“I have seen contracts within the comics industry shift frequently. Why, one of the biggies has a clause that grants them Universal rights to the work. You know, for the huge comics audience on Mars. Mark Smylie of ASP is a longtime friend of mine & one thing I can vouch for 100% is his honesty. I don’t think he would strong-arm anyone. Both of us had witnessed another indie publisher do that to other artists. If Mark says that the contract he came up with for Archaia artists was the direction the industry is headed, then I am sure that is his experience. Image is (to my knowledge) the only major *comics* publisher with a contract as creator-friendly & rights flexible as it is.” – Eva Hopkins, from my comment section.
BAD BEHAVIOUR ISN’T EXCUSED BY ITS FREQUENCY: IT’S STILL BAD BEHAVIOUR.
I am going to be completely inappropriate here, but maybe that means I’ll get quoted everywhere and people will get the message:
Saying that because most companies in the comics industry have shitty contracts and take advantage of people so it’s okay for one more company to have a shitty contract and maybe take advantage of them too? That’s a lot like saying that most guys at the bar you drink at are date-rapists, but you’re willing to take your chances with the new guy. Just go drink at a different fucking bar, it’s right-the-fuck next door.
Stop defending the comics industry when it behaves badly! Go get yourself deprogrammed from this Stockholm Syndrome Nightmare that tells you that this is just the way things are! It’s a lie! If your work really wasn’t worth anything, these assholes wouldn’t want a cut of you.
Image Comics! IDW Publishing! Slave Labor Graphics! Fantagraphics! Drawn & Quarterly! Five great companies that offer contracts that don’t take media or ancillary rights. All of them have published stories that have been turned into film or animation. Five comic book companies, bang! Then there’s a whole book industry with dozens of publishers doing graphic novel work ethically, working within a medium with a history of respect for creators’ rights. There’s self publishing, for fuck’s sakes. You have options! You don’t get the fake-prestige of working with someone blowing smoke up your ass telling you they’re going to give you 10% of your own movie deal which is practically in-the-bag, they-gotta-guy, but so what? If your work is marketable, people will come to you. Agents, lawyers, hollywood people, they swarm up and down the aisles at Comic conventions, on the web, the whole nine.
Quit shrugging your shoulders, comics. Quit giving in. Quit saying “that’s just the way the industry is going” like you’re powerless to stop it.
This guy’s got it:
- “What they want to do is make a deal to do the graphic novel, which would be great, and there’s no money there, which is fine — obviously you’re doing it for the fun of it — but if a movie comes out of it, then they guarantee that they will not pay you for it, that they will screw you.†– Eric Bogosian, MTV Splash Page Article
Go to another bar.
– Chris
“IDW Publishing!”
holy shit, not in my experience.
b
Seen it first hand, Brian. Sorry that wasn’t the case for your project.
Awesomeness.
Please stop dragging those poor date rapists into your comic industry arguments.
Love,
Chip
“Let’s give her somethin’ to talk abowwwwwwwt…”
The comic industry is just depressing. It’s a mystery to me why anyone would want to make a living in it. There’s soooo much money out there to be made, why stress yourself out over peanuts?
Anyway, comic people will excuse *any* behavior from comic companies. No matter if it’s horrific contracts or horrific quality of work, some asshole will turn around and defend it in the blink of an eye.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been offered two options with my dealings with IDW. One is a back-end deal where no page rate or advance is paid but the profits are split 50/50 publisher/creators. The other, where they finance it and pay a page rate, they take 50% of media rights. This has seemed pretty fair to me, and has always been communicated in a very aboveboard way.
Well, IDW–who now has the Star Trek license–will be publishing a collection of Star Trek stories I originally penciled for DC Comics.
I will not be seeing any money from this edition.
Now, Paramount (who owns the license, natch!) and IDW are well within their legal rights here. But both of them will be making money from this edition, and the creators will not.
Just don’t expect me to sign any copies of this edition if you meet me at a convention.
I don’t hate the industry persay we know its sales driven indstury just like any other. You don’t make money, you don’t stay in business simple at that. Thing is, lots of marketing schemes and gimmicks that Marvel, DC, and the smaller publishers pull to spike sales and increase market share make the stories suffer in the process. You got bad stories, you don’t readers. Marvel is succeeding now with ingenious marketing, yet their stories are flat as the earth and won’t be considered classics like the Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s work of the era. Now, I can defend Marvel’s treatment of its “creator’s legacy” by expanding on the existing work or I can criticize the hell of them. I will chose the second option here. Marvel actually has dishonored many of its creators creations by replacing and killing the original heroes and bringing on successors, most often in female form or some other twist. It is truly nothing more than marketing and a profit-driven mentality.