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Rodrigo castellanos
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 July 2012
Location: Uruguay
Posts: 1586
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| Posted: 08 July 2012 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | 1
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Len Wein's received more compensation for co-creating Lucius Fox than he has for co-creating Wolverine (and when's the last time you saw a kid wearing Lucius Fox Underoos?).
Wow, that's truly astounding. DC used to pride itself in the eighties with the fact that Kirby got more money for creating Darkseid than what he got for creating almost the entire Marvel Universe (this was around the time the character debuted as a villain on the "Super-Friends" cartoon).
Nowadays, though (with Levitz gone) DC ain't looking too good either with the whole Watchmen thing...
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4075
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 1:16am | IP Logged | 2
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Kirby's money from the New Gods came from getting to submit new (or slightly revised) character designs for the Super Powers toy line. I've read that Kirby would actually get physically ill from seeing all of the toys and products based on his Marvel characters when he'd encounter them in stores, which is a damn shame.
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Kevin Brown
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 May 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 9127
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 7:04am | IP Logged | 3
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Nowadays, though (with Levitz gone) DC ain't looking too good either with the whole Watchmen thing... ********************************************* Watchmen was work for hire. DC (and Warners) did (and still does) pay out royalties to Moore and Gibbons for their work that shows up in trades and any other media (i.e. movies). But unless it was in the original contract, other people using the characters would not give them a cut or royalties. And as for the "whole Watchmen thing", if DC decided to bring back, say, Wild Dog, would people be clamoring and arguing for Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty to get a cut? Somehow I seriously doubt it because, like Watchmen, the creators created the character as work for hire. Anyway, the one thing I have constantly heard from creators that is always a positive about DC is their royalties.
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Ed Love
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 October 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2711
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 7:11am | IP Logged | 4
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Yeah, you don't see a lot of people threatening boycotts over the announced new Amethys, Blue Devil, and Black Lightning stories.
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Adam Hutchinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 December 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4502
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 7:29am | IP Logged | 5
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Dan Mishkin, co-creator of Amethys, seems to have a pretty realistic view of the business side of comics:
QUOTE:
| It doesn't feel great. It doesn't feel great to see our characters handled in ways that don't seem true to what we were intending to do. I've really been trying to adopt a "don't hate the player, hate the game" approach, and I don't even hate the game! I can be unhappy about it; I can be disappointed. It's never been a thrill to have a writer say to me, "I would love to write Amethyst," or "I would love to write Blue Devil," as if I must be dead or something. I would like to write them too -- in fact, I created them! But this is the business. I shudder to think what my attitude was when I was first writing comics and working on characters created by other people with this cavalier assumption that I knew better than anyone what this character was all about. |
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Chris Geary
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 January 2009
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1158
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 8:08am | IP Logged | 6
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Watchmen wasn't strictly a 'Work for Hire' situation. The contract stated
that after it wasn't in print for a year then the rights of the characters would
revert back to Alan and Dave Gibbons.
As it has never been out of print, and probably will remain in print forever,
(even if paper goes the way of the Dodo, a 'digital print' will always be
available) it's unlikely that the rights will ever leave DC.
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8525
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 9:02am | IP Logged | 7
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Look, can we get over this please. Watchmen was an adaption of the Charlton characters with the names changed. It was originally written for the Charlton characters, shoudln't the guys who complain actually be the guys who created those characters? Moore came up with an original (ish) story for those characters. Before Watchmen is happening in that same universe. I really don't get what the problem is here. And Moore let Eclipse reprint Alan Davis' Marvelman art without any complaints - that wasn't a continuation, it was the actual art!
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 14923
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 11:05am | IP Logged | 8
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Nowadays, though (with Levitz gone) DC ain't looking too good either
with the whole Watchmen thing...
-----
In terms of compensation, according to Moore, he was offered a "really,
really large sum" of money to give his blessing for the "Before
Watchmen" series (which DC obviously didn't need to do), while Dave
Gibbons, according to Moore, was getting a around a quarter of a
million dollars for his involvement.
http://www.seraphemera.org/seraphemera_books/AlanMoore
_Page3.html
Alan Moore may feel screwed over by DC because he thought the
contract he signed would allow Watchmen to revert back to him at
some point, but DC doesn't seem to be screwing him out of
compensation. He's just refusing to take it. However you feel about the
merits of the "Before Watchmen" project, DC owns the characters. At
this point, it's clear that Moore will never work with DC again, has kind
of given up on getting Watchmen back, and has disdain for the comic
book industry in general. How much effort does DC need to put into not
offending him nowadays?
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4075
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 12:38pm | IP Logged | 9
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Look, can we get over this please. Watchmen was an adaption of the Charlton characters with the names changed. It was originally written for the Charlton characters, shoudln't the guys who complain actually be the guys who created those characters?
Moore and Gibbons created the characters, period. They were originally based loosely on some MLJ characters. When their pitch went to DC, it was suggested that they pitch a story based on the newly-acquired Charlton characters. When it was decided not to go that route, Moore and Gibbons created new characters who drew inspiration from the Charlton characters. The Charlton characters were a springboard, but the characterizations are obviously significantly different than what came before.
If DC didn't think the characters were significantly different, why did they copyright the characters? Why didn't they launch Watchmen 2 in 1988 with the Question, Blue Beetle and Nightshade having adventures alongside the JLA? If creating new and enduring superhero characters were as easy as changing the outfits on characters from failed publishers and selling millions of comics, why haven't we seen dozens of hit comics following that exact same formula? Could it be that there's something more to what Moore and Gibbons did than getting rid of Captain Atom's pants?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 136298
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | 10
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Moore and Gibbons created new characters who drew inspiration from the Charlton characters. Doctor Manhattan's origin is chapter and verse Captain Atom. Rorschach is the Question. Night Owl is the Blue Beetle (even to there having been a previous hero with the same name!). Silk Spectre is Nightshade. On and on. These characters were "inspired" by the Charlton characters in the same way Ozymandius' plot was "inspired" by that OUTER LIMITS episode. +++ If DC didn't think the characters were significantly different, why did they copyright the characters? Because they could. After all, at that point they owned the Charlton characters. Who was going to protest? +++ If creating new and enduring superhero characters were as easy as changing the outfits on characters from failed publishers and selling millions of comics, why haven't we seen dozens of hit comics following that exact same formula? Oh, you mean like DC did in starting the Silver Age? Like Marvel did bringing back their Golden Age characters?
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4075
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | 11
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Origins aside, aren't the characterizations enough to differentiate the Watchmen characters from the Charlton characters? Isn't it better to have new characters populating that story than drastically changing the Charlton characters to fit the story that Moore and Gibbons wanted to tell? They pitched a story, DC wanted them to pitch it with Charlton characters, the pitch was accepted but with permission to use the Charlton characters denied, and it was reworked into something else. If DC had accepted their initial pitch with characters based on Archie's MLJ line, with one super-powerful character and a bunch of street-level characters, would Watchmen have been just as well received?
The characters didn't come from nothing at all, but I don't get the argument that what they did was no more complicated than changing some costumes and cashing paychecks. If it were that simple, every comics creator would have made a million bucks by now off of whatever Batman or Spider-Man knockoff character he had in his eighth-grade sketchbook.
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Daniel Gillotte
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 2778
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| Posted: 09 July 2012 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | 12
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OT, but I liked this from the Dan Mishkin interview- "And by the way, Amy grew up in a perfectly happy household and there's not reason she shouldn't have. You can do the Harry Potter version raised by the Dursleys, but I have a room in my house that's a shrine to Superman and I don't think there's anything wrong with having a happy childhood, like being raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent. That's how you get to be Superman -- not by being from Krypton, but by having those parents. "
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