I've not posted anything on the the Gary Friedrich suit against Marvel for the ownership of Ghost Rider, nor the recent judgement against him to the tune of $17,000, and thats partly because it has gone so viral that it really isn't necessary for me to do so.
Daniel Best has, once again, with the time and inclination to read through the court documents and understand the legalese to the point where he can break it down for us laymen. i wanted to link out to further distribute the short and dirty version of where it all stands right now, with the second movie about to open and in trailers.
Gary has no way to win this really. If Jack's heirs couldn't win against Marvel and their lawyers, then Gary has no chance of it. I guess I find it just shocking how these piddly little properties that were given away for $35 a page have turned into million dollar inventions. For the record, the second comic I ever owned was Marvel Team-Up #15, with Spider-Man and the Ghost Rider. Now there is a Kane/Romita cover I'd love to own.
And, as always, the little guy gets screwed. Period. And you'd think that Marvel would want to avoid the obvious bad press, but their lawyers are (quite correctly) worried that allowing any loophole, any crack of precedent to show through, will open the floodgates. Wolfman and Colan's heirs would go after Blade (again) and so would all the rest.
And none of this would have happened had the industry not been born on the backs of utter mobsters and crooks. Reasonable contracts up front would have taken of all of this, or at least made it a little easier. But when Seigel and Shuster and Bill Finger and Friedrich and Burgos and Everett all practically on or over the edge of poverty, there is no nice, there is no warm fuzzy spot. There is only the sound of us long time, life long comic fans sliding the tectonic plates of our nostalgia around to accomodate all the evil done to the creators over the years.
They don't sit easily together, do they?
Showing posts with label work for hire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work for hire. Show all posts
Monday, February 13, 2012
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
In Discussion Of: Work for Hire and Working the Workers
Noah Berlatsky makes some interesting points in his Who Watches the Super Serfs post in reaction to Joe Quesada's comments on work for hire. Joe, for those who simply don't wish to click about 5 layers down to get to the quotes, points out that Work for Hire is just life under capitalism and that we should all just shut up about it.
And yet, there are very few other artistic forms where the creator is expected to give and give and give and get nothing back. The music industry is one, at least in the old days, where only the publishing was important. (Does it not depress anyone to know that a song, pick any song that has achieved a certain level of cultural fame, for all those times that you've heard it on the radio growing up, nothing goes back to artist's pocket book if he or she didn't write it? Music that we consider the soundtrack of our lives sometimes is created by an artist who receives nothing for the continued radio airplay. In Europe, at least, there has been a "performer credit" that paid the performing artist for decades).
By anyone's estimation, Siegel and Shuster should have been millionaires, but they didn't even get the working wage as they were fired off of the Superman books relatively quickly so that DC didn't to worry about fighting with two men who had an emotional investment. DC stole the greatest idea in the history of the medium and bailed on the inventors.
Is this any better or worse than some of what Tom Crippen points out in his rather depressing self-examination of his younger comic reading days, when he discovered that Romita and Buscema were not inspired artists gearing up for another exciting issue of Marvel Team Up, but were, in fact, workhorses, churning out yet another issue? Perhaps not. Since the result, in any case, is a depressingly mediocre product for the reader.
That workhorse/work-for-hire mentality has stuck us with a level of mediocrity that is rather hard to surpass unless one looks at television with a long lens. Another medium that started out in the mud and never climbed up any higher until recently and only by:
Is there incentive for the creator to actually give a Marvel or DC anything other than to get a paycheck? Unfortunately, yes, there is, and much of it rests on the heart fulfulling its wishes to go play in the sandbox with all the favorite toys that one had growing up: The X-Men, The Avengers, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. and the dream of getting a paycheck for actually sitting around doing what your parents told you was a waste of time: drawing.
But neither of them leads to a happy old age, to a pension, to anything other than a bad back. Ask Gene Colan where his long term health benefits are, or Dave Cockrum where his were. The lived the dream, but like the hourly employee at Taco Bell, the first day that they don't show up and make tacos, they don't get paid. And, as we all know, Gene and Dave made a hell of a lot more than tacos.
Tom makes the point, late in his essay, that he found himself "ground down" by the relentless quality of reading all the Marvels, til staring at the carpet was the equivalent of reading yet another issue of Thor. Many of the artists who have worked on a monthly schedule can attest to that feeling, and I realize that this has long since been about getting the product out on the stands, as opposed to getting a good product out on the stands. Would any other market want to actually cheapen their goods at that level? I guess if your business plan includes a built-in turnover of consumers, especially consumers who you consider to have no taste differential, then yes, cheapen the product all you want.
But not in this day and age. The business model has changed, or it should. Work can stay in print and, like an actual book, continue to entertain. Good creators should get paid well, great creators even better. And if the idea lives on, and there is money to be made, then the creators should continue to get paid. Quesada's idea of work for hire being the only way to go only works if you're going backwards from here. And I think that we're going anywhere but.
And yet, there are very few other artistic forms where the creator is expected to give and give and give and get nothing back. The music industry is one, at least in the old days, where only the publishing was important. (Does it not depress anyone to know that a song, pick any song that has achieved a certain level of cultural fame, for all those times that you've heard it on the radio growing up, nothing goes back to artist's pocket book if he or she didn't write it? Music that we consider the soundtrack of our lives sometimes is created by an artist who receives nothing for the continued radio airplay. In Europe, at least, there has been a "performer credit" that paid the performing artist for decades).
By anyone's estimation, Siegel and Shuster should have been millionaires, but they didn't even get the working wage as they were fired off of the Superman books relatively quickly so that DC didn't to worry about fighting with two men who had an emotional investment. DC stole the greatest idea in the history of the medium and bailed on the inventors.
Is this any better or worse than some of what Tom Crippen points out in his rather depressing self-examination of his younger comic reading days, when he discovered that Romita and Buscema were not inspired artists gearing up for another exciting issue of Marvel Team Up, but were, in fact, workhorses, churning out yet another issue? Perhaps not. Since the result, in any case, is a depressingly mediocre product for the reader.
That workhorse/work-for-hire mentality has stuck us with a level of mediocrity that is rather hard to surpass unless one looks at television with a long lens. Another medium that started out in the mud and never climbed up any higher until recently and only by:
- rock star mentality where one creator occasionally gets enough power to actually force through something interesting and innovative
- sheer accident.
Is there incentive for the creator to actually give a Marvel or DC anything other than to get a paycheck? Unfortunately, yes, there is, and much of it rests on the heart fulfulling its wishes to go play in the sandbox with all the favorite toys that one had growing up: The X-Men, The Avengers, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. and the dream of getting a paycheck for actually sitting around doing what your parents told you was a waste of time: drawing.
But neither of them leads to a happy old age, to a pension, to anything other than a bad back. Ask Gene Colan where his long term health benefits are, or Dave Cockrum where his were. The lived the dream, but like the hourly employee at Taco Bell, the first day that they don't show up and make tacos, they don't get paid. And, as we all know, Gene and Dave made a hell of a lot more than tacos.
Tom makes the point, late in his essay, that he found himself "ground down" by the relentless quality of reading all the Marvels, til staring at the carpet was the equivalent of reading yet another issue of Thor. Many of the artists who have worked on a monthly schedule can attest to that feeling, and I realize that this has long since been about getting the product out on the stands, as opposed to getting a good product out on the stands. Would any other market want to actually cheapen their goods at that level? I guess if your business plan includes a built-in turnover of consumers, especially consumers who you consider to have no taste differential, then yes, cheapen the product all you want.
But not in this day and age. The business model has changed, or it should. Work can stay in print and, like an actual book, continue to entertain. Good creators should get paid well, great creators even better. And if the idea lives on, and there is money to be made, then the creators should continue to get paid. Quesada's idea of work for hire being the only way to go only works if you're going backwards from here. And I think that we're going anywhere but.
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