One of the trolls on the DC boards got me thinking:

1. Is there something about creator-owned properties that would make them more rewarding to the reader? If so, why?

2. Is it more rewarding to work on a creator-owned property than a DC/Marvel-owned book?

3. Are unit sales/audience sizes a factor for a creator’s enjoyment? I.e. is it more rewarding to work on a 100,000 unit-selling big two book than a 5000 unit-selling creator-owned indie book?

4. If the contents are equal as far as storycraft and artwork is concerned, would a creator-owned book higher on the, “Is it art” hierarchy than a work-for-hire book?

5. Professionalism aside, does making or missing deadlines have anything to do with the quality of the book when it’s completed? How about the quality of the creator?

Interesting topic!

I have personally been enjoying more creator owned work than the old mainstays for a few reasons:

1) I have overdosed on the classic characters to a certain degree: after you've read 500 spidey tales its hard to interest me. And maybe like Linda has said in the past: all the good stories with these characters have been told so now its up to a new generation to read em and we move on to new stuff.

2) new concepts and characters: its fun to see new archetypes or new takes on old forgotten characters: the creator owned work usually means you get new stuff instead of the same old.

3) The fact that creator owned work unlike corporate icons can go in any direction is cool. Characters can die, stories can end, etc more surprises + more freedom. Which in turn I guess can be more rewarding to the creator (no corporate constraints).

Maybe its just my preference - but I feel that some creators I like are more enjoyable on their creator owned work..maybe because they are more invested in it...I think Ellis/Cassaday are much better on Planetary than on any Marvel book..I like their marvel stuff but I feel their creator owned stuff is better.

I think creators can strike a nice balance between the 2: Ellis, Morrison, Millar, Diggle, etc all give us a mix of Dc/Marvel and creator owned stuff which is cool.

Creator owned work that im currently enjoying or looking forward to:

Planetary, Apparat, Fell, Desolation Jones by Ellis
Moore's ABC line is great too.
Silent dragon by Diggle looks friggen amazing.
Queen & Country by Rucka is brilliant too.
I thought the Millarworld books: Wanted, Chosen, etc were way better than any of Millars Marvel work.
WE3 by Morrison was also fantastic.
Hellboy is classic stuff as is SIn City
I also loved the old Byrne creator owned stuff: next men and Danger Unlimited. I wish he'd return to them someday.

Ellis said something interesting at the TO con - he said that American writers are brought up in an environment/industry where you are taught to take over and write titles you enjoyed as a kid..while in the Uk writers are used to being hired and told to create something new...a generalization for sure..but interesting.

I'm only going to answer question 1 and say that the continuity of creators can ensure greater coherence to the long-term arc. How many comics have been hurt by a creator imposing his or her vision of a character that is inconsistent with how they've been portrayed in the past? <cough>Gwen Stacy</cough>

On the other hand, what would Spidey have been like if only Stan ever wrote him? We wouldn't have had Straczinski's dreck, but we wouldn't have had Uncle Rog's stuff, either. Maybe if Stan stayed on as editor to maintain continuity of characterization (of course, that's about the only continuity he'd be interested in maintaining).

One last post ( I told you I liked this subject Trevor!):

If you were a creator..in this day and age of Image, Dark horse, Icon, vertigo, wildstorm, etc why would you create a character for the big 2 (DC/marvel)???

At least DC has vertigo and WS and even offers creator participation for some of its DCU stuff..JACK CROSS by Ellis is DCU but he holds part of the rights.

Imagine if Hellboy was owned by Marvel! And Mignola just got a page rate! Wouldnt you kick yourself if you created the next million dollar comic/movie/toy franchise character for a simple paycheck..!!

I personally would save my big guns for my creator owned stuff in order to keep creative control, and profit from any further exploitation/interest in the character. Remember how hard Siegel and Shuster fought for a piece of Superman..??

If you think about it...most of the new characters/concepts have been outside the big 2...can you blame em?

Tough questions. I don't know if there is an all encompssing answer; I think it all depends on the individual reader, so my answers are prejudiced in that I'm a big fan of creator owned stuff as it's the creator's vision not some corporation's moneymen or EIC or marketing division.

It's not unusual to hear a creator talking about a great sounding pitch that was rejected by someone who never worked on a comic previously.

There's been some great WFH stuff over the last year or so but we're dependant on the 'suits' greenlighting them, plus there's nothing to stop the next 'hot' writer coming in and rewriting or repositioning any great WFH stuff.

I find them more rewarding overall, it could be an age thing but I like to see continuity and characters develop. That's not something you can really do with WFH where the nature of the icons is that they don't age and the status quo isn't rocked that much (Dead aint dead).

Profit considerations are generally greater for WFH books than creator owned so as a reader I don't have to be concerned when my favourite book drops out of the top 50.

I like the idea that the money I fork out in my LCS is going (or a portion of it) directly to the creator.



Depends on the creator

With a creator owned book, they own and control it. They don't get paid in advance and as a rule make less money than they would from WFH.

BUT if the book is moderately successful, coming in at close to or even less than standard cancellation numbers thay can make more than they would on a WFH book.

Plus they make all the money from liscensing, reprints, movie and TV deals etc. AND they control it and dictate how they want it reprinted and liscensed. Maybe they don't want a flick made of their character unless it's true to their work?

With WFH it's money upfront with no risk financially. Some folks may particularly wish to play with a companies icons rather than create and nurture their own characters.

It seems that the folks who chose this route shouldn't be too upset, when they have no control over how their work is presented or rewritten or handled by other creators; that's the very nature of WFH.

So for the creator, (especially if they have the financial means) it comes down to creative control or financial reward (some creators don't have the luxury of choosing).

I can't understand how a creator with the resources to do creator owned books will stick with WFH and then consistently bitch about how WFH characters are treated by other creators or companies or movie adaptations or how their previous work is being reimagined or reprinted or how books were rejected or cancelled by this boss or that boss. That's the nature of WFH!

Any creator who doesn't buy comics, bitchs about other creator owned books and works happily in the system they find so much fault with, should shut the fuck up about 'what's wrong with comics'.



Depends entirely on the creator and the factors I've listed above.

Jim Lee doesn't need the money but he likes having a top selling book over a creator owned new character, Erik Larsen is the reverse.



Probably not but I'm biased and personally I'd have to say yes, because we know it's 100% the creators vision. Their may even be marketing issues over creativity involved in the final book but the creator has the final say.

My favourite books over the last year were actually WFH: Superman Secret Identity and DC's Frontier. Both brilliant works, but whats to say that somewhere down the line (depending on contracts I suppose and the creators having clout) that someone other than the creators might decide to revisit the concepts and farm them out to other creators ala The Kingdom. I personally would rather see sequels by the original creators in this instance than none at all.

I know that Cooke had issues over the presentation and pricing of Frontier and wanted to see it collected in one edition and I'm pissed off I can't get an oversized HC of Secret Identity to put some more money (depending on the royalties deal) in the pockets of Busiek and Immonen to thank them for such wonderful work.


Quality of the book no, sales and viability probably. Quality of the creator yes, though that may not be fair in the case of WFH books were it's editors etc. who decide when to publish.

Creators who announce books then fail to publish them with no reason or explanation to their audience piss me off. I'm more forgiving of delays in creator owned stuff generally because for the most part their one man bands with a lot more responsibilities than just writing or pencilling a book.

Mike

There needs to be a way for the big two to encourage new, original characters, characters that the companies will own, that writers besides the creator can write. But the only way that could work is if the creator received compensation similar to that of a property s/he owned.

-Comp

Harrison - I think DC has just that - creator participation where if you create some new characters and they are set in the DCU the creators still retain a portion of teh rights along with DC or Wildstorm, etc..

Lab rats , Planetary,Jack Cross, Sovereign 7 and a few others fall under this deal..to me its a win win situation.

Marvel is lagging behind on this. In fact rumor has it they stopped the whole Epic launch precisly because guys like Avi Arad did not want the next big movie deal to go to a creator and not Marvel...not very conducive to creativity i say.

1. Is there something about creator-owned properties that would make them more rewarding to the reader? If so, why?

Assuming that this is purely a legal distinction, not much. Star Wars is as much a corporate entity as anything else, and it's creator-owned. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out of the same creator-owned self-publishing route as Cerebus, and we all saw how quickly that degenerated into just another Hollywood property.

2. Is it more rewarding to work on a creator-owned property than a DC/Marvel-owned book?

Here, we get into a weird area that drifts away from your question a bit. "Crorporate-owned" is increasingly a short-hand for the characters that have been around for decades, while "creator-owned" means "something new". In this day and age, if a creator is going around creating a lot of new stuff, then he's probably going to seek out a deal that allows him to own the characters (at least in part). While you have a *lot* of pros whose big dream is not to create the "next Spider-Man" but to work on Spider-Man. If 60s Jack Kirby was around today, then he'd probably be in the "creator-owned" field and not the "corporate-owned"... once he realized that Marvel wasn't going to "take care of him", he plugged the creative pipes over there, recycling concepts rather than creating new ones, and sought out a better deal at DC. This is really what this gets down to, whether or not a creator feels as though he's being sufficiently rewarded for his efforts, and ownership is often a part of that.

3. Are unit sales/audience sizes a factor for a creator’s enjoyment? I.e. is it more rewarding to work on a 100,000 unit-selling big two book than a 5000 unit-selling creator-owned indie book?

Quite possibly, it could be more financially rewarding... even with that big ol' gap you've written in. Creator-owned guy owns the whole ball of wax, so they have more opportunities to cash in: trade paperbacks, movie deals, cartoons, merchandise, etc. Plus, they're their own boss, so they can't have someone come in and say "sorry, Swamp Thing can't meet Jesus." During the Cerebus hey-day, the book was only selling 40,000-50,000 copies a month, but Dave Sim was acting like a rock star flying to Europe on the Concorde... he was probably making a good bit more money than the guys who had been working on Superman prior to Man Of Steel, and had complete editorial control over the finished product.

4. If the contents are equal as far as storycraft and artwork is concerned, would a creator-owned book higher on the, “Is it art” hierarchy than a work-for-hire book?

Here's where the leading questions get a mite bit too leading. No, there's no real difference conceptually, but the difference stems from the sorts of people who are attracted to each option. As I stated above, if a successful writer/artist is going around creating new stuff out of habit, they will likely seek out some sort of creator-owned or creator-participation deal... it just makes good business sense. The greater the opportunities in this arena, the less likely we are to see that type of person opperating in a pure corporate-owned environment, and the more likely we are to find the fanboy-turned-creator in the corporate areana who dream has always been to write his favorite characters.

Edit because I forgot to *really* answer the question. All things being equal, they're on the same level; but we're seeing a pretty dramatic shift toward creator-owned or creator-participation being the more heralded. I don't think this is accidental, I think it has everything to do with the types of creators being drawn to the two camps. Increasingly, we're seeing DC and Marvel drawing talent from the creator-owned fields to do their corporate characters... and, generally speaking, I find the creator-owned stuff from the likes of Ellis, Ennis, and Bendis more engaging than their corporate-owned output. We've come a long way from the days when corporate-owned books like Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were the undisputed kings of the medium.

5. Professionalism aside, does making or missing deadlines have anything to do with the quality of the book when it’s completed? How about the quality of the creator?

It's impossible to boil down "professionalism" to any single element. It's a combination of talent, punctuality, personality, creativitity, fan-base, etc. There's a bazillion stories of actors or directors who are difficult to work with, having personalities that immediately piss off everyone around them... but if they've got enough talent or are a good enough earner, then such sins are often forgiven. Writers miss deadlines, actors show up late on the set, directors go over-budget and over-deadline... but if the finished product is successful enough, then all sins are forgiven. Neil Gaiman got away with being months late on Sandman, a lot of other creators at the time had to go find other careers... but we don't remember them.

Actually, the distinction I'm looking for isn't so much creator-owned vs. corporate-owned, but creator-owned vs. work-for-hire. Elfquest and Spawn are creator-owned, but have generated a lot of work-for-hire material, too.

Considering how linked WFH and "Corporate-Owned" are, everything I said transfers over... apart from the TMNT example, which was WFH under a creator-owned system. Even the Star Wars example still stands, because Lucas wrote and directed the last two (possibly three) pieces of crap.

"Creator-Owned" isn't some guaranteed stamp of quality, nor is WFH proof of crap. Mostly, it's just a case of the option being on the table... 20 years ago if "creator-owned" was as common an option as it is today, it's doubtful that Watchmen and V For Vendetta would have appeared with DC as the legal author. These days, unless someone is dead-set on using Batman or Spider-Man, they'll probably shop an idea like that around for at least a creator-participation deal.

Yeah, but Lucas doesn't write the cartoons, comics, novels etc.... he licenses it out.

Its funny that something can start out creator owned and then turn into a franchise and in turn spawning work for hire...like Spawn by Mcfralane or even some of the Hellboy spin offs written by others than Mignola.

Gotta keep that ol' money machine rollin'!

Trevor - you gotta admit its kinda cool - imagine you created a character and told the majority of the stories you had to tell. Wouldnt it be cool to a) make some more money of your creation and b) have creators you've enjoyed over the years work on your character. Frank Miller, Walt Simonson, Byrne, Stern, etc..would you say no to any of these guys?

If I was in Lucas' shoes, I'd milk it for every cent I could get. Any artistic values I might have (and those are few, I assure you) fade before the opportunity to have BB King play my house party.

1. I doubt it, personally. I think the reader is almost certainly completely indifferent to whether the property is creator-owned or company-owned. I know that I didn't care at all about the ownership status of, say, Jon Sable, Freelance vs. that of Amazing Spider-Man.

2. Depends on the creator, I'm certain. John Byrne has made no secret of his preference for working on Jack Kirby's creations. Howard Chaykin and Frank Miller feel much differently, I suspect.

3. I'm sure the number of people who are reading and, presumably, enjoying your work factors into the equation. It's probably not determinative, though.

4. Not certain I understand your question. Taking a stab at it, I think the answer would probably be no. Whether the property is creator-owned or company-owned has no bearing on the question of artistic merit; only the work itself is the judge of that.

5. Quality of the book, no. Lateness, while irritating and often unprofessional, doesn't impact the worth of the final product when it is finally released. Quality of the creator? To some extent, I guess. Certainly a fan of Rob Liefeld's shouldn't bank on his ability to produce work on time. I don't know if it makes him a lesser artist, per se, but it makes it a little more frustrating to follow his work.

Scot, it's interesting that you and I are in complete agreement in all five questions....

Yes, there is. Conversely, there are things about work-for-hire properties that can make them more appealing, too.

The main differences are control and purity. In wfh, someone else is in control, so the writers, artists, etc. don't necessarily get to follow their vision as clearly as they might, not if the editor tells them to put Sabretooth on the team, or that a character should be drawn more attractively, or whatever. And in wfh, the work is more likely to be a patchwork of different -- and sometimes conflicting -- visions, which can make it less credible or blunted in its impact or made to feel ephemeral, or whatever.

The flip side, of course, is that it may turn out that you like that creator's vision restrained rather than unfettered, and if you like the editor's decisions, then good for him. And of course, the patchwork nature of shared-universes is a draw for many -- they like to see different takes, different visions, and like the accumulated detail of a continuity that sprawls across more terrain than one creator could cover in a lifetime.



Same answer, but with a different twist. Yes, it's more rewarding in some ways. Working in a wfh shared universe can be more rewarding in other ways. So it's a matter of which ways matter more to the individual creator, or, if he switches back and forth, what proportion he likes them in.



Yes for some creators, no for others.



It probably has more of a shot at it, due to greater purity of vision, but that depends on a lot of factors, too, like whether that creator's vision is worth a shit in the first place, or how much the wfh editor interferes, if at all, and so on.



Think about it this way: If an artist takes three months to draw a gorgeous story, is the story improved if the deadline was set at a different point? Exact same work, different date written on the calendar?

I'm not sure what "the quality of the creator" means, as something different from the work, if you're absenting the idea of professionalism.

kdb

Double post.

Twice the value! Twice the fun!

I was also thinking that some stories just work better with established characters...the Kraven's last hunt storyline would not have been as good or as relevant without the long published histroy between the 2 characters or if Demateis and Zeck created some new guys and published it through image..in that case...

Artistic value can be acheived with other people's characters..I mean Frank Miller on DD rocked and is still one of my favorite runs and that was work for hire. These days though its the new creator owned stuff that is getting me pumped.

in regards to question 5 - lateness is not a problem for me. Im not a stickler to the monthly schedule..as long as the work is good Ill wait. And once im rereading good work its not like im flashing back to the book missing its shipping deadline:)

It's "Double-Mint Busiek".