The final numbers on the fundraiser

I share the final numbers with you guys:

Official ebay sales for completed auctions totaled $2,124.30. Roughly $350 of that had to be refunded with another $50 or so eat up in fees from paypal and ebay, but the wonderful and generous people of Your Mom's Basement made up for that with the Save Thomas' Ass fund raiser because i had to cover it or Missionfish, ebay's charity handler, was taking it directly out of my bank account, refunds to buyers or not. They also tagged another $300 or so onto it, all said and done YMB donations totaling well over $700, the rich so and sos.

So that's $2,124.30, the $300 extra from YMB, plus around another $400-500 I've gotten word of folks donating directly to the Candlelighters after hearing about this whole thing. It short, some where right around the neighborhood of three grand went to help out some sick kids and their families.

From my own family's experience, I can't begin to explain to you how far that will go. The Candlelighters were amazing to us. Did you know just parking at the Houston Medical Center costs $12 a day? That adds up QUICK. There's a ton of little things like that people never think of, but the Candlelighters do, and they help you deal with them.

I'm shipping some of the art tomorrow, then the rest that i have in hand on my next day off. This is just about all done now. It was interesting.

I'll have a very lengthy post about this whole experience from beginning to conclusion soon. I want to get it down for posterity.

Stuff! That you can buy! And then hang on your wall!

Round two of the auctions end this morning with not a DC property in sight. Time to get in those last minute bids for:

An original ink/brush drawing of Wolverine by David Mack.

A pin up of the cast of Scurvy Dogs by Manny Bello.

A sculpture all about the love by Erin Jameson.

The men who would be Captain America by Marcus Kelligrew.

A First Moon pin up by Tony Talbot.

The cast of LOST by Jim Muniz.

Barry Ween pin up by Judd Winnick.

An Astronauts in trouble pin up by Jeff Parker.

A Milk and Cheese/World's Funnest pin up by Evan Dorkin.

I've asked every one in my family to buy the Evan Dorkin piece for me. They all said "Milk and Cheese? Mixlpltik? What the hell are you talking about?" And then I said. "You don't get me! You never will!" and locked the door to my room and listened to the Cure and my angst. Wait, that reference kind of dates me, huh? What do the whiny kids like these days? Them Fallout Boys or some such?

I'm going to be at training for my terrible new job for a few hours today, so I'm going to miss the end of this round as it happens. This afternoon when I get home around 2-3 PM US central time (8-9 PM GMT) I'll be relisting the Paul Salvi Superman Rogues Gallery piece, with the WB's blessing, as finale to all this. So you guys look forward to that. It really is an awesome piece by the way. And now it's famous!

Wrapping it all up some more

I just wanted to say some thank yous publicly.

The people of Your Mom's Basement for coming to my rescue. You're wonderful people and your support was one of the best things that's ever happened to me.

Ali and Mike for keeping me distracted with conversation about standing on one's head in Australia, sci-fi that I am lukewarm to and other things that stink substantially less than this whole situation. I was going completely insane over this mess, and you made it only slightly mad.

Mike Netzer and Evan Dorkin, who have been exceptionally generous to me since I started this silly fansite and both of whom made me feel less like an ass for trying to do something good but doing it clumsily. I also want to thank David Mack, who I just met through the fundraiser and has also been very very generous and kind.

The people who said nice things. It really helped.

The artists and bidders who were affected for being so understanding about this. That you guys accepted it and didn't blame me was a huge relief.

I heard from Warner Bros.

Late last night, one of the two auctions that got canceled was re-instated. Just one. I sent another email to the WB, not expecting a response because I didn't get one from the last two emails.

I sent them this after seeing the auction was reinstated-

Hi, I'm Thomas Denton. I recently emailed you (and believe a number of emails were sent on my behalf, and apologize for any confusion that may have caused) about two ebay items that were pulled due to trademark infringement concerns. (ebay user ID mistermxy).

I just received notice that one of them has been allowed to go ahead, for which I am very grateful. The full situation was this: I organized an auction where many professional and amateur artists donated some of their original work with the intention of donating all the proceeds to the candlelighters (www.candlelighters.org) It was an entirely non-profit venture. Many of the auctions, all original works, featured characters owned by your subsidiary DC Comics. After the auctions were canceled, I pulled all auctions relating to your properties. Would I be allowed to relist all of them?

In response, I got this-

Dear Mr. Denton:

We made a exemption for the item that was relisted.

Thank you,

Craig M. Hoffman

Director

Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Technical Operations

Corporate Communications

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

So it seems I'm allowed to sell that one item. And WB does not respect grammar. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that this wasn't just ignored by the WB altogether.

This is the item I'm allowed to sell:

I'll be emailing Paul Salvi, the artist, to ask him what he'd like to do. If he wants to try again, we'll be putting it up as a special lone piece as something of a finale to all the auctions. Some of which are still going, by the way. Buy some stuff! Help some kids!

Wrapping it all up.

Okay, this all taken care of. I've not heard back from WB, but it doesn't matter much now. The artists have their work, the buyers have their money, all the donations have been squared away. And please don't worry about my money woes. That was just me venting because this whole thing freaked me out. I'm okay. Some very good friends helped me out.

This whole thing has gotten WAY out of hand, and I think it'd be best if I just stopped fueling the fire.

Thank you to every one who has helped me out with this. It's meant more to me than you will ever know.

the way things be

More random reactions to what I've seen online:

I didn't get a cease and desist. WB shut down two auctions, and to prevent any further troubles I killed the rest myself. I also refunded all the auctions featuring DC characters that were already completed. So as of right now, no profit at all has been made or will be made from items featuring Time Warner's intellectual property.

All of the original art that could not be sold is in the hands of the original artist. I do not have it. The exception is one piece, the one by Mike Netzer, who has asked me to hold onto it in the hopes this can all be straightened out. I have no profited by gaining art or money.

DC Comics does not hate kids. They probably don't even know this happened. My order came from the WB, and was likely wholly random and came up in regular searches they do of ebay. I'm sure once I get some replies from the WB this will all be straightened out.

Yes, I know it was stupid of me to use their property. Thanks to every one who has pointed that out. I was operating under the assumption that this would fall under the same umbrella of artists doing sketches at conventions or guys like John Byrne who make thousands for personal profit making drawings of DC characters.

My name's not Alex, it's Thomas. Hello. Alex was the guy who submitted this to Boing Boing. I don't know him. But if you see this, hey Alex!

The painting of the S shield and the comment about hoping WB gets mad about it was joke that came after the fact. It's not why WB came after me. I was just talking to the artist while making posts about all this and put that up to promote her work and because we were having a laugh about the absurdity of all this. I'll mention her name and site again because she likes being famous. Hello, Ali.

Yes I am trying to laugh at this. No, it's not easy. Mostly it's stressing me the hell out and making me sad.

Let's see... what else. Oh, yeah, i am having some money troubles because of this. I'm not putting up a public donations thing because, well, I don't want it to seem I'm making money off this. Some friends helped, and they are most brilliant and wonderful people in the world. Thank you, guys.

A bit of good: the first round of auctions netted $1400 for the Candlelighters. That's pretty awesome.

Lastly, I wish the original auctions had gotten this much attention.

What I've decided to do

I've already pulled the auctions from round two of the fund raiser that featured Warner Bros properties. I am going to refund and return the art from the first round that featured DC characters so they cannot point at me and say "Look at the money you've made from our properties."

Should things get straightened out with the WB and I get their permission, I can always relist the items later.