Creator Ownership

Retaining Creator Ownership

Believe it or not, the vast majority of art and entertainment, and even most software, in the United States is not owned by the original creator or author. As a general rule, ever since companies in the United States first started publishing work, even as far back as the novels, newspapers, and magazines printed hundreds of years ago, the work is created by an artist or author, and then sold, outright, to the actual publisher. The idea of only selling “publishing rights” has traditionally been abnormal.

There’s a story regarding famous comic book writer and publisher Stan Lee, and his friend, comic book artist Will Eisner. At a certain point, Stan Lee wanted to hand his editorial duties over to someone else so that he could retire, move to Hollywood, and focus on making movies (movies had been Lee’s first passion, which is ironic when you consider the recent string of Stan Lee based superhero movies like “Spiderman” and so on). Stan Lee brought Will Eisner in to meet with the then-owner of Marvel comics. The meeting went down something like this; Stan Lee suggests to Will Eisner that Eisner take the editorial reins from Lee, asking him what he would like to do if he were running the production end of Marvel comics. Eisner immediately responded “Well first, I would instate some kind of royalties system to allow artists and writers to retain ownership and continue making money per-sale, rather than being paid a flat fee per-page.” Eisner recounts that Stan Lee’s boss tried very hard to stifle his laughter.

Generally, it hasn’t really been in the best interests of publishers to really give ownership to their artists. Even today, in film, most movies are owned by their distributors or producers, and not by the actual director of the film. In general, the only way to really retain ownership has been to self-publish, which comes with the risk of losing money if the property doesn’t sell. Self published work is also more likely to remain obscure, without the aid of million-dollar marketing campaigns making the public aware of the existence of the work in the first place.

In the world of comic books, much of this changed when Frank Miller, creator the “Sin City” comic books, and a number of other artists finally started forming a guild and threatening to strike if they were not allowed to keep their original artwork (thus preventing comic publishers from reprinting without permission), retain rights to royalty fees, and keep their creations.

It hasn’t always worked out. Even after forming the guild, Frank Miller, while writing and drawing the Daredevil comic books, created a character named “Elektra”. Over the course of the original comics written by Miller, Elektra died before the story ended. His intention was to make sure that Marvel comics never did anything with the character he wouldn’t like by simply removing her from the story before leaving the comic in the hands of another writer. What wound up happening was that Marvel comics had their writers bring Elektra back through plot contrivances. Today, Frank Miller really isn’t very happy with what Marvel has since done with the character.

We’re focusing on comic books here because the whole industry is notable for two things:

1- No other publishing industry has really been as restrictive, nor as difficult for an artist as comic books. Where a novelist might get a few thousand dollars for a novel, a comic book artist, until recently, was lucky to make twenty to a hundred dollars a page, as a flat fee. When you can only draw a page a day, on average, that’s not a lot of money.

2- No other publishing industry has seen quite the revolution that comics have seen. Today, many publishers are desperate to find new, more interesting material to publish. This is partly thanks to Frank Miller, but perhaps also thanks to the Underground Comix movement of the seventies, when a number of eccentric artists self-published offbeat stories, and many of them wound up outselling popular superhero comics, showing the major publishers that there was real demand for something more interesting, and that the work-for-hire method wasn’t really producing quality material anymore.

Today, you still have plenty of artists making a flat fee and then never seeing another dime, but you also see comic publishing houses like Dark Horse, which cater to the individual artist, buying only the publishing rights, and allowing the artist to retain licensing rights, character ownership, and so on.

If you are a working artist with a family to feed and bills to pay, you may just be willing to take whatever work you can get. But, if you have options, if you have a dayjob, it’s a good idea to hold out for a deal where you can retain creator ownership. This way, you don’t just make some money, rather, you have an asset, a whole body of work that can continue making you money until your dying day.