CBR has a round-table chat with Robert Kirkman, Mark Millar and Steve Niles about creator-owned comics and the industry that’s just filled with interesting stuff, even if I’m not sure I agree with all of the logic. It’s also filled with some wonderfully quotable stuff, like this from Millar:
There are advantages [to work-for-hire] as well, though. I won’t say that I’ll never do company-owned again, even though I make more money from my creator-owned work. The best payday I think anyone has had from corporate comics for the past ten years was “Civil War.” Steve [McNiven] and I made a lot of money on that, but what Leinil Yu and I made from “Superior” was more. It’s financially so much smarter to do creator-owned, but sometimes it’s just fun to write those classic characters. Sometimes you write something not for money but just because you love it. So I don’t view this as a kind of “them versus us.” I have a much more holistic approach to it, and right now, I’m doing work where I just want to do creator-owned stuff, and for the next year at least I’ll be doing that. But I won’t rule out more company-owned stuff in the future. I loved writing “Ultimates” and “Civil War” and “Old Man Logan.” There’s a buzz to it.
I like the Marvel and DC guys, so I don’t want to do any name calling. But I don’t like them so much that I’d create a character for them. [Laughter]
In related news, Dear Marvel and DC: This might be a good time to reconsider your creator participation policies. Now that people are actually laughing about the fact that they won’t come up with new characters for you and all, I mean…
July 6th, 2012 at 9:44 am
Stop no-linking competitors’ article that you reference. It’s a bullshit tactic to benefit from their work without sending your readers to the primary source, thereby depriving them of eyeballs, credit, and ad revenue.
http://robottuxedo.net/stop-not-linking
July 6th, 2012 at 10:25 am
While you’re adding that link you also may want to go ahead and change that headline from “creator-owned” to “company-owned.”
Just tryin’ to help!
July 6th, 2012 at 10:36 am
Wow. I agree with both Stop No-Link Blogs and RF. Really sloppy work here. No excuse for it.
July 6th, 2012 at 12:26 pm
Man Graeme really blew it with this one. Dumb.
And I hate when this sites ‘lifts’ stories for their own blog filler. Graeme think of your own stuff for a change.
July 6th, 2012 at 2:53 pm
To be fair, the author of this post has just recently made it known that he doesn’t look at the comments here (and, really, WHO CAN BLAME HIM?). But presumably someone in the organization does, right?
If not, I suggest this fine website looks into the wild and funky world of INTERNS.
July 6th, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Aaaand this is why you shouldn’t write things before 7am.
Jeez, embarrassing both to write “creator-owned” in the headline AND screw up the HTML so that the link didn’t show up. It WAS sloppy; no way to deny that. Sorry, all.
As a matter of course, Stop No-Link Blogs, I add links – The lack of one here was a mistake, nothing more sinister. I was definitely not trying to steal content without referring back to the original source, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned the source in the very first sentence of the post.
July 6th, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Boom, fixed! See? A little bit of crowd-sourcing/editing can be a good thing now and then, when reasonably applied.