Lady Alchemy Legal Defense

CLICK HERE  for the full story & all evidence.

The Lady Alchemy comic book is currently the subject of a frivolous lawsuit filed by a disgruntled former freelance “artist” who is trying to derail the project, drain me of money, inflict severe emotional distress on me as punishment for firing him, and stop backers from receiving the book.

Unless I handle this insane lawsuit now, I will not be able to share updates with you, post artwork online, sell the book, or deliver the book to backers. Unfortunately, that is why I need to ask for your help. 

The former artist appears to be asking for $60,000 and has committed perjury several times. He has repeatedly lied under penalty of perjury to advance a meritless case and cause me pain. He has to be held accountable for this. 


To be clear: The dispute is not over who OWNS Lady Alchemy. The lawsuit is AGAINST Martina Markota aka Lady Alchemy. The lawsuit is over the ownership of the Indiegogo campaign which is PROVABLE and his attempts to stop me from drawing MYSELF with ANOTHER artist. I am NOT using his drawings of Lady Alchemy. 

A false copyright claim has taken down the IGG page (and it will not be reinstated until the lawsuit is over), so I am unable to address backers directly.

The comic book is almost 75% complete with a new team. As I am already suffering severe personal and family problems I have kept this quiet and I have paid thousands of dollars for a lawyer to handle the lawsuit while I push ahead with the book.

I tried to update you as much as possible, however, I am in a catch-22, because every update I post, they try to use against me in court.

However, the situation is now so dire that I must ask for your help, and I want to reveal the entire situation – in all of its absurdity – to you.

Having already required more than $10,000 in legal representation so far, it now appears that this case could cost tens of thousands of dollars more to fight.

Not only must I defend my intellectual property and my image, but it is not right for somebody with a vendetta to use a lawsuit to try and drain me of funds and stop me delivering the book that my backers paid for.

Below, you will find a short and bullet-pointed explanation of what has happened so far.

If you would like to read an extremely detailed timeline of events, complete with evidence, CLICK THIS LINK 

The book is nearly complete thanks to the new team, I have paid the team in full, and at this rate, I will be using my own money to print and deliver this comic book to all my backers.

The former "artist" I foolishly hired has repeatedly claimed to be the "best artist in ComicsGate" but not only produced poor quality artwork, he tried to use me to deliver a comic book about him that none of you wanted. I don't think he should be able to get away with this, and I really need your help to fight him.

This is taking an extreme toll on not just my mental health, but my physical health too. I don't know how much more I can take and appealing for your help is the last thing I wanted to do. But I need to.

I am eternally grateful for your support so far, and all generous donations to this fund will go directly to my lawyer, Ron Coleman of Dhillon Law Group. Your support will help me ensure that this book, with the incredible new art, is finally delivered to backers.

Thank you,
Martina Markota


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SIMPLIFIED TIMELINE OF EVENTS:

·       In 2018 I hired an “artist” on a freelance basis to produce a Lady Alchemy comic book with a story that was based on my real-life experiences as an artist in New York City.

·       My former “artist” over-ordered merchandise, to the tune of several thousand dollars, from his friend’s company, leaving me with a huge bill to pay so they could profit off me.

·       My former “artist” delivered 14 pages of a comic book (after a year and a half) that barely referenced Lady Alchemy and did not reflect the story and vision I promised to you, the backers, in my IndieGoGo campaign. The “artist” self-inserted himself into the book as a character named “Major Grubert” (which is a copyrighted Marvel character) and changed the story to focus on him, not on Lady Alchemy.

·     During the campaign, my direction for the story was completely ignored by the artist and his friend. My input was repeatedly brushed off, despite it being my project, and I was told to accept a new story that would span ten books total. The “writer” emailed me to say that in future books he would explore Nazi themes. In the final book, he told me that he wanted my Lady Alchemy character to fight the “God of Child Sacrifice” Moloch in Israel. These were literally neo-Nazi themes. I am a conservative. I am not a neo-Nazi and I couldn't believe what I was reading. Their actions were totally unacceptable. Had I continued to engage these people, they would have dragged my name, brand, and reputation through the mud and dragged me down to the level of online LARPing neo-Nazis.

·       Backers were (rightly) asking me why the book wasn’t done, so I fired him in 2019. I had naively paid him in advance for the poor quality artwork.

·       After hiring a new team (Dario Carrasco and Von Klaus) and starting from scratch, the old “artist” and his friend – who he recruited of his own accord to write a story that I didn’t approve of – became vindictive.

·       The former “artist” began a smear campaign, wrongly claiming I committed fraud, and that I spent all the money. He claimed that neither me nor my husband had worked in years, and that we were going on expensive vacations using the comic book money. There was no semblance of truth in a single thing he said. 

·   The former "artist" also wrongly claimed that I stole the campaign from him and that I was hired by him as a promoter for his book, which I later learned he had called “Dark World.” Not only had I never heard of “Dark World,” neither had any of you, my backers. I soon learned that this former “artist” had been using me to create his own comic, with him as the main character.

·   I paid the former "artist" as a freelancer and I have both the invoices and transactions to prove it. At no time was I paid by the former "artist" to promote his "Dark World" comic, nor did he at any time own the campaign. You, the backers, know this as well as I do.

·       The former “artist” appeared on YouTube shows to slander me and derail the project.

·       After I ignored his nasty campaign and kept on working with my new team to deliver the comic book that you supported, he then began copyright striking my IndieGoGo campaign and my websites.

·       My websites and the Indiegogo campaign were soon reinstated.

·       During the summer we made lots of progress on the new book. The book was finally coming together & backers were being updated.

·       All of a sudden, all that incredible work from over the summer was taken by the former “artist” and his friend and compiled into a copyright lawsuit. They claimed “substantial similarities”, taking the new artwork and comparing it to their shockingly poor quality artwork that I had already paid him for, and which I decided not to use. The former “artist” wrongly claimed that he owned the copyright of that artwork, which he did not because I had paid him thousands of dollars to do it, and the artwork depicted my trademarked Lady Alchemy image.

·       I learned in the lawsuit that the former “artist” took the works that I had paid him to produce, of me, and illegally filed copyright of them.

·       I am now in the middle of a frivolous copyright lawsuit filed by a disgruntled former “artist” and his friend, who I have never met, who both wrongly claim they own Lady Alchemy IP, and that the campaign was originally called “Dark World” and I was merely a promoter of it.

·       You, the backers, know this is untrue. You backed a Lady Alchemy comic book about my real life as Lady Alchemy in New York City. What is “Dark World”? I don’t know and I know you don’t either.  

·       In the lawsuit, they also claim that the IndieGogo campaign is theirs and that I stole it from them. IGG requires tax ID verification and that information cannot be changed after a campaign is launched. The IGG is owned by Magnum Opus Productions, my company, and always has been. The former “artist” is lying to the courts.

·       Every time I have tried to speak about what these two have done to me, they have copyright striked the content. Not only is their claim of copyright infringement obviously wrong, but the fact that they simply filed a lawsuit means that the striked content is not reinstated. They have done everything they can, including breaking the rules and the law, to stop me from telling you what they did to me and to this project. It is straight abuse. 

·       My IndieGoGo has been copyright striked for a second time now, and it will not be reinstated until I win this frivolous lawsuit.

For a full and detailed timeline of events, CLICK THIS LINK 
Thank you so much for your support. It means so much to me.

Martina Markota