Meta: Tuckerizations and Character Names

[Martin Phipps]

cabbagewielder at yahoo.com wrote:

>      My point is Martin named a character (loosely) after me

This is a lie, Jesse, and you know damn well that I didn't base him on
you because I've already explained it to you through e-mail.  It's too
bad, really, that I'm not in North America right now where I could deal
with this through the courts.  Seriously.  Because I take extreme
offense at your attitude.  I feel, quite frankly, that I have been
punched in the face and, worse, I have absolutely no means to
retaliate.  You know damn well that I was pulling names out the air
when I wrote Superfreaks.  I don't have to apologize or make excuses
because I did nothing wrong.  Accept this.  Then give me the apology
you know you owe me.

The LNH-Y story is a perfect example of what I was talking about: Tom
Russell saw no problem with using people's names.  If there was malice
against you then there had to be malice against everybody.  It goes
against all common sense to say that you were being singled out for
ridicule.  In fact, I just did a search for "Enright Superfreaks"
through google and found that, as a vaguely recalled, I did in fact use
the name "Alex Enright" as the name of the killer in #9.  Was this
supposed to be Jamas Enright?  Of course not.  And if I do a google
search for "Willey" or "Enright" then I would find that there are
probably a lot of Willeys and Enrights out there and not just Jesse and
Jamas.  Not everybody named Willey is you, Jesse.

More to the point, whenever you use a name in one of your stories,
unless the name is "Smith", "Jones", "Lee" or "Wang", it is almost
certainly the name of somebody you've met, seen on TV or read about.
Otherwise, how do you know it's a real name?  Even made up names like
McFly from Back to the Future turns out to belong to somebody who could
then sue claiming rights to the name.  But guess what... people can't
claim rights to family names.  Every name we make up is somebody's
name.  The current President of South Korea is (phonetically) No taywu.
 How many Dr. Nos are in Korea?  However did Ian Flemming survive the
lawsuit?  The answer: there was no lawsuit.  Family names are public
domain.  Period.

You don't believe that people can use people's names as the names of
villains without malice Jesse?  Do you know the real name of Jessica's
villain Appallingly Tasteless Man?  See Writer's Block Woman and Mouse
#10:

>"No! I _won't_. I am the Appallingly Tasteless Man and I _will_ have my
>revenge on the world for my sufferings."

>"You're Mr Phipps, the worst dressed teacher of my high school. You bored us
>all to tears in physics class and wore the ugliest suits. Then you found out
>about my powers and decided to use them for your revenge."

>"YES!" roared the ATM/Mr Phipps, "And I'dve gotten away with it too if it
>hadn't of been for those nosy heros!"

So I e-mailed Jessica way back and asked "Is this based on me?  Because
my name is Phipps and I teach physics" and she assured me that no, she
had a physics teacher named Phipps when she was a student and she was
thinking of him, not me.  Well, okay, so while it isn't altogether cool
to base a villain on a real person at least it wasn't based on me and
having met this other Dr. Phipps she was entitled to comment on his
wardrobe.  The truth, as you might say, is fair game.

Now if I had then gone on the newsgroup and still claimed that she was
doing a Tuckerism of me then she would have been completely right to
call me a liar and an asshole.  But I didn't.

And it isn't the only time my name has been used.  Russell has used my
first name twice, first for Martin Mylar and then for Martin Rock.  Was
he supposed to have asked first?  Meanwhile, the name "Marvin Filmore"
was used in both Golden-Age LNH-Men and Silver-Age LNH-Men and while I
didn't take offense at the former I took offense at the latter because
Tick took that character from Golden-Age LNH-Men and used it as a way
to direct insults at me.  And Tick didn't deny doing this either.
Meanwhile, I do deny ever having you in mind when I wrote about Jack
Willey.  In fact, I had the Willy Lopez character in mind from Ghost.
That's the God's honest truth.

Frankly, at this point, I'm reluctant to accept a late apology from
you.  At this point, you would need to beg for my forgiveness, as in
getting down on your f**king knees and begging for forgiveness.
Anything less than that I would have to consider a further insult from
you.  And a continuation of the insults I've had to endure from you
these pass couple of days would be entirely unwelcome.

Martin