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I hate the new look but then again I don't read the comics (I did when I was a kid, though!) so who am I to judge?
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Order Small Things, my contemporary fantasy novel featuring Megos, at http://joederouen.com/?page_id=176 -
>My point being that current DC and Marvel artists are definitely payed royalties based on sales of their comics,
I know they flirted with this after Image made "creator owned" books a thing again; but how does this work? Would you get royalties on characters you created, or any book you've done? I wouldn't think it'd be on every book you did, unless you were paid a one time bonus for the total number sold. Actual royalties would make the rights for reprints and such more compicated than I'd think the companies would want to deal with.
>and on the best selling titles, it would be fairly substantial income above and beyond the page-rate they get.
For the best selling books, but I don't know about the average book. The curve tends to be high on stuff like this.
>Even if Archie comics sell more (which we haven't established),
Someone linked to an interview where they discussed the (then) recent "death" of Captain America. (I think the link may hve been here at the Museum, actually.) That article mentioned the print run of the average Marvel book being around 65,000. A couple months back I was reading one of them Archie Digests; and the postal legal statement listed the average number of issues each month as 186,000.
>if the artist does not get royalties, then it's likely that they are not making as much overall as the guys who work for Marvel or DC.
Maybe; I could see it, and I've been told that the Archie folks tend to be REAL tight-fisted. But I don't think Staton would count as a top guy for Marvel; so I don't think he'd get the higher rates and bonusses. Given the numbers, he might make more working for Archie under those circumstances. (I haven't heard what the overall results were after the DeCarlo thing.)
It's tough to gauge since payscale isn't released too often, except sometimes for the top guys. (Which can give skewed perspective.) Same with conceptualizing the situation; since most folks inclined to think about stuff like this tend to see the big two and a half as the center of the comic universe; so it's tough to imagine something goofy like an Archie book being more insinuated into society. (Especially since you really don't hear much about Archie in any "serious" comic circles.)
...and it's kinda tough to think of a guy like Staton as "filler" for a company; but I'd bet that's how Marvel and DC would see him these days.
Don C.Comment
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Any current writer or artist working on a book at the Big Two Superhero companies get royalties based on sales of whichever individual issue of a comic book they work on, as well as the trade and hardback collections containing that work. I would imagine this kicks in after the break-even point.
That being said, I'm sure there are guys working on the low end Vertigo and Wildstorm books who don't really see any royalties. Although we do live in an age where initially low selling books like Road to Perdition and History of Violence get made into movies by Warner Bros, so there is always hope for a payoff on the back end of things like that.
As you implied, Marvel and DC have basically become "R&D" for the Hollywood Studios that their parent companies are attached to. I'm sure there is probably Option Money floated to movie concepts introduced in many low selling and cancelled comics that have never made it to the big screen (Alien Legion!).
The legal statement in the Archie digest is the amount circulated for distribution via news-stands and supermarket checkouts. Not actual hard sales numbers like we get via the direct market to comics stores with Marvel and DC (although we also don't get their bookstore numbers or newsstand numbers either). 186,000 doesn't factor in the number of those that are returned/destroyed. Given the "softness" of the magazine biz these days, my understanding is half or more of those can be returned/destroyed.
With all that said, numbers and payscale speculation aside, I believe we are in agreeance that a guy like Joe Staton deserves better than what he is probably getting.
I was a big fan of his run on Green Lantern, here is hoping that DC or Marvel has room for him somewhere on their monthly schedule.Comment
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>Any current writer or artist working on a book at the Big Two Superhero companies get royalties based on sales of whichever individual issue of a comic book they work on, as well as the trade and hardback collections containing that work. I would imagine this kicks in after the break-even point.
That seems SO weird; considering how little they used to pay. I guess it's 'cos Marvel and DC AREN'T really Marvel and DC these days, they're Marvel Entertainment Group and one of the periodical departments of Warner.
>I'm sure there are guys working on the low end Vertigo and Wildstorm books who don't really see any royalties. Although we do live in an age where initially low selling books like Road to Perdition and History of Violence get made into movies by Warner Bros, so there is always hope for a payoff on the back end of things like that.
Yeah. I imagine even the low end guys 'aint starving to death; but I bet they're not making noteworthy cash. It's weird to think that just 10 years or so it wasn't unusual for a cartoonist to pull down 6 figs from one of the big two and a half.
>Marvel and DC have basically become "R&D" for the Hollywood Studios that their parent companies are attached to.
I dunno if they're even THAT much any more! Compared to the movies and toys I bet the comics account for a VERY small percentage of the income. Sometimes I wonder what the execs really think of the comic branches. I could almost see them trying to shut them down at some point. "Nobody READS any more..."
>I'm sure there is probably Option Money floated to movie concepts introduced in many low selling and cancelled comics that have never made it to the big screen (Alien Legion!).
I wonder about THIS too. Used to be, anything you created while working at the big two was OWNED by the big two; even if they never published it! There was a big stink in the early 80's that I recall demonstrating the unlawfulness of this clause; but it was there for decades. I'd bet that their contracts are now custom'd to each employee. The only real GOOD thing to come out of the 90's was the idea that a person could actually own a comic character. (Not that this was actually a NEW idea; but it was to the big two.)
>Not actual hard sales numbers like we get via the direct market to comics stores with Marvel and DC (although we also don't get their bookstore numbers or newsstand numbers either).
Although I'd expect the Marvel/DC data to be print runs, since that seems to be a standard for companies to rate. (Probably 'cos it's the easiest to measure.)
>Given the "softness" of the magazine biz these days, my understanding is half or more of those can be returned/destroyed.
Even so; that means an Archie digest is STILL outselling the average superhero. Which I can believe; since them digests are EVERYWHERE, and the Marvel/DC stuff isn't as available as it was. Of the stores I've seen with Marvel or DC books, the selection has been remarkably minimal. No doubt due to their attention on comic shop sales. (I suspect they've price pointed themselves out of being attractive to newsstand sales.)
>I believe we are in agreeance that a guy like Joe Staton deserves better than what he is probably getting.
Hear! Hear!
>I was a big fan of his run on Green Lantern,
Even if you don't count his Marvel and DC work (*sigh*) he's done a lot of books, in a lot of different styles. Y'don't see that sort of thing so much any more.
Don C.Comment
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Paul Levitz's interview at newsarama answered some of the questions we've raised...
It appears with Vertigo being at the bottom of the sales charts for the comics books, there is a great deal of success in bookstores and libraries. I know that Vertigo books have become a staple in the Toronto Public Libraries in recent years, not only stuff like Sandman, Y the Last Man, 100 Bullets, Transmetropolitan, but branching out into things like Rick Vietch's I Can't Get No and Harvey Pekar's American Splendor seems to be working out for them as well.I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built in Vertigo. It’s a larger comics publisher than probably anybody but DC and Marvel, if it were measured on its own…maybe Dark Horse, dependant on the year.
Remember the days of Vertigo’s birth, and would you have bet anybody on who’s going to be larger in the long run, Image or Vertigo? I think you would have been laughed out of the room if you had bet on Vertigo. It’s now significantly larger. It also very much was built for the business that has emerged in the last few years and that is growing rapidly. It’s an extraordinarily successful book publisher. The lives of its collections, the skill sets we’ve built in managing that side of the business are serving us well in the rest of the company, and we’re continuing to see new titles that are showing the kind of vitality that indicate those collections will be an enduring part of the backlist as well.
I think one thing that underlies a number of your questions that’s interesting – the comic book fan community is historically been used to the idea of keeping a scorecard of success based on a very single dimension: how many titles are in the Top 10, the Top 20 in the comic shops? That’s a great place to be, don’t get me wrong – we’re much happier when we have a fair number of titles in that list. It’s certainly still one of the great ways to have a success in comics.
But that’s only one of so many ways to succeed right now. That’s part of what’s dramatically changing the health of the business, and certainly has been a large part in changing DC’s fortunes. A lot of what we’re doing in our new business ventures in the last few years are based on a definition of success that is and should be largely invisible on that chart.
I would also imagine that the film/TV options are an invisible revenue stream for them, not to mention the big paydays for things that actually make it to the Big Screen such as V for Vendetta, Constantine, and Watchmen.
I found this bit kind of implied that...
NRAMA: Moving on to the MINX line, along with CMX, and to some extent, the graphic novels, it’s a line of DC product which is pretty invisible to the regular DCU reader. So how is it doing, as a line? Obviously, it’s a product designed with a specific audience in mind…
PL: We’re happy with year one. We always knew this was going to be a tough business to build, and that it’s a multi-year process to do it. We got one of the projects picked up on option for theatrical development, which was very exciting, and we’ve reached a number of new readers. We still don’t really know how we’re doing in the marketplace completely, because a lot of those copies are going out into returnable businesses and may come back to us. But I think we’re off to an okay start.Comment
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Here is some interesting things about how WildStorm has situated themselves within the DC publishing groups, and we should note their role in online gaming!
Newsarama: Let’s go through the various imprints of DC, and talk about their performance and overall fit within DC. Going in a jumbled order, let’s start with WildStorm. Originally, it was a strong alternate universe to the DC Universe under the eye of Jim Lee, and then licensed books came in, along with creator-owned, and now…it’s hard to put a finger on what defines Wildstorm…
Paul Levitz: I don’t think that the “WildStorm Universe” books were ever more than a portion of what the line was. The early days, when we took on Wildstorm, the Cliffhanger line was some of their most successful stuff, and was an experiment that went very well for a period of time.
Part of what WildStorm is, that it’s unrestrained innovation. It’s there to try things in a much more experimental fashion than say, the DC Universe. The good news and the bad news about having a cast of characters like the DCU has, or an editorial philosophy that’s as deep as Vertigo’s is that you’ve got your target, and you’re working it. Wildstorm has, for most of the years it’s been with us, has been the place where we’ve tried things. Jim has a particularly open, creative mind, and a lot of those things have won awards, created excitement, and sold a lot of copies. Things as diverse as Cliffhanger and America’s Best Comics, which probably couldn’t be further removed from each other in terms of what made them successful – one very much an artists’ imprint, one very much a writer’s. Jim keeps looking for what the next cool thing will be.
There’s a lot of energy at WildStorm these days attached to the digital world - World of Warcraft is successful so far in its launch, but it’s more of a symptom of what’s going on. Since we’ve been involved with the Sony Online gaming project, we’ve got a whole group of people at WildStorm who’ve learned how to create digital assets, and can move through and work with the computer gaming world in a more involved way than DC’s ever been able to before, and that’s led us to a number of different relationships with gaming companies that we think will yield some interesting results over time, some of which will be invisible to the world, and is just work we’re doing with and for them.
NRAMA: We’re coming up on 10 years since the acquisition of WildStorm by DC. Is today’s WildStorm still true to the vision of what a WildStorm as part of DC would be?
PL: I think where we started with Wildstorm was the desire to be in business with Jim. Jim was then, and I think still is now, one of the most vibrant creative talents in our business, not simply in his personal art and style or in his relationships with other creative people, but in his willingness to get up and get at, and do things that other first string creators are not always willing to do.
The results we’ve had from him driving the development of the DC massively multiplayer game project for the last two and half years are something that I don’t think we could have replicated with anyone else in the business. If we hadn’t gotten anything else out of WildStorm in the last almost ten years, I’d be thrilled from that alone. That said, I think John Nee just estimated that WildStorm was going to have its best fourth quarter in 10 or 15 years with the success we’re having in the bookstore market and the comic shops with Heroes and The Black Dossier. They continue to do a number of very diverse, strange and wonderful things – lots of which work, some of which don’t, and that’s okay too.Comment
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I seem to recall that was exactly what Ted Turner was proposing when he made a play for the DCU. He argued he could exploit the Superman properties much better than they were currently being handled within Warner. Luckily he didn't get his way.
You really have to appreciate the wisdom/vision/luck of those sailing DC through the corporate seas of the Time/Warner/Turner/AOL empire during all the turbulant times of take-overs and mergers (Jeanette Khan and Paul Levitz?). They ultimately positioned themselves in the best possible place under Warner Studios (IIRC?), and not the publishing branch, nor the periodical divisions of the Time Empire.
I remember at one point Jim Shooter discussed in an interview about how he took a meeting as EIC at Marvel about the possibilities of licensing and publishing the DC characters if Warner shut down their comics division. I would imagine this was in the early eighties?
It is interesting to see more and more of the TV/Movie/Animated media that directly adapts the original material (with varying degrees of success). Most recently we're seeing Superman: Doomsday, the upcoming New Frontier, Hellboy, and The Ultimates.
Nope. The Diamond numbers are simply the amount sold to the direct market comic stores (where there are no returns) and does not count newsstand sales (where there are returns) nor do they account for the different newstand formats (Marvel "flipbook" comics) or the book trade.>Not actual hard sales numbers like we get via the direct market to comics stores with Marvel and DC (although we also don't get their bookstore numbers or newsstand numbers either).
Although I'd expect the Marvel/DC data to be print runs, since that seems to be a standard for companies to rate. (Probably 'cos it's the easiest to measure.)
What the Diamond numbers also don't take into account is reorders if Marvel/DC overprint (they don't overprint MAX titles for example). Which is why so often you get press releases from various companies declaring that the print run of the latest "hot" comic being sold out at Diamond and touting a larger number than shown on the initial Diamond charts.
We still ultimately don't have reliable actual sales numbers for Archie comics with which we can compare, nor do we have a baseline for the "average" Superhero comic given all the different markets the work is now published in.>Given the "softness" of the magazine biz these days, my understanding is half or more of those can be returned/destroyed.
Even so; that means an Archie digest is STILL outselling the average superhero. Which I can believe; since them digests are EVERYWHERE, and the Marvel/DC stuff isn't as available as it was. Of the stores I've seen with Marvel or DC books, the selection has been remarkably minimal. No doubt due to their attention on comic shop sales. (I suspect they've price pointed themselves out of being attractive to newsstand sales.)
Just so we don't lose the forest for the trees, the main driving point that sparked this discussion isn't whether Archie Digests sell better on the newstands. It's whether or not someone would get compensated better if they pencilled for Marvel/DC or Archie. We still haven't established that Archie even has a profit participation program for each of those digests sold, which are made up mostly of reprint material!
Mad Magazine has probably always outsold an average mid-range Marvel comic, but I know Sergio Aragones has commented in the past about how he doesn't see a cent past his initial payment despite all the reprints (I'm not even sure he got his original art back).
We also need to take into account the royalties that Mark Bagley might earn (on top of his page-rate) for each issue of Ultimate Spiderman pencilled if you add up the direct market comic sales, the newsstand comic sales (minus the returns, NOT simply the circulation numbers) which in this case would be the double issue flipbook format, the direct market hardcovers and softcovers and their reorders, the various bookstore incarnations (minus the returns) which are also sold to the library market. There was also an Omnibus that was specific to one of the bookchains (Borders?) as well as a time when the comics/graphic novels were sold in Walmarts and Targets. Not to mention foreign reprint editions!
I'm not even counting the amount Mark Bagley must have earned during that half decade or so (and continuing now!) that his Ultimate Spiderman images (initially created for the covers) have adorned every kind of Spiderman product imaginable.
Quote from a Brian Bendis Newsarama interview...
Something else to consider... Mark Bagely and many other creators can also sign exclusive contracts with Marvel or DC which gives them benefits (medical coverage etc) and security (a gaurenteed amount of work for the period specified).But Bagley is very well regarded at Marvel and by his readers. And believe me, Marvel takes care of him, you see all that Spidey stuff with Bagley’s Spideys on it? Bagley’s taken care of.
If only the older guys (and not just Perez) can get that kind of deal, and not just the "hot" artists.
I think there was a period early on in the creator owned days of Archie Goodwin's Epic Comics and early Vertigo where the movie/TV rights weren't automatically handed over to the publisher. Which I imagine was the case when Alien Legion (owned by Carl Potts?) was optioned back in the day (and there are probably others... Groo? Elfquest? Dreadstar?). I'm trying to remember the specific example of an early Vertigo creator owned work that slipped through as well.>I'm sure there is probably Option Money floated to movie concepts introduced in many low selling and cancelled comics that have never made it to the big screen (Alien Legion!).
I wonder about THIS too. Used to be, anything you created while working at the big two was OWNED by the big two; even if they never published it! There was a big stink in the early 80's that I recall demonstrating the unlawfulness of this clause; but it was there for decades. I'd bet that their contracts are now custom'd to each employee. The only real GOOD thing to come out of the 90's was the idea that a person could actually own a comic character. (Not that this was actually a NEW idea; but it was to the big two.)
I don't know how Marvel/Icon works, but apparently anything published by DC/Vertigo/Wildstorm these days gives Warner Bros the right to option automatically and DC/Vertigo/Wildstorm gets a piece of the action. I believe I've heard of situations where something is "Creator Owned" but DC/Vertigo still holds the trademarks (relating to our other discussion) and has locked in all the options.Comment
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>the main driving point that sparked this discussion isn't whether Archie Digests sell better on the newstands. It's whether or not someone would get compensated better if they pencilled for Marvel/DC or Archie.
True; and although I can't provide definitive info I wouldn't be surprised if someone makes more at Archie. At least on the actual book. Despite the lack of attention the books get from the "comic community" at large they still seem to be a sizable presence in the industry.
What makes me wonder though is all the stories of how tightfisted they tend to be. I can see this still being the Archie standard; since their place is so secure. Unlike the big two and a half, Archie doesn't HAVE to provide the latest and greatest "event" every month. They're gonna sell their books regardless.
>Mad Magazine has probably always outsold an average mid-range Marvel comic, but I know Sergio Aragones has commented in the past about how he doesn't see a cent past his initial payment despite all the reprints (I'm not even sure he got his original art back).
Now THAT'S old school thinking! Most companies would hire you to produce pages that they ultimately owned. You wouldn't get your works back either, since you really had no claim on them. (What you produced wasn't "yours," it belonged to the company.)
Stupid Comics
>I think there was a period early on in the creator owned days of Archie Goodwin's Epic Comics and early Vertigo where the movie/TV rights weren't automatically handed over to the publisher.
I think this started with the independants of the early 80's. A lot of them were either creator published; or they had weird deals with the creators. (Like First; who held the rights in some weird kind of legal stasis. Hence the rights reverting back to the creators a set time after the company's death, and not reverting to public domain. Or "AV/Renegade, who I think jyst did the nuts and bolts of publishing the books, while the creators retained all rights.) Epic and Vertigo were Marvel and DC's attempts at producing "independant" comics in response to this. So they probably adopted some of the independant practices to make working for them more attractive.
>I believe I've heard of situations where something is "Creator Owned" but DC/Vertigo still holds the trademarks (relating to our other discussion) and has locked in all the options.
I think it worked this way with First too. The company held the trademarks so that they could bring to bear the COMPANY legal resources to protect them; although the creators actually still held the actual rights. Even though they couldn't actually DO anything with them while the company was still around.
Don C.Comment
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>Ironically, they have just announced the return of the Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters to be published by Dynamite.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Although I DO recall the Hamsters having some weird sort of cult popularity on their own, back in the day.
>No doubt multiple covers will be involved.
No doubt. 'Cos if history has taught us ANYTHING; it's that people NEVER learn the lessons of history.
Don C.Comment
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