Starting off from here (and read down a bit):
www.2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/topic,29826.msg540726.html#msg540726
Have at it.
Just from what I'm aware (and some of this may be incorrect, if so let me know):
2000 AD is, as far as I'm aware, largely work-for-hire and I don't see it changing any time soon (they didn't change it when the comic was selling a good six figures and making changes when it is down in the 20ks would probably be foolhardy). I don't know about this angle but I assume they get some cash for reprints and possibly media adaptations (although how that works out for the more... shared properties like Dredd and Rogue Trooper seem to add considerable complications to that). There are some exceptions - Dinosty is creator-owned and available to be optioned through Pat's site at Repeat Offenders because the contracts are missing, this might also be underlying problem with Zenith (although it could be slightly different, as could Luke Kirby).
DC Universe and Marvel Universe stories are usually work-for-hire and they have their imprints for creator-owned material. Marvel's Icon imprint seems to be largely for the well-established work-for-hire writers on exclusive contracts (that is a whole other area ;) ). DC is more complicated - Vertigo is a mix of work-for-hire and creator-owned series I think (it is complicated as it started off importing the more... horror aspects of the DCU to form the core of the imprint so it started off work-for-hire and others tie-in or spin-off from them, although even here creators like Neil Gaiman have some degree of say over the characters he made famous) and Wildstorm, which was once an Image imprint, has Image Universe titles and comics based on licensed IP which is work-for-hire, as well as having a stable of creator-owned titles. Who gets paid for what is fiendishly tricky to unravel - it seems Marvel don't pay creators for overseas reprint sales - but on balance it is thought that, for bottom rung writers and artists, the different deals tend to work out everyone getting paid about the same amount per page (the page rates and other perks can change though depending on how high-profile you are, of course, and whether you have an exclusive deal).
Anyway that should do for a start.
Warren Ellis commonly cites the lack of Creator Owned as the reason he wouldn't work for 2000ad.
Which is a shame as Freakangels in particular just oozes the class that deserves o be in 2000ad
Quote from: Dan Kelly on 26 August, 2010, 08:41:43 PM
Warren Ellis commonly cites the lack of Creator Owned as the reason he wouldn't work for 2000ad.
I can see this being a problem for 2000 AD down the road - with Hollywood sniffing round all sorts of comics in the last few years (as opposed to just the big flagship characters) a lot of people will have their eye on scoring big. You could eventually see a scenario where you have hungry up-and-coming writers prepared to offer up new series to get their foot in the door, while the established writers keep spinning their existing titles out for a regular pay cheque and saving their best ideas for creator-owned titles.
I mean I'd love to see a new series from John Wagner but he is going great guns on Dredd and Strontium Dog, which will be putting food on the table, and the success of A History of Violence (and interest in Button Man) would make it tricky for him to bring in something new and just give it away. Luckily Pat Mills seems abundantly creative, so we get new stories out of him like Defoe, but quite a bit of his new material is increasingly creator-owned (he has two companies at the moment for Requiem and American Reaper, as well as the other Repeat Offender titles). Alan Grant is also off publishing with a number of different companies, some of which he has set up himself.
This isn't a 2000 AD-only problem - the Big Two may be worse hit as there aren't creators adding handfuls of new titles and characters as there was back in the day, but they are also under pressure to keep a kind of status quo imposed on their flagship characters so they can match with movie, TV and video game adaptations, so nothing really changes for them (and often changes, like Spider-Man's marriage get reversed). The only real place for innovation is round the edges, although this doesn't mean there isn't room for some cracking stories in the key titles, as can be seen with Batman and Robin.
So it is a problem all publishers may need to look at.
Here's some facts:
1) A comic artist can take about a month to pencil / ink 22 pages (and that's the fast ones)
2) A creator owned comic typically doesn't pay a page rate but will offer a much more attractive back end deal - ie full ownership and a decent percentage of the profits.
3) Any money from the backend will come to the creators MONTHS after doing the work for the first issue - often several months. (Mark Millar acknowledged on twitter recently that the guy drawing Nemisis has had to forgo any sort of money for several months until the announced the film deal - and that's one of the books that will actually sell and make money)
4) Most creator owned comics don't make enough at the backend to make the attractive back end deal worth anything at all. In fact, for many, it's little better than vanity publishing.
5) Page Rated work doesn't pay THAT much either (not given the amount of time/effort), but at least you can count on the money arriving roughly 30 days* after you finish the work
So, take all of those factors and then you find that in order for a comic creator to do creator owned work they have to have a sizeable amount of money in reserve. (And by sizeable, we're talking several months worth of mortgage paying money).
Yes, in a really perfect world the choice would be: creator owned vs page rate, but in the real world the choice is between feeding your family vs starving.
(Or, if you're really lucky, you can find the time to do a creator owned book while doing paid work).
-pj
*At least this is what it says in the contract.
I seem to remember(this might be false memory) reading an article about Toxic saying that one of the reasons it failed was that the strips were creator owned, so that when an artist fell behind, they couldn't replace them to get the strips back on time.Thus the chopping and changing of strips without completing some of them.
filip
I understand Dark Horse take a lot of creator owned work. They have some of their own characters/strips as well though.
Phonogram is one of the biggest casualties of being creator owned that I can think of.
Despite being well reviewed (as well as aces) the sales on the first issues were not high enough to provide Jamie McKelvie with the income to commit full time to finishing the series as originally planned, and he had to fill in with work-for-hire work to pay the bills. This affected the schedules, which probably affected the sales.
More details here (http://www.phonogramcomic.com/blog/?p=112)
As a result plans for any further Phonogram has been canned...
Marvel WFH isn't as big a deal, as writers usually aren't creating new properties.
New Vertigo properties aren't creator owned but there are detailed contracts that give the writers/artists certain rights over the property - detailing things like what they get for trade sales, translations, movie options etc.
Warren Ellis was happy to create Planetary with Wildstorm under some rights sharing contract.
Does a 2000ad contract give anything like this to its creators?
QuoteI'd love to see a new series from John Wagner but he is going great guns on Dredd and Strontium Dog, which will be putting food on the table, and the success of A History of Violence (and interest in Button Man) would make it tricky for him to bring in something new and just give it away.
John mentioned a potential new project over on his facebook recently.
Quote...been playing around with something for the US - just dabbling with the idea at the moment, poking it with a stick and seeing what happens.
...It will be for Vertigo, assuming I ever get it done and Vertigo then want it.
Thanks for that radiator - I had assumed as much but it is interesting to see it confirmed and I can't wait to see what comes of this.
Quote from: briantm on 27 August, 2010, 11:29:35 AM
Marvel WFH isn't as big a deal, as writers usually aren't creating new properties.
There are still new characters being created and you never know when they next Wolverine or Deadpool will emerge that can support their own franchise.
Quote from: briantm on 27 August, 2010, 11:29:35 AMNew Vertigo properties aren't creator owned but there are detailed contracts that give the writers/artists certain rights over the property - detailing things like what they get for trade sales, translations, movie options etc.
Indeed - it is tricky to know what the situation is with a lot of Vertigo titles. Some are effectively creator-owned (I'd assume quite a bit of Grant Morrison's non-DCU-derived stories) and the Swamp Thing/Sandman type of stories will be largely work-for-hire with the usual sales bonuses and incentives (although as most Vertigo comic books don't sell by the busload, making a lot of their cash from trades, these might not kick in a lot). The Gaiman-Sandman/Endless business seems to be more of a courteous (based on respect for his work and the sales he brings in) rather than anything written on paper and it also highlights a problem Vertigo have - they don't have enough flexibility in their contracts. Gaiman would like to come back to write more Sandman comics but Vertigo can't offer him enough of a cut to make it worth his while. As I've possibly mentioned here (and I have definitely touched on this elsewhere) my hope is that the return of DCU characters from Vertigo is the visible part of some horsetrading that began with when the Big Five were promoted to help run DC (which didn't include a promotion for Karen Berger as some thought might happen) and that being given more flexibility in the contracts is the "quid" to the more visible "quo". Vertigo has been a little quiet of late on the more "creator-owned" front while Wildstorm launched a whole raft of (apparently proper) creator-owned titles. Those performed poorly on the sales front and it wouldn't surprise me if, once a lot of the DCU characters get properly bedded in, that Vertigo will start expanding the creator-owned aspect (with Wildstorm phasing out their offerings to focus on Wildstorm Universe titles, once they fix the mess they've got themselves into with World's End, and comics based on licensed IP, which is a BIG earner for them).
Quote from: briantm on 27 August, 2010, 11:29:35 AMWarren Ellis was happy to create Planetary with Wildstorm under some rights sharing contract.
Its a tricky one as Planetary is part of the Wildstorm Universe and it does crossover with it (and the DC Multiverse, of which the Wildstorm Universe is a subset), but it also plugs into other concepts Ellis worked on like Century Babies. So I don't think there would have been a way to make it creator-owned as it was conceived.
Quote from: briantm on 27 August, 2010, 11:29:35 AMDoes a 2000ad contract give anything like this to its creators?
You'd imagine it would at some level, the devil is in the details and there is a reluctance in the industry in general to discuss those details (quite rightly as most people don't go round make the finer points of their work contracts public knowledge).
(I should point up that, soon(ish) I'll be announcing TWO creator owned series to come out...)
-pj
One thing I'm a bit mystified about: when did "creator owned" translate to "no page rate"?
When companies like Epic and Tundra started offering creator-owned deals, they definitely offered a page rate for the work -- in the same way as a novelist gets an advance, it just has to be earned back before the royalties kick in.
It wasn't as good a page rate, in recognition of the fact that the rights reverted to you after the first printing and subsequent exploitation will see you compensated again, but it was a page rate nonetheless.
Cheers!
Jim
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 27 August, 2010, 10:55:22 PM
One thing I'm a bit mystified about: when did "creator owned" translate to "no page rate"?
When companies like Epic and Tundra started offering creator-owned deals, they definitely offered a page rate for the work -- in the same way as a novelist gets an advance, it just has to be earned back before the royalties kick in.
I was wondering about that myself - if someone like Image is going to make some cash out of the print run then would it not be in their interest to throw a bit of coin in the general direction of the creators to ensure they get the comic done and in on a timely basis, so they (or at least the artist) doesn't have to delay publication (thus harming sales and income for everyone involved) by seeking paid employment elsewhere. I know it might mean the company would have to have an extra wodge of cash before they started but, over time, this should all balance out - they could even work the deal so the advanced gets paid back before the money starts flowing to the creators (or they take a larger cut at the start to ensure they aren't out-of-pocket).
Quote from: pauljholden on 27 August, 2010, 09:06:48 PM
(I should point up that, soon(ish) I'll be announcing TWO creator owned series to come out...)
Good show.
There have been a couple of legit creator owned series in 2000ad, all by Wagner and Grant I think. Als Baby, Balls Brothers, Teenage Tax Consultant(all Toxic Refugees?) and Grants The Bad Man.
I think it would be an interesting experiment to take on a creator owned COMPLETE story from the likes of Ellis. He does come across extremely egotistical, but anything I have read by him is great(I have read no superhereos stuff). Stuff like Global Frequency, Planetary and Orbiter would fit in very well in 200ad, it would probably need serious story compression though.
Mayby that where the Megs role could come in, Lily McKenzie is great, Tank Girk was a failed Experiment, 5 or 6 episode of it would have been enough to make it enjoyable, but it overstayed its welcome. Insead of fiddling with 2000ad continue to offer a slot in the Meg for creator owned stories, MUTO MANIC please!!
David
Quote from: maryanddavid on 28 August, 2010, 12:27:06 AM
There have been a couple of legit creator owned series in 2000ad, all by Wagner and Grant I think. Als Baby, Balls Brothers, Teenage Tax Consultant(all Toxic Refugees?) and Grants The Bad Man.
Anyone know how these came about? They all seem to occur round about the same time (coverage in TPO seems to be round 194-197) in the mid-to-late 90s but there isn't much of an explanation in TPO.
This is from memory, so It might be wrong. Here goes, Prog 650 was to be realunched as No.1, with the weekly launching in the US as well. I think the was an article in Speakease at the time, how there was a meeting with Management and creators, with Fleetway offering some form of reprint fee and possible creato owned material, to attempt to stop the brain drain to the us, with Morrison commenting on the extra he got from extra sales of Animal Man.
Skreemer was possibly the first creator owned series for 2000ad, which was subsequently poached by DC, which may have put a stop to any further creator owned for the time been.
The collapse of Toxic. and the departure of Wagner from the proget left a few stories well in production and having never appeared in Toxic led to Button man in 2000ad. The success of that probably gave Wagners leverage to have the other stories(Als and Teenage) creator owned. Ill try and dig out the Speakeasy over the weekend.
David
Cheers, that'd be very interesting.
Here is some number-crunching on sales of creator-owned titles:
www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/3110-the-kirkman-bendis-debates-let-e2-80-99s-do-the-math-.html
Worth reading that with the discussion on page rates (http://www.2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/topic,30056.0.html) in mind.