Creator-owned titles vs work-for-hire

[Emperor]

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.

[maryanddavid]

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

[Emperor]

Cheers, that'd be very interesting.

[Emperor]

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 in mind.