From: dan@spiff.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Dan Parmenter)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Kirby, Claremont and rights
Date: 28 Dec 92 19:59:47 GMT
Organization: /home/fsg/dan/.organization

In article <1ha50aINN84g@uwm.edu> manga@csd4.csd.uwm.edu 
(Peter Michael Betz) writes:

>  sigh, here we go again. Before you get dumped on for suffering from such
>  a nasty case of brain constipation, let us get something straight: When
>  Kirby did that work, it was just that, work. The only difference between Joe
>  the comics artist and joe the construction worker is that joe the comics guy
>  is a so-called "artiste" and thus for some unimaginable reason his work is
>  more important.
>  This is hogwash. You don't see construction workers coming back after
>  10-15 years saying "that building is mine, I made it, I want it back" if he
>  went off crying to the local construction magazines, he'd be laughed out of
>  the union. But Kirby does it, and pea-brains such as yourself are only too
>  eager to jump on his bandwagon. Just goes to show what complete fools some
>  people are.......

Hmmm, but suppose "Joe Construction Worker" also more or less designed
the building, laid the foundations and personally supervised most of
the construction, only to paid as a common laborer?  Furthermore, the
construction worker analogy breaks down, since as another poster has
pointed out, what Kirby mostly wanted wasn't the copyrights for the
characters, but his original artwork.  There really isn't an
equivalent in the construction industry of returning original artwork,
which shows just how ridiculous your analogy really is.  

Furthermore, regardless of whether YOU think artists are the
equivalent of construction workers, not even the hopelessly inadequate
copyright laws support this.  Plenty of people have successfully sued
Marvel and other companies for various creator rights.  Putting a work
for hire contract (especially a retroactive one) on the back of checks
doesn't seem to really hold up.  Steve Gerber successfully sued Marvel
for creator credit on Howard The Duck, although he does not own the
character.  A number of lawyers evidently thought Kirby even had a
decent case for contesting Marvel's copyright based on the fact that
he designed the character's costumes.  The last time the copyrights
for many of the characters came up was in the late eighties when
Marvel coincidentally (hoo hah!) changed the designs of several
characters' costumes (Thor, the FF and a few others including
Spider-Man) to protect against any potential contestation of their
claim on the characters.  

Furthermore, when Kirby was attempting to get his original artwork
back, the retroactive work-for-hire contract (reflecting 1978 changes
in copyright law) which he was asked to sign was 4 times as long as
the one that other Marvel artists signed in order to get *their*
artwork back (the retroactive contract essentially stated that the
artist had no claim on any original creations), and to cap it off,
Marvel only wanted to return about 1/4 or less  of the artwork that
they had.  Unsurprisingly, the artwork that was being withheld was
Kirby's early work, not his seventies stuff.

To me, Marvel's arbitrarily changing a bunch of Kirby costumes,
requesting that he sign a much more specific and restrictive
retroactive work-for-hire contract and then saying that even if he
SIGNED the damn thing he'd only get a fraction of his artwork back,
indicates that Marvel was pretty scared and thought there was a good
chance they might suddenly wake up and not be able to use Captain
America any more (Cap is a particularly special case - while I do not
agree with Jack's assertion that Stan Lee hardly did anything on the
Marvel silver-age books, I am appalled that Lee would take credit for
creating Captain America, perhaps Joe Simon might have a thing or two
to say about that).  

This makes a shambles of the argument that Jack "knew what he was
getting into" when he signed the contracts way back when.  If this is
the case, why has Marvel gone to such absurd lengths to establish
their ownership well after the fact?  The very fact that copyright
law has changed also makes a shambles out of the "contracts signed in
good faith" argument.  Contracts, when they work, must be signed in
good faith by people who have a full understanding of the implications
of that contract.  

The comic book industry, like the record industry, spent most of its
existence built on shaky legal foundations that made it very easy for
a company like Marvel to play fast and loose with copyrights and
issues of creator ownership.  Until the seventies, royalties were
virtually unknown (DC was the first mainstream publisher to offer
them) and creator ownership was scarce.  Much of this has changed, and
despite the protestations of even the most ardent "screw Kirby, he
signed 'em over, so fuck 'im" faction, Marvel did eventually cut a
somewhat better deal with him, and returned a more significant portion
of his artwork, without the offensive 4-page contract.  

It never ceases to amaze me how the comics industry, particularly
Marvel (but DC as well and the others) takes bright, frighteningly
talented people, and then proceeds to screw them to the point where
they're prepared to write off the entire industry.  Look at Kirby.
Look at Gerber.  Look at DC's treatment (before the seventies) of
Siegel and Shuster.  I've recently seen the Tundra Press "Art of Jack
Kirby" book, and there's stuff in there that will blow your mind.
During the seventies, he was doing watercolors and oils that confirmed
everything a Kirby fan ever suspected about what was really going on
in his brain.  He turned out huge vistas with spaceships, gods,
sprawling battle scenes, beautiful women (yes, Kirby can draw them!)
and even some stuff that could be called slightly abstract.
Typically, it was during this time that he got fed up with marvel
initially and started his exclusive stint at DC where although he
thrived for a time, his work was still subject to random editorial
interference (redrawing his Superman heads for example, insane!) and
then basically cancelling his entire fourth world series (New Gods,
Forever People and Mister Miracle) because publisher Carmine Infantino
didn't like it (the books were selling).  Of course we can reduce this
to "well he signed the contract..." but that explanation unfortunately
fails to account for why the two biggest comic companies around
couldn't figure out how to utilize one of the best talents this
industry has ever produced while happily picking the bones of his
creations for years on end (back when I still read mainstream comics,
DC was busy reusing as much Kirby fourth world stuff as possible, with
at least one issue of Superman being a virtual tracing of a Kirby
Jimmy Olsen issue (I forget which) and of course Marvel still gets a
lot of mileage out of Galactus, the Surfer, etc. 

At least DC acknowledges that it's Kirby they're ripping off, and
they've gone to great lengths to make sure that he sees some money
from the sales of things such as New Gods action figures (these were
popular a few years back) and creator credit wherever possible.  The
overwhelming trend at Marvel though, still seems to be the bizarre
notion that there really aren't great creators, just great characters.
Look at how Marvel dismissed Chris Claremont: no one hated his last 8-10
years on the book more than me, but it was abundantly clear that what
ultimately sold X-books was Claremont's vision of the characters and
their dynamics.  Obviously the fight scenes helped :-) but in terms of
the long haul X-men fans who stuck with it forever, or at least long
after the magic was gone (say issue #140 or so) were doing so because
of Claremont's unique stamp on the characters.  The book was also
making them a LOT of money, and if anything, with the animated series
making waves, seems poised for its most profitable period yet.  But
Marvel's position seems to be that it's the *characters* that sell the
books, and it doesn't matter who writes or draws the characters (or
creates them).  Sure Claremont had a reputation as a "difficult"
creator, but he sold a lot of books and with Roy Thomas and Dave
Cockrum, largely defined the X-men aesthetic (along with creating or
significnatly redefining a number of characters).  

The comics industry really seems to chew up and spit out talent.

Bernie Krigstein (classic EC artist) - left the industry in disgust
due to arbitrary editorial interference and lack of contemporary
recognition for his talents - now practically worshipped.

Graham Ingels (another EC talent) - also left in disgust, now a
born-again Christian allegedly.

Wally Wood (another EC artist) - personal and industry problems led to 
alcoholism, drug abuse and ultimately, suicide.

Steve Ditko (co-creator and clear voice of the original Spider-Man) -
has grown increasinggly withdrawn, solitary and bitter.  Now his
prodigious talents are mocked by fanboys and he was last seen
pencilling ROM The Spaceknight (imagine Hitchcock reduced to directing
episodes of "Beverly Hills 90210").  

Jack Cole (Plastic Man creator) - suicide

Siegel and Shuster - reduced to poverty.  DC fired Siegel and Shuster
summarily in 1948 after THEIR attempt to get some rights out of DC
for creating Superman (they were granted some rights to Superboy, but
I'm unsure of the status of this case) and then basically treated them
like personae non grata (though Siegel did some script work out of
them eventually) until Warners/DC decided to set them up with a
lifetime pension in the seventies.

These are just a few.  Obviously, some may have had problems going
into the game, but it's quite clear to me that the comics industry is
partially to blame.  When talented artists and writers see their
creations devalued, taken away from them and subjected to random
interference of every kind, it has an effect.  When there was NO
self-publishing industry and creator-rights were a distant dream, a
comic artist had little choice but to accept things the way they were.
Most were young, quite naive and had a burning desire to work in
comics.  Since there was no mechanism for a creator to reap any real
money from his or her creations and page rates were low (and no
royalties were ever discussed), artists who wanted to make a living
in the business had to produce a lot of pages to get by.  So they
churned out work like machines, fuled by coffee, talent and
amphetamines.  Cartooning is one of the hardest jobs there is, and
many don't last.  Wally Wood talked abut how many of his
contemporaries simply said "to hell with it" and got lucrative jobs in
commercial art, but he chose to stay, bad conditions and all, because
the artform meant something to him.  They all say that.  Tales of
talentless bully editors run rampant in the industry.  Jim Shooter's
much-discussed bullying was very much inspired by his first editor and
mentor Mort Weisinger at DC (though Shooter, perhaps remembering his
less than ideal working conditions can be credited with some of the
creative reforms at Marvel (royalties etc.) in the seventies, but not
in the area of creator-ownership.  Interestingly, I suspect Shooter
favors them personally, but was enough a company man in his Marvel
days to keep quiet abut it).  

Most mainstream comics fans seem to really hate talking abut the
subject of creator rights.  It never ceases to amaze me how otherwise
intelligent adults who read mainstream comics (an oxymoron?) can be so
largely ignorant or even openly hostile to the concept of creator
rights.  Many fans, especially Marvel fans, seem to completely
endorese this mad conceit that "there are no great creators, just
great characters".  I wonder, do the characters simply roam freely in
the creative aether, awaiting that moment when they are given life by
anonymous talents employed by the great and benevolent Marvel Comics
Group (the only "creator" acknowledged).

- Dan

--
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| Dan Parmenter       |"I'm waiting for a time, when I can do without these  |
| dan@gnu.ai.mit.edu  | things that make me feel this way all of the time"   |
|                     |                            - Spiritualized           |
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc