I'm interested to know what Ed Brubaker got for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He created the Winter Soldier, the character is the main villain of the movie, and his name is in the title. And yet I have seen him say that he got paid more for being an extra in the movie than he did for creating the character. He has not written anything for Marvel in years.
The problem with WS is that it was the reinvention of a character that was already owned by Marvel (and also, John Byrne apparently said that every Cap writer's second story pitch was "...and Bucky turns out to still be alive"). He has every right to be angry, but not nearly as justified as Starlin
Completely unrelated, but I remember how I found EVS years ago. I was legit looking for tutorials on comic books script writing or something and this random video popped up in the search about how to draw Harvey Weinstein. Dead ass paused my search and was like “okay”. Never looked back. Ironically enough, just listening to EVS’ philosophy on business has been the biggest comic artist pro secret. So, thanks.
You've talked about Marvel and this for years. Too bad none of Marvel's "creatives" listened to you. However, since the creatives at Marvel aren't trying to maximize the economic value of the properties they work on, but are instead using the characters to push the creatives' personal agendas, I find their discovery of this to be funny.
Their personal agendas, which basically is the program of the upper, vocal echelon of society, which they temporarily are part of, untalented though they are. Being castaways when no longer politically useful, will be a chilling experience for these token pawns.
Not only did Starlin create Thanos, he wrote the damn story that they made into two movies (with changes), and was the lynchpin of the whole thing. Jim should be loaded. I wonder what he made.
This is why creators should work for themselves. Given the success of CG and now the Rippaverse, I hope it gives people the motivation and inspiration to go independent and screw over the large corporations. There will be a point where we don't need them for entertainment. 😊
Yeah,Quorra,Eric didn't want to mess with any comic company,he knew the DEAL. LOL. 3 million comics sold as we speak and all the money goes to Eric. SWEET.
Yeah,Quorra,Eric didn't want to mess with any comic company,he knew the DEAL. LOL. 3 million comics sold as we speak and all the money goes to Eric. SWEET.
This reminds me of something an uncle of mine said while drunk. "The bigger the company name, the more they'll treat you like crap." I've found that's been depressingly true over the years.
They make even worse products, noticed this as a kid with video games, and of course mcu. Over time the product becomes dumbed down, and homogenized to appeal to lowest common denominator. Stop appealing to actual fans, and start chasing phantom audiences. Now you got woke shit and esg which makes things way worse. You get a worse product, and blue hair calling you nazi or company moral figging making weird socal statements for esg score.
People need to largely stop being r tards and learn to bail on these companies when they start getting too big and make garbage/ dumb decisions. Get used to seeing companies and ip fail when they go bad. Actual capitalism vote with your wallet, make them compete or go broke..
Jim Starlin had to sign his paperwork a second time for Thanos. It seems Marvel lost his creator agreement when they moved offices years ago. I hope he negotiated a bigger check that time around but I thought it was too personal to ask how much.
People should be aware of this in all fields of work. I am an IT professional at a few of my jobs there was a clause in my contracts that if I ever created anything using my work tools and even in some cases at home. That it would actually be their property and not mine.
Funny how they only want the benefits not the liability - say for instance you created some brilliant ransonware at home and shutdown half the government they should be fined or jailed as well 🤣😂🤣
It seems the more powerful a company is, the less likely they will honor their contracts with individuals. After Disney purchased Lucasfilms, they stopped paying royalties to authors who wrote "Star Wars" novels. Not because they weren't legally obligated to pay these people. They were. To be honest, I don't know if it was ever resolved. I remember author Allen Dean Foster went public with the issue, explaining both he and his wife had health problems and he needed what was owed to him.
Because people keep agreeing to work for them for a pittance & the prestige of saying they work there. We've all known this for decades. So I don't know why people keep repeating it. They know what they're signing. It not being fair really isn't the point. It's still a choice they made.
If I remember correctly, the creator of The Winter Soldier was also poorly paid for creation that was a title character for a Marvel movie. CA:TWS was a huge blockbuster.
Marvel views artists as interchangeable and easily replaced labor, and therefore they get wages. DC treats creatives like professionals, and they get a share of the profits. Marvel is currently winning in the marketplace, and under the current circumstances I find that amusing and instructive. This is another reason for the most talented artists to directly fund their creations.
Neil Adams did sterling work to get Siegel and Shuster improved payments ahead of Superman the movie. Nothing has changed. Probably worse in fact. EVS - a quality commentary of the state of things. Pity DC universe movies aren't better and making more as the creators would get better payments I'd expect.
Actually,John,Neal got them the payments in the first place and got their names on the Superman movies as the creators of SUPES.And no,Siegel nor Shuster weren't ripped off by DC comics for Superman,they sold the rights for Supes to Dc for 130.00,that was standard practice back then.Their salary for producing the Supes comic was HEFTY. Just saying this because some people are saying these guys got ripped off by the industry at that time.
Actually,John,Neal got them the payments in the first place and got their names on the Superman movies as the creators of SUPES.And no,Siegel nor Shuster weren't ripped off by DC comics for Superman,they sold the rights for Supes to Dc for 130.00,that was standard practice back then.Their salary for producing the Supes comic was HEFTY. Just saying this because some people are saying these guys got ripped off by the industry at that time.
There's EVS and family, huddled around the Christmas tree, drooling over the pool brochure. Then, his Marvel royalties arrive. Meltdown ensures. Sadly, no cousin Eddie to kidnap Kevin Feige and bring him back in the R.V.
Ethan, large corporation has a history of not paying out, just look at the way Peggy Lee was treated over royalties for her contributions to Lady and the Tramp.
You, ya boi zack and young rippa are the future of american comics. If image comics's owners had ball, they would be supreme right now but they sold out. Keep up the good work
We need a copyright reform focused on creators instead of corporations. Where the creator is, for life, the right holder, and can share, but not transfer, copyright to someone else, but not to a corporation, and keeps the rights for life in non transferable way. That means for as long as the creator lives, the work is copyrighted, but once the creator is no longer with us, the work enters public domain. That will stop this kind of situations.
You, Richard, and now Eric are showing how to fight back. Creator owned IPs are the wave of the future, the community you guys are forming will lead to a new comics empire, like the mainstream was in the beginning. The key is to NOT follow their mistakes, keep it creator owned, pay the artists well, and always respect the audience by giving them good stories and awesome characters.
Marvel I heard is even cheap when they hire CGI companies and I heard some people that work in CGI left because they hated Disney so much. This would explain the She-Hulk CGI.
Thank you so much for shedding light on these type of deals and business of making comics and the various adaptations than come therein. Everyone is so focus on the stories and products but few actually discuss the business of it. Especially when it comes to these deals with bigger companies.
This brings me back to the days where I used to work in movies, tv and video production. Fighting to get the money you are owed by a signed contract. The last year I really worked in production I lost over 10000$ in unpaid salary and that is not counting the money I didn’t get taking days off from my regular work to go work on those projects. One of the producers who had not paid most of the staff emailed all the staff about how great the movie turned out to be,how well the movie was doing in festivals and how they were going to go to regular theaters soon. Everybody insulted the fucker, demanding the money. He never answered anybody, until he announced a special screening for us to see the movie where we had to pay for tickets, nobody bought tickets but a lot of the team showed un and confronted him, I don’t know what happened exactly but I heard some people got partial pays, but not me…
@@SL-hq2ck I don't remember the name of that movie specifically, but here are a few stories. One of the movies was called Pi = Omega Rho, or some shit like that, had nothing to do with maths, it was about some alien ghosts dumbassery, not sure it ever came out. That movie was cursed from the start, they could not get most of the equipment, we had to use the DP's personal camera with terrible lenses that someone else lent to us, we had no steadicam rig so we had to improvise, the ownership of the terrain where we were supposed to shoot for a whole week was contested in court so we were not allowed to go there, a bar that allowed us to shoot decided that it was a good idea to have customers drinking alcohol so we ended up having a bunch of drunk dumbasses ruining the sound, the first AD had never worked as an AD so she was not able to assert her authority. I was supposed to shoot for 2 weeks with them then 2 weeks on another movie right after, we ended up doing 2 days of work, they demanded that I stayed for 2 extra weeks, which I refused to do because I had another project that I told them about even before getting hired. The second project went great and I got paid, the first one, well, there was a lawsuit by part of the staff and they got very little after paying the lawyer's fee. One was a documentary about the business behind art, the producer got sued for another project he released and lost, he wanted me to give him the project files of what I had done without paying me for the time I spent on it, I gave him a date at which I was going to delete the project if he didn't pay me and sent him a video at midnight on that day deleting the project. One was a movie about an immigrant who came to Canada with his son, he lost his son and while searching he ended up going to a warehouse party, willingly getting super high on hard drugs and banging 2 chicks that night, it made absolutely no sense, no idea if he ever found the son. Luckily I was there just for 2 days of pickups, but I am still waiting for my money. Maybe it's the lost son who had it. One guy that I was helping a lot, he was paying me cash for a few hours a week because he could not afford union rates and I hated union stuff by that time and he was very passionate so we got an agreement. One day he applied for financing for post production in my name without telling me, he knew someone who helped him go around the rules and one day in my bank account just a little under 10k showed up, he then demanded me to transfer the funds back to him. I contacted the NFB and explained the situation, I refunded them the money and he got in trouble. If he had asked me before I would probably have said yes if I could keep part of the money, I am not rich but that guy was even worst off than me, he was putting everything he had in his movie and that really hurt me. A guy who I thought was a friend got a bunch of people to make a movie, we all agreed that we would take a delayed pay, so if the movie made money we would get paid and if everybody was paid in full we could get a slight bonus, He offered to help everybody get jobs on union sets because he knew a lot of people, nobody got 1 day of work on a union set and we never got a penny. I know the movie made some money, not enough to pay everybody fully but enough that we could get maybe 40% of what we were owed. I have not worked on a movie, tv or video set for almost 10 years now, I used to do work as PA, grip, gaffer, boom operator, sound guy, first second and third AD, second camera assistant and data wrangler (a DP I used to work a lot with told me once that he hated seeing me coming on set if I was doing data management, because it always meant that I found a problem on the footage, and that is true, I would not leave my computer to go on set unless there was a problem that probably could not be fixed in post production easily). I also did a lot of editing and post production. I sometimes look for small post production gigs and sometimes a friend asks for help for editing and post production. He knows I will say yes unless I am too busy and I know that he will pay me. I make less than 1K a year doing post production, I mostly do it for fun now.
@@sergentboucherie Bruh... crazy stuff, but I appreatiate you sharing this. Sounds like there's a lot of pent up frustration with the business waiting be heard. But none of this surprises me, really. Even an observer outside the business, film business seems severely packed with shysters, frauds and well meaning but too clueless and unskilled people. I hope you also have some nuggets of gold, in terms of positive experiences. And, yeah, good luck in the future, man.
@@SL-hq2ck Thanks dude, what really sucks is the student loan I took to go back to school to get a degree in managing tv and movie sets that barely got me any money. Without that loan I would be in a much better financial situation. And with covid and the crazy inflation hitting one after the other let’s just say that I am very tight at the end of the months these days.
@@sergentboucherie Hey, man, I draw for a living, so... in a very similar boat here. Living month by month. Power to you, man. Good things in the future.
RU-vid asked for my opinion on this video- I clicked on the happy face on the far right (the highest available rating) and on all of the descriptor buttons; calming, useful, novel, informative, entertaining and other. I hope it helps! 🤘🏻🇺🇸
Holy shit, Marvel and Disney are an even Bigger Scum than I thought. When I was younger I wanted to make my own character for marvel. But now, I'm 100% glad I'm prioritising hate on Disney and Marvel over ever thinking about joining them Tho I doubt I ever would've have tbh. I got the idea but not the skill 🤣
I feel like creatives (and unfortunately, Marvel) have wised up on not creating new characters, because every new character I've seen in the Marvel comicbooks have been derivatives of already established heroes (Kamala Khan, Miles Morales, Blade's daughter, the gaggle of idiots that were the Captain America wannabes on Cap's 80th birthday) or mutants, which means they're vaguely associated with the X-Men. Shoot, as much as everyone trashed it, at least the New Warriors were actually original characters! Don't think Marvel is going to get them onto films and television anytime soon.
If more pro’s with aspirations of getting Hollywood deals hear this stuff they will finally come around to going Indy. I was hired by a well known athlete through a studio and with my artwork got a studio production deal. I got paid decently but not what I should’ve gotten. Sadly we know what we got into because we want the paychecks and the prestige within the industry. Do your own stuff.
You got the prestige thing right. That's part of the lure & why people give up so much to be part of it. The types they have in comics today who put it in their Twitter bios when their page rates are worse than they've ever been is proof positive just how much the prestige of saying 'I work there' means to some.
I worked as an airbrush artist in a mall back in 1989. We worked on commission. The store made all the money for the items we painted ON. We got 70% for the artwork. After working three months from a sort of nice guy, he got audited and was found to owe the IRS around 12K. His solution was to take money from his artists. My commission dropped from 70% to 43%. I asked if we could raise our prices to compensate for OUR lost income. He said "No". Of course he did. It wasn't his fault he was caught cheating on his taxes. I stayed on for two more months as I had a wife and a daughter. When, after THAT time, I asked again, he told me that I was free to leave. I didn't have a contract. So I went back to work at my old shop. The second airbrush artist (Who was more awesome than that store deserved) left shortly after that. The store closed. If my former boss wanted to pay off the IRS, he needed another angle. I have no idea what happened to that shop. I did find out that the owner is now a Licensed Practical Nurse. I still paint and draw for a living. Hardly any blood or semen involved.
I think you are misunderstanding the situation, but honestly don't want to do the research. The IRS money that "he owed" was probably FICA and stuff he should have built into his pricing model. Basically, he was overpaying you.
love the content and appreciate your videos, i do have a question though. im sure you have been asked this before, but lets say you have a lot of ideas for characters and stories. what do you feel the best route some one trying to create content? i know theres youtube and other social media routes but im curious if there are paths to be taken that arent obvious ? i know theres no simple solution, but any bread crumbs are appreciated. thanks for your time ! and love the characters you have created. also have you ever thought about doing videos explaining your creative process when it comes to stories and ideas. i just think it would be fun to hear :)
This actually WAS a comic artist pro secret story. Great background and experience and sooo sad what happens to all these people. I would suspect someone like Sana Amanat knew all this and set up a much better deal for herself for Kamala Khan (though G. Willow Wilson still probably got screwed).
What could she have demanded that others couldn't? She strikes me as the type who likes idea of people knowing she 'created' such a character rather than what it pays. After all, it's still a derviative of another character with her self insert grafted on. She got a few more bites of the cherry because of her minority status. She may even have gotten a little more for a show over a comic but neither did well & her employers knew that in advance.
The smartest thing Bendis ever did was to reference the Marvel encyclopedia instead of making new characters. He kept his own ideas for Powers, and let Marvel recycle the Hood.
This is a big reason why Disney didn't bother building a John Carter franchise. Marvel and Star Wars were rich with characters that could be exploited without compensation.
I can't sympathise with these people. No, it's not fair. But they accept knowing that or not reading their contract. If you don't understand it, that's what lawyers are for. Or even local citizens advice bureaus. People want to say they work at x y z yet we've known since the Batman/Superman days people who sign away their rights get stiffed. This is no surprise to anyone. They're just unhappy it happens.
I don't know anything about the industry but when I found out that Disney said the Star Wars extended Universe was not canon I instantly thought, that's because they don't want to pay anyone royalties for a good story. I am not surprised Disney and marvel lowball their talent and replace them with a copy and paste generation. It's sad that the magic makers behind the scene or not properly taken care of.
It's Slavery with a new name. But what do you do when they all pull the same tactic? Going independent is not an option for everyone. Imagine the competition if everyone were independent business people.
To me, the worst part of all this is, how these are accepted practices in many industries. Especially, those involving talent, and contracts. The companies lie profusely, and portray themselves as caring, honest and virtuous to the artists. Then, their legal departments craft manipulative documents. They dangle big numbers in front of people that, could be transformative to their livelihood. The companies know the vast majority of the talent will not retain a lawyer proficient in contract law. so, if there are maybe single digit percentage of the talent that had the savvy and means to catch this crap? Oh well, they still win out on the other 90+%. As I said, this is all acceptable, just part of doing business..etc etc. As much as I distrust government, see it as a hot bed of corruption. Things like this remind me that we are basically screwed either way. Because, the private sector can be every bit as much corrupt.
Sorry to hear about you being stiffed by Marvel and DC like that, Ethan, though I'm glad the royalty cheques for Justice League softened the blow a bit. 💡💵
The artists are doing the right thing by hiring attorneys. Always get an attorney to review your contracts. Edit: RE: Jim Starlin - not only did he create Thanos, but Drax, Gamora and more huge MCU characters.
It's a catch 22. Whether we like it or not Marvel are a household name so getting a gig with them is a guarantee of the kind of exposure that would take you years in indie comics and you may never achieve it. Best way to do it for 5 years max, and in that time do your best work. If they ask you create a new character make sure it's executed well but as derivative as possible so that you put as little as yourself into it as you can so that when they eventually screw you over you can shrug your shoulders and move on. Keep your best ideas for your own IP
Don't you find that strange, that they keep paying something out of all the big things involving your characters? That's because you still have rights over them. Author's rights are inalienable. They own the patrimonial rights. You own the author's rights. It's not a gift - just a shut-up value.
She was never more than mediocre. And we all know she got into comics through her "boyfriend" at the time, Mark Waid. She even said she knew nothing about the DC characters, never read comics (!), and that her first exposure was through Batman: The Animated Series (1992)! I don't know how terrible a person she is but it PISSED a lot of people trying to get work in comics that all it took was Waid to talk her up to some editors!!!
4:45 The writers and artists who create disney comic stories (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Mickey Mouse) they don't get anything from the reprints of their stories in other countries.
Hey Ethan! I think Cyberfrog looks cool and i wanna read whats going on and what leads into Rekt planet. After the 90s TBP, does Bloodhoney take place after?
Well that sucks. I took a liking to an old Marvel character that had been totally abandoned and I've been writing a multi-story epic for them that includes both old and new characters. I was hoping to one day try to get it published if I ever got it finished, but by the way you talk that may not be the most lucrative thing. Looks like I may have to divert my efforts to something else before dealing with Marvel. It's a shame because I prefer Marvel's properties over DC's in most cases. 🙁
Disney made entire Star Wars books library into Legends, so it have to pay Writers royalties. Even if Marvel is as bad, Disney will make it worse. Disney: What are royalties?
Miss Daniel Kiblesmith says he gets to Fawn of Princes of Foreign Lands as payment for the Incest Twins, Internet Gastic Surgery, and Fat Motion or Fat Jogger (Hard Bastard)
Contracts like these are legally dubious. I think of the ip that creators make for these companies like tile work, you don't get to keep it or benefit from it. Creators can't allow themselves to be low-balled
And this is why characters like safespace and the other one(I honestly forgot the name. They are that stupid of characters) even exist. They don't pay actually creative people so only untalented, uncreative hacks will work for them anymore. Even these hacks understand that their is no point in ever even trying to improve and rather use their position to jam a message down everyone's throats. There's a part of me that feels like safespace and the other one are pure spite creations because they will obviously never be used outside of comics, but that would be giving too much credit. Edit: Snowflake. Snowflake was the other one. Jesus that was not even worth the two second Google.
OHHHH this explains why Atrocitous has kinda just disappeared along with the other John's era lanterns. Glad I stopped buying modern books at least from the big 2
No wonder coming from marver... remember what Neil Adams told the press about how much marvel paid him vs the 100k DC paid him in royalties when they used Ra's Al Ghoul for the Nolan batman trilogy
Only $25k for designing and creating a popular character is insulting. For comparison, the people 'simply' animating that character for the movies would get paid way more than that.
That article off to the side about a trailer being released for "Teen Wolf: The Movie" is really annoying me. Teen Wolf already was a movie. Making another movie and adding "The Movie" is moronic.
The guy who made ben10 made American chavas and only got 10k for the character in dr strange he didn't even cash it he showed it to the press. He is fortunate enough to make ben10 so he could come forward.
That's entertainment. The top dogs love to virtue signal, but there are certainly millions of people who feel they have been cheated out of their fair due by companies like Disney and Warner Brothers.
