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^ Boy, that Roy Thomas was a sneaky corporate stooge back then... "House Roy"
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Think OUTSIDE the Box! For the BEST in Repro & Custom Packaging! -
In what other industry are you contributing that much to a company and getting paid piecework? With no ownership, royalties or bonuses of any kind? It's ridiculous.
I know people here disagree, but I think Marvel's track record with their employees sucks and they bring this upon themselves. They maybe working within the legal boundaries (as recent legal judgments have shown), but they're a perfect example of how legal doesn't have to be moral.Comment
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I think Templeton's point about using Ploog's work is moot. It's NOT Ploog's work, it's Marvel's. They're the one's receiving compensation.
A lot of writers do this at conventions - the same way a lot of artists make a bit of extra cash making and selling sketches of characters they don't own. You can say it's different because the artists are drawing the characters - but legally it isn't.Comment
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You know those talented guys sold their souls to the Devil(MARVEL DC) to feed their kids, pay their Mortgages,cars etc......
Back then it was a job, comics were throw away disposable art. if those guys had a crystal ball they would have taken them to the bank.
Those artist and writers were just happy to have a job doing something creative till something in advertising or maybe the syndicates came along.
Marvel just protects itself and doesn't care when it comes to business with characters they own......and they will fight tooth and nail and win all the time.
They just don't give two ****s about anyones feelings, they have to put out a product to make money for the shareholders that's the bottom line......
Their mentality is Don't like the new stuff freek you...we'll find people who do.....like the old stuff okay we collected for you now go out and buy it......Comment
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Disney is notoriously litigious and obsessive about protecting their trademarks. I'm suspecting that this is just the first of the hammers to fall for the Disney era Marvel. Check out L'officier's description here...
Disney, if not Marvel, does have a full office staffed with para legals of young lawyers whose only job is to look for copyright/tm infringements and send C&D (cease & desist) letters. I have seen them. They don’t do it for the money or to be a pain the the ***, they do it based on the legal theory that if you don’t actively protect your (c)/tm, you run the risk of it being used against you as an affirmative defense in an infringement case.Comment
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I believe (other than most new talent not being as good these days) that nobody really wants to give their best work at the big two anymore.Comment
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So the vague legality of Marvel's contract method is to be blamed solely on one side and not the other? In my view Marvel is just as responsible - if not more responsible, because they had more to protect and were in a better position to make their stakes clear.
I agree that the corporation doesn't care about people's feelings - but it does care about a bottom line. Negative publicity can hurt their bottom line - and that they do care about. That's how Siegel and Shuster got their names in the credits of Superman - as far as I know DC didn't legally have to do that - they were shamed into it.
Yeah - Templeton is overstating the simplicity of these issues. There are lots of things to consider. The key being that what Marvel artists were agreeing to wasn't spelled out in full, and the benefit of future knowledge of how these characters were going to be used was not known by the artists OR Marvel.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth to see Marvel/Disney spending "over a hundred thousand dollars to defend themselves" (as Templeton claims in his strip) then to just see Marvel/Disney head these problems off before they start by offering bonuses or extra compensation to artists who were key contributors to creating characters from the start when movie deals like this arise.
It's small change to the corporation to compensate a fair wage for the work that contributed to MILLIONS in revenue - but it would make a HUGE difference to the artists involved - so to hear comic fans saying "the artists should have known better", it irks me.Last edited by Brazoo; Feb 15, '12, 3:49 PM.Comment
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There isn't even the slightest possibility that Marvel/Disney is going to do this.______
ChArLiEComment
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Essentially, given the amount of text that can be printed out on the back of a cheque, I'm not quite sure it can be as airtight as the contemporary contracts you see now that everyone is all lawyered up. Throw into the mix that these properties are being exploited in avenues that were not even imagined or maybe didn't even exist in decades past (home video, dvd, video games, digital downloads, Apps, etc), it does get tricky. Although it appears that Friedrich signed a more detailed contract in 1978 in addition to the back-of-cheque release.Comment
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I recall way back in the 80s news stories about Disney demanding their characters be removed from murals in daycare centers. It got them quite a bit of bad press as I recall.
ChrisComment
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Disney is no-holds-barred when it comes to illegal use of their characters. They've changed the way copyright rulings have been laid out and how works fall into the public domain by throwing millions of dollars at it.
The irony being that Disney was founded on using characters that were in the public domain.Comment
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If not for the Sonny Bono law, all the copyrights of major icons of the early twentieth century such as Mickey Mouse, Superman etc would have fallen into the public domain in the next decade or so. Even if the corporations hold the TM's still, there would have been a great deal or wriggle room beyond the trademark logo and images. But that was the point of copyright expiry in the first place... to ensure the life of a work beyond the life of an author and immediate heirs. It didn't anticipate the corporate entity that outlives human lifetimes having ownership of these kind of properties.Comment
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