Cartoons Editorial cartooning

Ben Wicks family fighting for custody of 2400 newly discovered cartoons

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Alan Gardner May 15, 2007 1 minute 2 comments

Canadian cartoonist Ben Wicks, who died in 2000, was one of Canada’s great cartoonists, but was perhaps not the best at archiving and filing his artwork. Recently, two brothers found three bags full of Ben’s cartoons in the garage of a home they had purchased from the Wicks in 1992. The collection of cartoons are valued to be over $57,000 and the brothers consider themselves the owners of the originals and recognize the Wicks family as the copyright holders.

So when the two Harnett brothers decided to reprint the cartoons in a book format, they contacted the Wicks family for permission and got the ugly side of a law suit as the Wicks family wants the cartoons back.

The story linked above contains a good deal of the family’s testimony which is high on emotion, so I’m curious how this case will turn out. Certainly, Canada would have laws governing abandoned property (intentionally or not), so I’m hoping the outcome will side with established law and not swayed by emotion. The Wicks family is also bringing in editorial cartoonist Andy Donato and former Toronto mayor David Crombie – both of which I’m sure are experts in law regarding abandoned property and aren’t there to create more drama about the cartoons.

The lesson to be learned: keep track of those cartoons!