RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books JACK KIRBY: A tribute to the King...

[INTERVIEWER QUESTION:] You have made your discomfort with DC’s policies very clear. Would you have similar misgivings about working for Marvel?

[writer Chris Roberson: ] I don’t have as clear an understanding of the internal workings of Marvel, of how they deal with their current creators. I can say that I would be deeply uncomfortable on ethical grounds making a living working on, for example, characters created by Jack Kirby whose family receives absolutely no remuneration for it. Yeah, so it’s largely a moot point because I have not been offered work, and at this point I doubt I will, but if offered I would turn it down.

[UPDATE: Chris Roberson has e-mailed in to offer the following correction: “I’ve learned since speaking with you that Marvel reached a settlement with the creators of Captain America some time ago, and in that instance at least the Kirby estate has seen remuneration for Kirby’s creation.”]

[UPDATE 2: Neal Kirby has e-emailed to correct the above: “The settlement Roberson refers to was only between Marvel and Joe Simon. My parents were not part of that action, and never received any remuneration from Marvel for Captain America. Also, neither the estate nor myself and my sisters (separate from the estate) have ever received any funds from Marvel for Captain America.”]

Is there anything you can point to that DC could change that would make you feel comfortable working for them again?

There is, actually, and it was suggested not to me, but in a public forum, I think on Heidi MacDonald’s ComicsBeat.com, by Kurt Busiek. Kurt is tireless in wading into enraged inflamed conversations online and being a voice of reason. But what Kurt suggested was that if Marvel and DC both were to retroactively grandfather their current work-for-hire creator-equity deals— For example, now if you work for DC and you create a character that appears in one of their books, and then years down the line it’s an action figure or it appears in a movie or appears in a TV show or gets republished or whatever the case may be, the person that created that character gets a check. So what Kurt suggested was if DC and Marvel were to grandfather their current equity deals back to 1938 that they would obviate the need for the lawsuits that many of the creators and their estates continue to bring and that also they would have a public relations bonanza on their hands because they would be able to show how they were taking care of the people that made these characters that people cherish now. In much the same way that Time Warner settled with Siegel and Shuster in the ’70s so they could trot them out for the premiere of the Superman movie. How great would it be if Time Warner could point to how they were helping pay for Tony DeZuniga’s hospital bills while they were promoting the Jonah Hex film, or whatever the case may be. I think if they took better care of the people who created the characters that other hands now service, that would do a great deal to engender fonder feelings on my part.

One other thing I would add is that if DC and Marvel did retroactively grant the creator-equity deals to their former creators, we wouldn’t need a Hero Initiative now, because those guys would be getting money. It would reduce the profits a miniscule amount for the larger corporations, but it would take care of entire generations of now dying old men and women who have gone on to see their creations continue to generate revenue they or their children don’t have any part of.

Your career previous to comics was in science fiction and prose publishing. Do you ever have conversations with your friends from that world about creators’ rights in comics, and if so, how do they react?

I’ve had those conversations and it depends. I mean, to people that have a blushing familiarity with prose novels, they’re aghast at the way that the rights structures work, at least for work-for-hire stuff, but for those novelists who’ve done work-for-hire novels, whether it’s writing novels for tie-ins for TV shows or games or action figures or whatever the case may be, they’re perfectly sanguine about it, because it’s the same thing. The difference is that in the prose world, the work-for-hire stuff is a very small sliver that is kind of—I don’t want to say the bottom rung, but it’s not the thing that the most attention is paid to. More attention is paid to stuff that people create themselves and own. And there are sometimes confused looks when I have to explain that the reverse is true in the comics industry.