Bleeding Cool is a comics news blog with 3-4 million monthly views. Founder Rich Johnston, “the oldest extant comics news reporter on the Internet”, covers this scandal and call for Consumer Rights:
Last Unicorn Publisher Targeted With Accusations Of Fraud
Rich’s story throws another failure on this Dumpster fire of a story caused by Conlan Press. It adds evidence that Last Unicorn comic artists were also accused of non-delivery of work for years, on many other projects. Customers who bought Last Unicorn comics can add that to the list of reasons why promises were broken.
Bleeding Cool forum members respond:
…for those who haven’t gotten the education either the easy or hard way yet: I would not give Ray Dillon, his wife Renae De Liz, or any organization affiliated with Connor Cochran any money prior to receiving something of value in return, not for yourself and not for charity. They are very good at playing on your desire to be sympathetic to whatever hardships or miscommunication they are presently claiming, but not about about getting people what they paid for in a remotely timely fashion, if at all. It’s an established pattern going back many years. You’ve been warned.
Bad partnership choice doesn’t necessarily reflect on an innocent person. But with Connor Cochran’s choice to also work with an ex-lawyer disgraced for literary world fraud – and all the other reasons his reputation belongs at the bottom of a dumpster – how can we not assume the worst? Now ask: how complicit is he with the artists’ history of bad behavior?
The forum raises a comparison to a notorious scammer who also pre-sold goods that were never delivered: “Connor Cochran is the Geoff Beckett of fantasy publishing.”
And a reader raises a comparison that will mean a lot to fans of The Last Unicorn.
“After reading thru the stuff I’m pretty convinced Peter Beagle is being Mommy Fortuna’ed by the publisher, Conlan Press.”
Mommy Fortuna’s carnival pimped sad, chained-up animals as pretend magic things, for a show that abused the little magic it did possess. No refunds! The analogy gets WAY too easy: The character is Twitter header for Peter Beagle’s sales manager.
Peter Beagle’s Twitter (which states it’s NOT managed by him, but by her,) supposes that naive, gullible fans will soak up a secondhand statement about this story like sparkles from a Unicorn’s ass.
On Twitter, proxied Peter says it’s all lies. Everyone who didn’t get these 79 sales is supposed to be lying. “You can take my word for it.” Conlan Press says that’s good enough… ignore inconvenient stuff posted here like EVIDENCE and CORROBORATION.
Watch this site for a new article soon, to learn what you’re really hearing when you hear denial about this from Conlan Press.
More reader reactions: link
Yep, I ordered this in 2005. Got nothing.
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Holy shit I just read through all of that on that site. Does this Author Peter Beagle not give a single shit about what this guy is doing?
I mean seriously what’s the deal with his silence? All I saw was “I’m not connected to the publishing house…” or some such craziness.
I mean from what I saw, this Connor Cochran douchebag had total control of his works and is dicking around people like this? Are you kidding me? Damn reading through all that pissed me off and I’m not even one of the ones that have bought anything.
I sure as hell will NEVER buy anything from those guys ever. Unless I just feel like throwing money down the crapper.
That asshole needs to give these people their money back or give them those deluxe last unicorn books, which it doesn’t even sound like there is any. And he needs to go the fuck to jail for swindling people out of unpaid wages as well as fraud.
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This year a friend and I went to a local screening of the Last Unicorn meet-the-author tour. We were extremely excited and it was a great experience at the time, we even dressed up in Lady Amalthea and Red Bull cosplays and put a lot of effort into them.
Connor Cochran was there with Mr. Beagle; he was extremely friendly and charismatic, telling us all about the cool tour book they planned to put together and would we be interested in having our cosplay photos in it? They would mail us movie filmstrip pieces with the characters we were cosplaying and everything. Naturally we were stoked, took lots of photos with the author, and gave our addresses.
We were told that the tour was going so well, they’d sold out of a lot of books. I ordered two that were missing as signed copies to be sent to me. Months have gone by now. According to their Facebook they’re having ‘unforeseen trouble sending the books across the border.’ I’ve sent many messages that have gone unanswered since the last update. Pretty sure I’m never getting my copies, and who knows if this tour book will ever materialize.