Whatever Happened To The
Fanzing Cineplex?

By Michael Hutchison

You may have noticed that the Fanzing Cineplex is no longer available. For the moment, it is gone, as we no longer have any movies to show.

In the last few days of May 2001, Fanzing received numerous e-mails from contributors to the 3D Comics Collective (http://www.3d-cc.com/) alleging that the 3D Poser movies made by Steven Conroy used, in addition to Steven's own creations, numerous characters downloaded from that site. This wouldn't have been much of a problem if Steven had just credited the original authors in the movies; Steven didn't have any credits in the movies, not even his own, so this could have been an oversight.

The President of 3D-CC offered numerous pieces of very credible evidence that this was the case. Steven insisted several times that they were his own characters, but would not offer an answer to any of the specific allegations.

In the end I was forced to concede that the allegations were true. Numerous specific markings and small flaws in the works of other artists showed up in the characters of Steven's movies. Most tellingly the original custom 3D figure "Blue Beetle's Bug" used in the JLI preview movie was obviously Douglas Sturk's; there's no way Steven could have made it precisely like Doug's on his own. When challenged to explain how this could be, Steven again said that they were his own but refused to answer the question of how this could be.

Finally, Steven announced that he was quitting and asked that his movies be taken down. Doug Sturk and the others at 3D-CC made it very clear that they didn't want Steven's movies withdrawn, they just wanted proper credits added; however, Steven never acknowledged that the characters were the creations of others. Without that, we couldn't keep the Cineplex running.

This whole messy situation wasn't resolved to much of anyone's satisfaction. I'm really sorry it had to end this way with Steven, who is obviously a good movie-maker and artist in his own right (as can be judged by his own characters that can be seen at 3D-CC under the name of "Lex Luthor"). I particularly regret that we can't debut the new movies Steven was working on. If Steven ever explains himself and offers the movies with the proper credits, we'll gladly host them again.

The one good thing to come out of this is that the folks over at 3D-CC know we exist and a number of them have offered their services to contribute artwork and possibly some movies in the future. It's possible that we may re-open the Cineplex in the future.

Actually, there's another good thing to come out of this: without the Cineplex movies, we have filespace and bandwidth to spare. Now that bandwidth overages aren't a problem, we can work on expanding the Desktop Themes section with new files such as our Legion of Super-Heroes Theme!

And now, I'd like to offer the credits for the specific figures as Doug Sturk was able to piece together:

Martian Manhunter by SturkWurk/Hokusai
Maxwell Lord by Lex Luthor
Blue Beetle ship by SturkWurk
Blue Beetle ship in DC 1,000,000 by Lex Luthor
Mr. Miracle by SturkWurk/AofD
Blue Beetle by SturkWurk
Superan (in JLA 07) by Lex Luthor/Hokusai
Batman (in JLA 07) by Lex Luthour/Hokusai
Captain Atom by Lex Luthor
Rocket Red by Lex Luthor
Black Canary by Mason (Mr. X)
Oberon by Lex Luthor
Booster Gold by SturkWurk/Hazlet
Guy Gardner by Lex Luthor/DL Warrior
Superman (in Crisis 07) by Richard Kane/Phil Hokusai
Super Girl ??? Possibly Lex Luthor/Jack Kamerer/Mr X
Green Lantern (Kyle) by AofD
Starman by Lex Luthor/Stickman
Wonder Woman by Mr. X (new hair by Lex Luthor)
Hall of Justice building by Tranzorz
Flash by -3-/Lex Luthor
Aquaman by Mike Hazlet/Kane
Green Lantern (Hal) by Lex Luthor
Power Girl by Sabaac/Kane
Batman (in JLA:Red Sands of Mars) by Ghost of Macbeth
Catwoman by SturkWurk/Nick Noel/Jim M/Cage Drei
Lex Luthor by (heh) Lex Luthor
Batman Beyond by Monkeyboy
Captain Marvel by Lex Luthor/Hokusai
City Scapes by Lex Luthor/FastTraxx
City Scapes in JSA by FastTraxx
Flash (Golden Age) by SturkWurk/Hokusai
Wonder Woman (Golden Age) by Lex Luthor/Mr X
Hawkman by Lex Luthor/Hokusai
Green Lantern (Allan) by Cage Drei/Lex Luthor
Dr. Fate by Katarn
The Atom (Golden Age) by Lex Luthor/Hokusai
Starman (Ted Knight) by Lex Luthor/Hokusai
Superman 1,000,000 by Lex Luthor/Hokusai
Note: a great number of these files also use morphs made by Traveler (Eric Van Dyke)