MattBrady
03-11-2003, 10:46 AM
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<center>A THOUSAND FLOWERS</center><center>Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside</center><center>Installment 13</center><center>by Stuart Moore</center>
Give Me Liberty…
We’ve all been there: worked at a job for a while, put in your time, done some good work and maybe some not-so-good work. And there comes a time when you think, I’ve paid my dues -- I deserve better.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/flowers13a.jpg" width="300" height="280" border="0" align="right">In 1968, a group of veteran DC writers got together to lobby for improved treatment. Up to that point, creative people in comics -- with a few very rare exceptions such as Will Eisner, who’d crafted his own deals -- gave away all rights to their work for a single paycheck. These writers, along with one artist (Kurt Schaffenberger), decided they were worth more. They wanted a better deal.
Mike W. Barr’s excellent article “The Madames and the Girls” (see bibiography) covers the details of this not-quite-unionization attempt. Barr quotes Arnold Drake, veteran writer and creator of The Doom Patrol:
“[The writers’ movement] was not about page rates. It was more complicated than that. Page rates are significant, but they did not go to the crux of the thing. The true crux of the thing was the matter of giving the writers some kind of ownership…if not actual ownership, then at least a kind of participation. That was the real issue.”
DC management didn’t respond well to this. The various writers involved were all either fired or edged out over time, and artists were shuffled around as well. In Barr’s article, Mike Friedrich, who broke in as one of the younger “replacement writers” around this time, is quoted as suggesting that management was already dissatisfied with the older writers’ work, and may have seen this as an excuse for getting rid of them. “It’s conceivable, if somebody started to agitate as a writer, that they could perceive that they were being forced out for that agitation, where in fact they could also well have been forced out because they weren’t producing what the market wanted to read.”
This goes straight to a recurring controversy in the comics field: professionalism vs. commercial star-power. On the one hand, a publisher naturally wants to reward the journeyman writer or penciller who’s been there, day in and day out, for years, who turns in his work on time and pitches in when there’s an emergency, who’s good to work with. On the other hand, a company has to keep an eye out for what’s hot -- for who the readers want, and who’s turning in the most exciting work.
And sometimes, journeymen lose their spark, and it’s a very tough task to coax them back into doing their best work. You don’t want to take an artist who’s always been there for you and throw him out in the cold, especially in a field with notoriously poor benefits and a small number of companies to work for. But if another artist’s work is better -- or more commercial -- don’t you owe it to the readers to hire him instead?
The comics field of 1968 was a narrow one. Distribution was still largely controlled by DC, which had a reputation for stodgy, child-oriented comics, as opposed to Marvel’s sharper, edgier material. Comic shops didn’t exist -- just the newsstand market, which even then was stuck in a slow, steady decline. Aside from blips like the Batman TV show (which briefly caused sales of that comic to skyrocket), there wasn’t much room for growth.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/flowers13b.jpg" width="400" height="186" border="0" align="left">That’s a tough environment to take a stand in. Management isn’t likely to improve working conditions when the company is tightening its belt all around. There was certainly justice in what the DC writers were asking for -- but, looked at from a purely economic standpoint, it’s not surprising they didn’t get it.
Let’s jump forward in time now, to the early ‘80s.
In late 1980, Marvel Comics launched its latest title, Dazzler, in an unusual way: The first issue was available only through comic shops, not on newsstands. It seemed like a gamble, but sales were extraordinary -- in excess of 400,000 copies, sold non-returnably.
Suddenly the Direct Market was, well, a market. And the nonreturnable nature of its business -- comics were sold to shops at a higher discount than newsstand sales, but with no option for shops to return them for credit -- made it a no-risk business for publishers, as long as a certain minimum sales could be guaranteed. Which meant, in turn, that small companies could compete with the big boys.
The first two companies to jump full-force into this new frontier were Pacific Comics and Eclipse. They recruited an impressive crop of veteran artists and writers to original projects: Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Mike Grell, Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber, Don McGregor, Jim Starlin, and many other bright lights of ‘70s and ‘80s comics. First Comics soon followed, bringing over Howard Chaykin, Martin Pasko, Joe Staton, and others.
The independent comics companies of the early ‘80s also nurtured new talents, and produced an interestingly varied batch of work. And more alternative companies like Fantagraphics took the torch of the undergrounds and nurtured a new generation of truly alternative cartoonists. We’ll deal with all of that another time.
But for now, let’s stick with the “ground-level” publishers, the ones that chose to compete head-on with Marvel and DC. What was it they offered that made it some of the highest profile writers and artists of the time switch camps?
As with the DC writers of the ‘60s, it wasn’t (just) money -- it was rights. And, along with rights, creative freedom.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/flagg.jpg" width="300" height="456" border="0" align="right">In 1981, neither DC nor Marvel had a deal in place that would allow Jack Kirby to publishCaptain Victory, Neal Adams to publish Ms> Mystic, Mike Grell to publish Starslayer, Howard Chaykin to publish American Flagg!, or Michael Moorcock and P. Craig Russell to publish Elric in comics form -- and keep the copyrights and trademarks to themselves. They probably wouldn’t have been comfortable with the sexual content in Elric and Flagg!, either.
This encroachment into the big companies’ market share didn’t go unnoticed, of course. Marvel has always moved faster than DC, and by 1983 they had launched Epic Comics, extending a publishing program begun a few years before with the magazine Epic Illustrated. Masterfully run by Archie Goodwin, Epic matched the rights offered by the smaller companies, backed by the advantage of Marvel’s big purse-strings. DC, for their part, slowly built up a reputation as a good place to work and made special deals for people like Frank Miller, finally implementing an actual creator-ownership deal in 1989.
The early ‘80s was a good time for creators to push for rights. Those Dazzler sales had, uh, dazzled everyone; suddenly it was as though a curtain had been pulled aside, revealing a whole new audience willing and eager to spend its money. And the economics of the direct market made it possible to earn a profit even on lower-selling titles, because no copies were wasted. Suddenly there were opportunities everywhere; if you were a well-regarded artist, why would you spend all your time getting a paycheck at a time for each issue of Daredevil, when you could do your own work, own it, be paid decently, and still reach a substantial audience?
The moral: It’s generally smarter to agitate when the market is expanding than when it’s contracting. Your employers have more incentive, and more room, to accommodate you. And, as George Clooney has noted, it’s also smarter to push the envelope when you yourself are a hot property, rather than waiting till you cool down. (And no matter how hot you are, you will, eventually, cool down.)
The comics writers of the ‘60s were frustrated. They felt trapped within a system that wasn’t reaching out, wasn’t benefiting them or even, in the long run, their employers. It’s no wonder they wanted change. But the economics were against them. The early ‘80s were a whole different, wide open ball game.
In the mid-‘80s, things changed again. It would take a much longer essay than this one to fully explore the various gluts and shifts in the direct market, but eventually there was just too much product going through the system -- and comics that once would have been sure things just weren’t anymore. By that time, too, some of the bright lights of comics just weren’t shining so brightly anymore or, like Neal Adams, published so infrequently that they lost steam with any extended narratives they tried to present.
By the time the “Creators’ Bill of Rights” was written by a group of prominent creative people, spearheaded by Scott McCloud and Steve Bissette, the winds had already shifted. Progress had been made; most of the major companies had at least some form of creator-ownership contract in place. But the market, ever conservative, was growing less interested in new properties. What did the creators do?
We’ll deal with that next time…
Bibliography
Mike W. Barr, “The Madames and the Girls: The DC Writers Purge of 1968” (COMIC BOOK ARTIST #5, Summer 1999; reprinted in THE COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION Vol. 2, available at <a href="http://twomorrows.com/books.html)" target="_blank">http://twomorrows.com/books.html)</a>
“A Bill of Rights for Comics Creators” (http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/bill/bill_of_rights.html)
**
Stuart Moore’s comics work: Go to <a href="http://www.rocketcomics.net" target="_blank">http://www.rocketcomics.net</a> , <a href="http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=1958," target="_blank">http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=1958,</a> and <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000094" target="_blank">http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000094</a> for a look at LONE, launching in summer 2003, with a special 10-page stand-alone preview story in ROCKET COMICS: IGNITE, Dark Horse’s contribution to Free Comic Book Day in May. Issue #6 of ZENDRA: HEART OF FIRE, the conclusion of my epic science fiction series from Penny-Farthing Press, is out now; more info on the trade paperback of the first ZENDRA series can be found at <a href="http://www.pfpress.com" target="_blank">http://www.pfpress.com</a> . Then visit my message boards at <a href="http://www.joequesada.com" target="_blank">http://www.joequesada.com</a> and we’ll continue this discussion there. See you in 14 days!
<center>A THOUSAND FLOWERS</center><center>Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside</center><center>Installment 13</center><center>by Stuart Moore</center>
Give Me Liberty…
We’ve all been there: worked at a job for a while, put in your time, done some good work and maybe some not-so-good work. And there comes a time when you think, I’ve paid my dues -- I deserve better.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/flowers13a.jpg" width="300" height="280" border="0" align="right">In 1968, a group of veteran DC writers got together to lobby for improved treatment. Up to that point, creative people in comics -- with a few very rare exceptions such as Will Eisner, who’d crafted his own deals -- gave away all rights to their work for a single paycheck. These writers, along with one artist (Kurt Schaffenberger), decided they were worth more. They wanted a better deal.
Mike W. Barr’s excellent article “The Madames and the Girls” (see bibiography) covers the details of this not-quite-unionization attempt. Barr quotes Arnold Drake, veteran writer and creator of The Doom Patrol:
“[The writers’ movement] was not about page rates. It was more complicated than that. Page rates are significant, but they did not go to the crux of the thing. The true crux of the thing was the matter of giving the writers some kind of ownership…if not actual ownership, then at least a kind of participation. That was the real issue.”
DC management didn’t respond well to this. The various writers involved were all either fired or edged out over time, and artists were shuffled around as well. In Barr’s article, Mike Friedrich, who broke in as one of the younger “replacement writers” around this time, is quoted as suggesting that management was already dissatisfied with the older writers’ work, and may have seen this as an excuse for getting rid of them. “It’s conceivable, if somebody started to agitate as a writer, that they could perceive that they were being forced out for that agitation, where in fact they could also well have been forced out because they weren’t producing what the market wanted to read.”
This goes straight to a recurring controversy in the comics field: professionalism vs. commercial star-power. On the one hand, a publisher naturally wants to reward the journeyman writer or penciller who’s been there, day in and day out, for years, who turns in his work on time and pitches in when there’s an emergency, who’s good to work with. On the other hand, a company has to keep an eye out for what’s hot -- for who the readers want, and who’s turning in the most exciting work.
And sometimes, journeymen lose their spark, and it’s a very tough task to coax them back into doing their best work. You don’t want to take an artist who’s always been there for you and throw him out in the cold, especially in a field with notoriously poor benefits and a small number of companies to work for. But if another artist’s work is better -- or more commercial -- don’t you owe it to the readers to hire him instead?
The comics field of 1968 was a narrow one. Distribution was still largely controlled by DC, which had a reputation for stodgy, child-oriented comics, as opposed to Marvel’s sharper, edgier material. Comic shops didn’t exist -- just the newsstand market, which even then was stuck in a slow, steady decline. Aside from blips like the Batman TV show (which briefly caused sales of that comic to skyrocket), there wasn’t much room for growth.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/flowers13b.jpg" width="400" height="186" border="0" align="left">That’s a tough environment to take a stand in. Management isn’t likely to improve working conditions when the company is tightening its belt all around. There was certainly justice in what the DC writers were asking for -- but, looked at from a purely economic standpoint, it’s not surprising they didn’t get it.
Let’s jump forward in time now, to the early ‘80s.
In late 1980, Marvel Comics launched its latest title, Dazzler, in an unusual way: The first issue was available only through comic shops, not on newsstands. It seemed like a gamble, but sales were extraordinary -- in excess of 400,000 copies, sold non-returnably.
Suddenly the Direct Market was, well, a market. And the nonreturnable nature of its business -- comics were sold to shops at a higher discount than newsstand sales, but with no option for shops to return them for credit -- made it a no-risk business for publishers, as long as a certain minimum sales could be guaranteed. Which meant, in turn, that small companies could compete with the big boys.
The first two companies to jump full-force into this new frontier were Pacific Comics and Eclipse. They recruited an impressive crop of veteran artists and writers to original projects: Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Mike Grell, Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber, Don McGregor, Jim Starlin, and many other bright lights of ‘70s and ‘80s comics. First Comics soon followed, bringing over Howard Chaykin, Martin Pasko, Joe Staton, and others.
The independent comics companies of the early ‘80s also nurtured new talents, and produced an interestingly varied batch of work. And more alternative companies like Fantagraphics took the torch of the undergrounds and nurtured a new generation of truly alternative cartoonists. We’ll deal with all of that another time.
But for now, let’s stick with the “ground-level” publishers, the ones that chose to compete head-on with Marvel and DC. What was it they offered that made it some of the highest profile writers and artists of the time switch camps?
As with the DC writers of the ‘60s, it wasn’t (just) money -- it was rights. And, along with rights, creative freedom.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/flagg.jpg" width="300" height="456" border="0" align="right">In 1981, neither DC nor Marvel had a deal in place that would allow Jack Kirby to publishCaptain Victory, Neal Adams to publish Ms> Mystic, Mike Grell to publish Starslayer, Howard Chaykin to publish American Flagg!, or Michael Moorcock and P. Craig Russell to publish Elric in comics form -- and keep the copyrights and trademarks to themselves. They probably wouldn’t have been comfortable with the sexual content in Elric and Flagg!, either.
This encroachment into the big companies’ market share didn’t go unnoticed, of course. Marvel has always moved faster than DC, and by 1983 they had launched Epic Comics, extending a publishing program begun a few years before with the magazine Epic Illustrated. Masterfully run by Archie Goodwin, Epic matched the rights offered by the smaller companies, backed by the advantage of Marvel’s big purse-strings. DC, for their part, slowly built up a reputation as a good place to work and made special deals for people like Frank Miller, finally implementing an actual creator-ownership deal in 1989.
The early ‘80s was a good time for creators to push for rights. Those Dazzler sales had, uh, dazzled everyone; suddenly it was as though a curtain had been pulled aside, revealing a whole new audience willing and eager to spend its money. And the economics of the direct market made it possible to earn a profit even on lower-selling titles, because no copies were wasted. Suddenly there were opportunities everywhere; if you were a well-regarded artist, why would you spend all your time getting a paycheck at a time for each issue of Daredevil, when you could do your own work, own it, be paid decently, and still reach a substantial audience?
The moral: It’s generally smarter to agitate when the market is expanding than when it’s contracting. Your employers have more incentive, and more room, to accommodate you. And, as George Clooney has noted, it’s also smarter to push the envelope when you yourself are a hot property, rather than waiting till you cool down. (And no matter how hot you are, you will, eventually, cool down.)
The comics writers of the ‘60s were frustrated. They felt trapped within a system that wasn’t reaching out, wasn’t benefiting them or even, in the long run, their employers. It’s no wonder they wanted change. But the economics were against them. The early ‘80s were a whole different, wide open ball game.
In the mid-‘80s, things changed again. It would take a much longer essay than this one to fully explore the various gluts and shifts in the direct market, but eventually there was just too much product going through the system -- and comics that once would have been sure things just weren’t anymore. By that time, too, some of the bright lights of comics just weren’t shining so brightly anymore or, like Neal Adams, published so infrequently that they lost steam with any extended narratives they tried to present.
By the time the “Creators’ Bill of Rights” was written by a group of prominent creative people, spearheaded by Scott McCloud and Steve Bissette, the winds had already shifted. Progress had been made; most of the major companies had at least some form of creator-ownership contract in place. But the market, ever conservative, was growing less interested in new properties. What did the creators do?
We’ll deal with that next time…
Bibliography
Mike W. Barr, “The Madames and the Girls: The DC Writers Purge of 1968” (COMIC BOOK ARTIST #5, Summer 1999; reprinted in THE COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION Vol. 2, available at <a href="http://twomorrows.com/books.html)" target="_blank">http://twomorrows.com/books.html)</a>
“A Bill of Rights for Comics Creators” (http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/bill/bill_of_rights.html)
**
Stuart Moore’s comics work: Go to <a href="http://www.rocketcomics.net" target="_blank">http://www.rocketcomics.net</a> , <a href="http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=1958," target="_blank">http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=1958,</a> and <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000094" target="_blank">http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000094</a> for a look at LONE, launching in summer 2003, with a special 10-page stand-alone preview story in ROCKET COMICS: IGNITE, Dark Horse’s contribution to Free Comic Book Day in May. Issue #6 of ZENDRA: HEART OF FIRE, the conclusion of my epic science fiction series from Penny-Farthing Press, is out now; more info on the trade paperback of the first ZENDRA series can be found at <a href="http://www.pfpress.com" target="_blank">http://www.pfpress.com</a> . Then visit my message boards at <a href="http://www.joequesada.com" target="_blank">http://www.joequesada.com</a> and we’ll continue this discussion there. See you in 14 days!