To Flesh or not

[Leigh S]

Flesh - Hack 'n' Slash: future creators go back in time to harvest past creations!

If you pitched this to Pat, he'd probably go for it....

[Jim_Campbell]

Well, exactly. People often point at Image, ignoring the tiny snag that quite a few people on that imprint make fuck-all and quite a few books make fuck-all.

A point I keep making, apparently to no effect whatsoever. A huge number of Image books make far less money for their creators than they'd have made on a work-for-hire contract — they're gambling on the Willy Wonka golden ticket of a Walking Dead-style TV deal. Newsflash: it's not gonna happen.

Most of the time, once they've paid the colourist and the letterer,* they're out of pocket. Maybe half the time, this stuff is basically vanity publishing by writers subsidising the project from their books on WFH for other publishers.


*They don't always pay the colourist and the letterer. The vast majority of the bad debt on my books is creator-owned projects that didn't make any money.

[pauljholden]

Flesh - except it's future humans come back to *now* who are cannibals.

That's my pitch.

The remnants of the superrich who've managed to survive the oncoming climate disasters, knowing 99% of the population will die soon enough...

[Leigh S]

Yeah, theres a strong argument that full creator rights aren't very Leftist - quite "Winner Takes All" - while I dont think IPC were operating a model that was designed so all workers could prosper, there's an argument for the model meaning that the Industry could sustain hundreds of workers - the cream wouldnt necessarily rise to the top, but if you put in the Tom "I earn more than the Prime Minister" Tully hours, there was money to be made, with the publisher taking the "risk" from any failures

The problem was they were a corporation that didnt value their creators AT ALL - confirmed by both Mills and Sanders!  They couldnt envisage such a massive success as Dredd, and when it did happen, they naturally (like most bosses) assumed it was their doing and their profts to milk.  If IPC or Sanders buy out had been able to offer better returns while not leaving all the risk with the publisher. Or if Rebellion had done something different with their contracts to give some stake back to the creators if not full ownership - but it was the Kingsleys money.  If it was mine, I'd have tried to lure back Moore with some sort of deal, but you;d have to do that to all the big names at the very least and what have you spent your money on - the gamble is now yours that that strategy will create a better and more profitable product  - creators more invested in doing their best so they share in the success as much as the publisher. The money you lose in paying the creators you gain in having big names who sell that much more? Safer to at least own the stuff you bought than give portions of it away on a hope of speculating to accumulate!

I can see both sides of the argument, but I won't slate Mills position as unreasonable, just perhaps overly focussed on the negatives (which is where I see the hand of the "Not My Thargs" in the hardening of his relations with Rebellion - though its not like he didnt have previous on both Toxic and within pre Rebellion 2000AD)

Well, exactly. People often point at Image, ignoring the tiny snag that quite a few people on that imprint make fuck-all and quite a few books make fuck-all.

A point I keep making, apparently to no effect whatsoever. A huge number of Image books make far less money for their creators than they'd have made on a work-for-hire contract — they're gambling on the Willy Wonka golden ticket of a Walking Dead-style TV deal. Newsflash: it's not gonna happen.

Most of the time, once they've paid the colourist and the letterer,* they're out of pocket. Maybe half the time, this stuff is basically vanity publishing by writers subsidising the project from their books on WFH for other publishers.


*They don't always pay the colourist and the letterer. The vast majority of the bad debt on my books is creator-owned projects that didn't make any money.

[Tu-plang]

Thanks for putting me right on the Smith situation. Sounds horrible, and I hope he's getting the support he needs. He's a wonderful writer, and his voice was a big part of the prog.

I still think that, the complexities of that particular case aside, out of respect for the creators (and the readers), a story should be left to rest or significantly re-tooled rather than just reassigned. We don't want the prog to feel like a holding pattern for IP, like DC does.

I'm loving the ideas flinging around this thread for a re-tooled Flesh, for example. Completely turning a strip on its head like that is a great way of keeping the prog relevant, and 'future rich hunting present-day poor' is very relevant and attention-grabbing. 21ST CENTURY FLESH: Time-travelling billionaire cannibals from a post-apocalyptic future use the present day as a hunting ground, carefully selecting victims who won't damage the timeline. How good is that?

Or if Rebellion had done something different with their contracts to give some stake back to the creators if not full ownership - but it was the Kingsleys money.  If it was mine, I'd have tried to lure back Moore with some sort of deal...

IIRC Moore has said in the past that they have offered him some kind of deal, and he responded by saying he'd only return if they upended their whole business model and returned all rights to the creators. I see where he's coming from, but I see why 2000AD will never, ever do that.

The best solution is to push forward and come up with many, many new ideas, and see what sticks.

[13school]

I occasionally miss that manic energy 2000AD had once upon a time. I know it was largely due to the very specific interests and abilities of the handful of writers behind 90% of the prog back then, and it's not like today's prog is bland by any stretch. But Mills (and Smith, now he's been mentioned) did bring to the prog something you couldn't get anywhere else, even if it didn't always click or wasn't to everyone's taste.

"Many many new ideas" is at the core of what I want to see from 2000AD - though in the light of the previously discussed trade-off between creator's rights and the stability of a publisher who owns your IP (and the risks that go with it), I understand that a torrent of non-stop invention may not always be possible.

[Tu-plang]

It's interesting because many of the off-the-wall 'new ideas' that used to typify 2000AD's approach were just pastiches (or even lifts) of contemporary trends, films and stories. Flesh as a comment on inequality, with billionaires hunting the poor, is a great contemporary riff. A brutal superhero parody is a good one for the current moment, though it's probably well-trodden ground already. A violent satire about the royal family would kill right now.

A big zombie crossover event is about ten years too late I'm afraid :/

[sheridan]

I occasionally miss that manic energy 2000AD had once upon a time. I know it was largely due to the very specific interests and abilities of the handful of writers behind 90% of the prog back then, and it's not like today's prog is bland by any stretch. But Mills (and Smith, now he's been mentioned) did bring to the prog something you couldn't get anywhere else, even if it didn't always click or wasn't to everyone's taste.

"Many many new ideas" is at the core of what I want to see from 2000AD - though in the light of the previously discussed trade-off between creator's rights and the stability of a publisher who owns your IP (and the risks that go with it), I understand that a torrent of non-stop invention may not always be possible.

What's your opinion on the all-ages progs?

[Colin YNWA]

Going back down thread. I really need to re-read the last Savage with the idea that its an ending in mind and see how that goes.

[broodblik]

Going back down thread. I really need to re-read the last Savage with the idea that its an ending in mind and see how that goes.

The last book of Savage was Book 11 "The Thousand Year Stare" and it ended like maybe, possible that it is an end of something but not really. So I still believe at least one book of Savage can be used to end the whole thing.

[IndigoPrime]

How many Mills strips have really ended? Metalzoic did, but that was a defined one-shot. Nemesis did – albeit twice. Sláine for me just... stopped. It had at least two natural endings before, but this one felt like a jolt. I don't recall reading anything else that felt like an end, not least because of Mills's tendency to intentionally end on a cliffhanger of some kind to leave people wanting more.

[Jim_Campbell]

So I still believe at least one book of Savage can be used to end the whole thing.

Except, of course, that Pat doesn't want to write it — he said the story's done and he's happy to leave it there.

[nxylas]

A point I keep making, apparently to no effect whatsoever. A huge number of Image books make far less money for their creators than they'd have made on a work-for-hire contract — they're gambling on the Willy Wonka golden ticket of a Walking Dead-style TV deal. Newsflash: it's not gonna happen.

Well, it happened to the creators of The Walking Dead! I think at the opposite end of the scale, there's a fear of ending up like Siegel and Shuster, dying in poverty after creating a character that has generated billions in revenue for other people.

[Richard]

A big zombie crossover event is about ten years too late I'm afraid :/

A few years ago I submitted a zombie story to Tharg, and he rejected it on the ground that 2000AD already had enough zombie stories. 

[Jim_Campbell]

Well, it happened to the creators of The Walking Dead!

It's vanishingly unlikely, then. I can think, off the top of my head, of at least ten books I've worked on over the last decade-or-so that have been optioned for TV/film, some of which go back to the early days of my professional career. Some have even had big name stars attached to the adaptation. Number that have made it to the screen at the time of writing? Zero.