Yes, paying people to do a job is totally screwing them.

Let's consider a recent example. Gary Friedrich created Ghost Rider for Marvel. However, he didn't write more than a handful of two of Ghost Rider comics. The overwhelming majority of comics and stories about Ghost Rider were written by people other than Gary Friedrich. Marvel eventually sold the rights to the character and it was turned into a movie that made some money. Why was Marvel able to sell the rights to Ghost Rider? Because of Gary Friedrich's work or because of the many other people who sustained the chracter and kept it a viable piece of intellectual property. If Gary Friedrich had kept the character to himself and self-published a handful of Ghost Rider comics in the early 1970s, would anyone have even remembered it, let alone wanted to spend 110 million dollars to make a movie about it? Or was Ghost Rider actually valuable as a movie property becuase of its connection to Marvel and not Gary Friedrich?

None of which denies that it sucks to see guys and gals who created things decades ago not get a slice when those creations decades later get turned into multi-million dollar intellectual properties. But decades ago, no one ever imagined there'd be this kind of money to be made off the work in other media.

And besides creating Ghost Rider, Gary Friedrich got quite a few paychecks from Marvel from working on other people's creations.

Mike

"Mr. Mouse, do your big shoes need licking? We have one of your apologists on line one."

What we know so far about Thanos: Jim Starlin has presented evidence that he created Thanos in the 1970s before he worked at Marvel. According to Heidi MacDonald's The Beat, Marvel is having trouble producing evidence that Starlin signed a work-for-hire contract surrendering the rights to Thanos. Marvel has decided to make Thanos the star villain of its next blockbuster Avengers movie.

To Mike Bunge, the answer is, Jim Starlin should go fuck himself because all hail Disney.

I respectfully disagree with Mike.

I think it's possible Starlin may be due some money.

As a talentless hack who has never created jackshit, I have to say that there is a fine line for creators to walk. On the one side there is money and success, and on the other is poverty and control over the work you might do. For me I know I'll never do anything at either company, I am not well known nor interested in such an assignment, but when you stare at nothing in your bank account, sometimes being paid is way more important than knowing you weren't screwed.

Sure.

But why should Jim Starlin have to choose? He was paid for the fine comics he created years ago. Now Marvel is using a villain he created for one of its big Hollywood movies -- and it may not have secured the rights in any clear fashion. I don't begrudge him if he asks for some compensation.

I am actually just saying I see Mike's point too, despite being a "creative" talent.

I see Mike's point too, but I disagree, at least on moral grounds.

If you make many millions of dollars on a movie featuring characters created by someone else, why not share the wealth a bit? A check for $50,000? $100,000? $200,000? You still would have a ton of cash left over. "The Avengers" probably dropped that much money on a day's catering services.

Gene Colan, who was old, sick and poor, didn't see a penny from "Iron Man 2," although he created Whiplash, the villain featured in the movie. Why? Because fuck him, ha ha ha, he signed over the rights to Whiplash when he cashed his paycheck, and it was work-for-hire, and we don't have to pay him anything, so we won't pay him anything.

I get the legal argument. I just don't like it.

(This is where Allen pipes up, "But you still pay your money to see the corporation's movies, you hypocrite." And he's right, he's absolutely right.)

I don't think that Capitalism is a moral agent. It works, I think, based upon exploitation of greed. It is not a system that rewards rights, or beliefs, it rewards willingness to make money from the labor of others.


So color me not surprised or offended that a corporation seeks to make money and not share it.

No, capitalism doesn't reward rights, at least not for the little guy. But maybe it should. Consider what's happened in the comics industry over the last 30 years -- the creators stopped creating anything, the stories went stale and readership plummeted. Why did the creators stop offering us new heroes and villains? Because they saw the guys before them get screwed on rights.

Look at Marvel and DC as publishers since, say, 1985, and it's hard to argue that screwing creators was the best idea from a business viewpoint. How many more WATCHMEN could there have been, if only? Would we be stuck with yet another X-MEN VS. AVENGERS mini-series this year?




I'm not surprised, but I'll admit to being offended.

All the crass corporate raping and pillaging from the last year or so has really done a number on my floppy-buying habit, let me tell you. Last month I bought ONE saddle-stitched comic book -- Roger Langridge's Snarked. I just can't support the corporate crap anymore.