comic books and graphic novels [are] published by DC, and are not in the public domain”.

For his part, Willingham promises to continue fighting for all the conditions of his still-in-force contract that he considers DC to have violated, as well as for the last installments of the series, the final script of which he delivered two years ago.

There will be additional chapters in this dispute, as well as in many other ones like it: in 2024, the historic first image of Mickey Mouse, the one that starred in the 1928 short Steamboat Willie, enters the public domain in the U.S. and other countries. Copyright in the U.S. lasts for 95 years, and math is an exact science.

Therefore, in a few years, King Kong, Superman and Popeye will meet the same fate. But The New York Times has wondered how the “notoriously litigious” Disney will react and how far it will go to fight in court. And who would dare to freely use all these works for fear of a million-dollar lawsuit? The same question surrounds DC and similar companies. Because in the real world, fairy tales are rare. Or they end up in court.

On Monday, October 2, representatives of both parties met to discuss the actors’ concerns: an increase in the minimum wage, guarantees regarding the role of artificial intelligence, regulations for the increasingly demanding self-taped auditions and fairer residuals — the long-term payments to those who worked on films and television shows for reruns and other airings after the initial release — in line with the rise of streaming. The meeting does not mean that the two sides have reached an agreement, but it does show greater willingness to strike a deal.

The SAG-AFTRA did not release a statement on the meeting until 8 p.m. LA time. “We have concluded our first day back in the bargaining with the AMPTP and will resume talks on Wednesday, October 4,” it stated, while encouraging actors to join the picket line on Tuesday. “One day longer. One day stronger. As long as it takes,” it ended. No details of the negotiation have been leaked, and both parties decided months ago not to give specific information to the media about the talks until a deal had been struck.

The SAG-AFTRA, which represents more than 160,000 actors, announced last week that they were finally going to sit down with the AMPTP, which represents Paramount, Disney, Universal, Netflix, Amazon, Sony, Warner and Apple. The strike has already led to $6 billion in losses, according to calculations by the state of California.

The talks with the actors union come after Hollywood studios and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) reached an agreement to end the screenwriters strike, which began on May 2 and lasted almost 150 days. The two parties negotiated for days before coming to a tentative deal on September 24. Writers in the union still need to vote on the deal, but it is widely expected to be ratified. If approved, the new collective agreement will be in effect until May 2026.

Just days after the end of the screenwriters strike, the actors union announced that they were set to begin negotiations with the Hollywood studios. But actor Fran Drescher, the president of the SAG-AFTRA, warned they had differing demands. “We’re happy WGA came to an agreement but one size doesn’t fit all,” she told CNN.

The hat, full of pins and badges, of an actor protesting at a strike picket in Manhattan, New York. MIKE SEGAR (REUTERS)

Since the actors’ strike was called in mid-July, tensions have been running high between the union and the Hollywood studios — so much so that it took more than 80 days for them to initiate talks.

The key issues are salaries and artificial intelligence. Now that the WGA has struck a deal, the SAG-AFTRA is alone on the picket line. It is seeking to negotiate a deal that is as good as the “exceptional” agreement achieved by writers.

But analysts warn the union shouldn’t rush to reach a deal, given 160,000 families will be affected by the terms of the new collective contract. “It is not the actors’ responsibility to bring Hollywood back to life,” the Los Angeles Times wrote Monday in an editorial. “It was not the actors who created the problems that forced two incredibly disruptive strikes, any more than it was the writers. The studios created a system in which working actors can no longer earn a living wage in their chosen profession, and it’s up to the studios to change that.”

The strike has put hundreds of workers in grave financial strain. Some of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors have donated millions of dollars to a common fund to help actors navigate these months of uncertainty.

This is the first time actors have been on strike since 1980. So far, it has been an upward battle. Chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told EL PAÍS that the actors have been willing to negotiate from day one, but that the studios have been reluctant to engage in talks. “We think that there is only one way to reach an agreement, and that is to talk and negotiate. And if they don’t want to talk to us, and they don’t want to negotiate with us, we’re going to be ready to do that any time they’re ready,” she said.

That moment has taken almost three months to arrive. And this time, there will be new talks within 48 hours.