Recently I received these two letters referring to the original JesusDressUp.com.
They sparked a series of email transpirings and I thought you all would be amused.
My replies will be on the green. Enjoy!

Nov 13, 2000
You said that you have a copyright  on idea/image of christ/devil. Please be more specific on what it is exactly you've copyrighted... Jesus dressed as the Devil? Jesus with devil horns? Evil Jesus?
You see, it's hard for me to take such a poorly written email seriously.
Normal Bob Smith

Nov 15, 2000
I don't have to take down the site do I? I apologize for my earlier remarks.
I was considering changing the devil suit to green. Would it still fall under the evil/jesus category if I did that? I was also thinking on maybe just adding pointy ears to the suit so it'd be more like a Satyr (half goat half man). Would this fall out of the guidelines for your copyright?
Please contact me as soon as possible.
Bob

Nov 17, 2000
Hey Peter, I've decided to just change the devil costume to Green. It's the holidays and I believe that it'll no longer fall in the parameters of your copyright that way. So don't worry about it.
Bob

Nov 22, 2000
I'd really prefer not to get lawyers involved in all of this. I've been considering your offer and I am now thinking of just putting your name on the site with your copyright. Would it be OK if I put just your initials? Then I could at least be the only FULL name represented on the site. Please get beck to me as soon as possible. Please refrain from getting any lawyers involved.

Since your initial email I have also had an idea for a comic strip I wanted to draw and put on the site. It sort of falls into the evil/christ category but not exactly. Let me know what you think of this and your thoughts on my JesusDressUp offers.
Your friend,
Bob

 

Nov 22, 2000 hey allready got a message into my lawyer and they said that they would get back too me by the time this little holiday goes over and i will be able too get you all the info that you will need to keep doing or not keep doing what you do...sooo as we await for there answer of copyright guidelines that is all i can say for now as for the inatials on your sight they would be "pexcho" again thanks peter excho... pexcho@hotmail.com

Nov 28, 2000

I apologize for this taking as long as it has. When I mentioned the initials I was actually hoping for just one initial. I'd be happy to give you copyright credit with the one initial (your choice of course). I'm sending you one of my quick sketches from the comic that I was telling you about. It's about a Jesus gone bad. Not the devil possessing Jesus like your copyright covers. Let me know what you think. It'd be nice to get your blessing on this before I started posting the series that I've done. Hope to hear from you soon about the Jesus Dress Up page. It's been on my mind.

This is the artwork that I included as an attachment. (CLICK TO SEE IT FULL SIZE)

Your friend,
Bob

 

After hearing no response and the "grace period" passing I sent one last reply.

Dec 3, 2000
I hope that your lawyer gave you good news! I was going to change the devil suit to green but then I decided that dark orange would be more like what I wanted it to portray. So I changed the suit to a REALLY dark orange. Then I thought that it is nearly red so I just made it red again and I'm just going to call it "Dark-orange"©2000NormalBobSmith.

I talked to my lawyer and he said that this would be enough to get you off my back. If you are still concerned about this matter I am willing to put an initial of yours on the site. It's your choice:
Option 1- P
Option 2- E

Of course it'd no longer have the copyright "©". It's too late for that. You should have replied sooner.

I hope that you don't mind me brushing off your silly, little copyright claim. I just copyrighted the compound word "DEVILCHRIST"©2000 NormalBobSmith. I figured that if this isn't enough to crush your spirit on the matter, then we're just going to have to take this to court (I'll be holding my breath until the summons gets here).

I hope that this doesn't dampen any of the thrill that your "copyright" brings you. It is a real impressive thing that you've got there. I want to thank you for inspiring me on the whole devil-christ gravy train. Not only am I going to do a comic but I have several other related ideas that I'm already working on. I hope to hear from you again very soon.

Normal Bob

Ok, this letter deserved no response (You'll see what I mean when you check out the site). But I did want to use this opportunity to give a little background of JesusDressUp.com

In 1991 I was dabbling in sacrilegious art. I was harboring a lot of resentment for having to go to church, pray to God and believe something because my parents told me to. I did a comic that told the short tale of a nun with a spear through her head caught in a revolving door. I also did a piece that I called "The Adventures of Jew Boy down Blasphemy Lane". During this period is when I created "Color-n-cut Dress Me Up!".

This is the original piece, tagged with my "BOB PRODUCT" logo that I was putting on everything that I did.

I remember being at my desk giggling to myself 'cause I was so goddamn clever. This drawing was very wrong but I couldn't stop myself. Then my mother walked in...
"Bobby NO!!" She yelled.
I knew that I was on to something good. I inked it in, photocopied them off and handed them out to friends so that they could color him in, cut him out and dress him up. I mailed them out as Easter cards that year and then forgot about it.

Almost a decade later I wanted to teach myself Dreamweaver. I picked up a copy of Lynda Weinman's Dreamweaver 2 Hands-on Training book. In the back of this book she has a little exercise that teaches DHTML which includes layers. Her example to work with is a little monkey that you can dress up. I thought that I could just as easily use my own artwork instead.

After completing the page I put it up on the Internet so that it could be shared with family and friends.
I used my personal pages that weren't meant for a whole lot of traffic. So my friends emailed the address to their friends, and they emailed it to their friends and so on and so on. Within 2 weeks I was exceeding the traffic aloud on my pages. I received a bill in the mail for $750 from my Internet provider. It was quite a shock. I refused the charges and was told that if I got a business account, it could handle the traffic and the $750 charge would be reconsidered.

So I get the business account for $19.99 a month. That's when I began work on NormalBobSmith.com.

Ok, so September and October pass. I'm getting a lot of emails and everything is cool. November rolls around and I get a bill in the mail for $1,700. I called up my Internet provider to find out what was up. It was then that I discovered that in September I got 150,000 visits to my site. But that was nothing. October brought in 250,000 and that bill was going to be nearly $3,000. That's where the advertising comes in.

Luckily the response has been overwhelming both from advertisers and fans. I greatly appreciate the interest that everyone has been showing and nothing would make me happier than if I could maintain these pages, respond to the hate and display my art.

Yes, it's only me here doing all of this and as of 8/12/00 these pages are only three months in the making.
So continue to visit. I'll be up-dating these pages as often as possible.

Normal Bob

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