Creators Wronged

I think I may have come up with a plot for a mystery novel. If you’re a freelance writer skimming Elance or Craigslist for work, you’ll come across ads from people who’ll pay you to write stories for them. For a flat fee, you produce anywhere from 1000 to 30,000 words, which your client can then do whatever they want with—run it on their blog, sell it, self-pub it under their byline. In some cases the client provides the plot and characters; in other ads, this much input from the buyer isn’t mentioned. You write a story, you get paid, which is how it’s supposed to work.

The trouble with this scenario is, you have no rights to your work. You agree to give those to the client in exchange for an agreed-upon sum. This is known as “work for hire.” Remember that term.

Here’s what I got to thinking: suppose you answered one of these ads and wrote a romance novel. You whip out 30,000 words of steamy passion, whipped cream and Brazil nuts and receive $1000 for your efforts. Actually, that’s not bad. I think it’s more than my last release through my publisher earned. Here’s another term to remember: “self-promotion.”

Then your client turns around and sells your work, now their work, to a publisher. And against all odds, it takes off. You didn’t know it at the time, but you wrote the next 50 Shades. Checks with lots of zeros on them are fired off to the “writer’s” bank account. Agents and publishers who’ve rejected your work for years are now falling all over each other, trying to sign the Next Big Bestselling Author. If the writer milks this puppy right, they’ll never have to write another thing.

You? You’ve got your thousand bucks, no rights to the story you wrote, and no legal leg to stand on, all of which you agreed to when you signed the contract. Sure, go ahead, make a stink. See what it gets you. You’ll be laughed out of court.

(Disclaimer: this isn’t the same as working with a book packager. Usually the packager provides the background, characters and general plot they want to see fleshed out. The flesh-out part is what they pay the writer for. Everybody knows this going in. Some writers even get royalties for writing licensed properties. It all depends on the kind of deal you or your agent negotiates.)

Back at my plotline, the “author” is found murdered. The writer who raised all the ruckus is suddenly the number-one suspect. The rest of the book would be the hapless writer trying to clear their name by rooting out the real killer. These are the stories my brain comes up with when I’m not keeping a closer eye on it.

Dunno if I’ll ever write this. I haven’t decided yet. Here’s a variation you can use if you want, ripped from Real Life: the plight of comic book writers and artists currently getting the shaft.

Comic books heroes are big business in movies and TV these days. Disney (owner of Marvel) and Time-Warner (owner of DC) are cashing in big time. Because that’s not all they own. They own those characters up on the screen, the ones that got their start in comic books. The characters created by writers and artists who don’t see a penny of the millions their brainchildren are raking in.

For an easy example, let’s take the Avengers. Almost all those characters were created or co-created by legendary artist Jack Kirby. Iron Man? Kirby. Thor and Loki? Kirby. The Hulk? Kirby. Captain America? Kirby, all the way back in the 1940s. Before he became a spy, Nick Fury starred in a war comic set in WWII, drawn by three guesses who. I’m not sure who created Hawkeye and the Black Widow, but they first appeared in the Iron Man strip.

I don’t recall seeing Kirby’s name in the credits of the Avengers movie, or in the credits of any of the films that led up to it. I didn’t see Chris Claremont or John Byrne’s names in the credits for any of the X-Men films either, and at least two of those drew their plots directly from the comics. (Also missing was Kirby’s name; he co-created the X-Men.) The billions earned by those characters and stories are going into the pockets of everyone except the writers who initially created them.

Why? Because up until around the 1960s and ‘70s, comic books were cheap, disposable entertainment for kids. The artists and writers who produced them did so as work-for-hire. In those days the paychecks came with a stamp on the back, a contract whereby the worker agreed to waive all rights to their work. If you wanted your money you signed on the dotted line and gave up your rights to whatever you created. Which they did. It was just a comic book. Who knew?

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster didn’t know. They sold the rights to Superman for $130 back in the 1940s. Their heirs have since won judgments from DC/Time-Warner, but it took decades of legal wrangling. Ditto for Kirby's estate, which recently settled with Marvel. Sometimes there’s a measure of justice.

And sometimes it just gets ridiculous. Check out this article on Alan Brennert, who accidentally created an important (and lucrative) character in one of his Batman stories. Go ahead and read it. I’ll be here when you get back.

(…)

Nuts, huh? We’re talking $45 here. Chump change to a behemoth like Time-Warner. I guess they don’t want to set a precedent. Imagine if they paid out royalties to everybody who deserved them. Why, someone in a corner office might have to forego a new Porsche. Or (shudder) send their kids to public school.

The moral of the story is, if you’re a writer, artist, singer, or anyone else in the arts, read your contracts carefully. If you see the words “work for hire” run, do not walk, to the exit. Nobody knows what’s going to become huge somewhere down the line. Wouldn’t you rather be the one who owns the rights to it?

Now I have to decide if I want to write that murder mystery. What the hell, NaNoWriMo’s coming up.

Quickies

Miniblogs today. I’ll just ramble until I hit the word count. Select whichever ones appeal to you.

# # #

First, the big news: is Stray Kitty back from the dead? He vanished abruptly last January, after coming to my door for breakfast for well over a year. I kept watch for three months before I donated my remaining cans of cat food to the ASPCA. Nobody’s seen him around since then.

Until now. Once again we’ve got a black-and-white cat back roaming the neighborhood. He’s been down at my end of the street, but seems to hang out more at the other end. Other neighbors have seen him, so it’s not just my eyes going bad. But is it really him?

Could be. Or not. The most popular theory is, somebody caught him last winter and was keeping him indoors. That’s entirely possible. I tried more than once to entice him into the house and out of the subzero temps, but he wouldn’t go for it, even when tempted with food. There was no way I’d get close enough to grab him without a net. Our hypothetical cat lover may have used a live trap. However, if this was the case, whoever caught him never informed the neighbors. If he was indoors, he must have escaped and returned to his old haunts. I haven’t checked the porch since March and nobody else was putting food out, so it’s no wonder he doesn’t frequent our end of the street.

Personally, I don’t think it’s him. I got an extended look at him the other day when I spotted him crossing the street. This cat looks smaller, definitely thinner, and doesn’t move the way Stray Kitty did. SK stalked like a scale-model tiger. He moved like a wild animal. This new version moves like a regular cat. I’m inclined to believe this is a descendant, a kitten or grandkitten. Stray Kitty roamed the streets for three years, and he’d never been fixed. There’s a farm on the other side of Route 272, so unaltered females would have been available.

Or this could be history repeating itself, somebody’s pet who got loose. Black and white cats with his markings aren’t exactly scarce. The only way to be sure would be to get close to him. Good luck with that.

# # #

The new TV season is now well underway, and I haven’t watched a single one of the new shows. I’ve even dropped some of my returning shows. I’m pretty much down to Bar Rescue, The Flash, Supernatural, America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway at this point. I’ll switch over to Sleepy Hollow when Project Runway wraps up. Not sure what I’ll do when Grimm comes back. That’s scheduled opposite ANTM, and I don’t have a working recording device. As usual, there are only a few shows I want to see, and they’re scheduled for the same time. Somebody somewhere really wants to piss me off.

The only new shows I want to check out are Supergirl (CBS attempts to hop onto the superhero bandwagon), and Legends of Tomorrow, the superhero group show on the CW spun off from Arrow and Flash. I’m turning into a fan of Wentworth Miller, who always steals the show as Captain Cold. Somebody else must like him, because they put him in a Yoplait commercial that’s a hoot. I shouldn’t skip the commercials. A lot of time they’re better than the shows they interrupt.

# # #

Speaking of superheroes, comics and TV, Tuesday’s Flash episode was loaded with Easter eggs for us long-time comics fans. Not only did they do a live-action recreation of the cover where Barry Allen meets Jay Garrick, the Flash from the 1940s, but they introduced the concept of parallel universes. The Flash crew discovered 52 possible alternate worlds, a nod to DC’s “New 52” company-wide revamp of a few years ago. Back in the ‘80s DC had so many alternate worlds they ran a twelve-issue maxiseries (Crisis on Infinite Earths) and destroyed all the extras. Then they brought a few back. Then a few more. Then they rebooted the whole thing and started over with the New 52. Which they’ve had to reboot yet again because nobody liked the new versions of the characters. I don’t know how many alternate universes they have now, or care. I know they’re trying to make Superman edgy. Like trying to get close to a stray cat, good luck with that.

Now that DC has officially undone Crisis on Infinite Earths, Marvel just had their own version and wiped out a lot of their parallel universes. Now they’ve rebooted and are starting over with a slew of new first issues. Their motivation appears to be to downplay the Fantastic Four and X-Men, because Fox won’t give back the movie rights. Comic books, once cheap, disposable entertainment for kids, have bloated into a corporate cash cow under the control of CEOs and stockholders. At one time I wanted to be a comic book writer. I’m glad now I didn’t go in that direction.

Hmmm … between me dropping TV shows and comics, I’ll have more time to write. If I learn how to draw, I can make my own comics. Who needs you, Time-Warner? I’ve got paper and a pen! Enjoy your day, folks.

Universal Problems

If you’ve ever read comic books, or been part of a fandom, or been a writer or reader of a shared world anthology, you know how much fun a universe shared by several writers can be. You get to swap characters, make outrageous team-ups and pair-ups and hookups, and enjoy another writer’s take on your brainchildren. Remember all those Marvel movies that culminated in The Avengers? There’s a shared universe done right.

And then sometimes you hit potholes.

Over on my other blog, Shapeshifter Seductions (www.shapeshifterseductions.blogspot.com), my serial story is moving into the home stretch. The hero is racing to the rescue of his damsel in distress, who’s an unwilling passenger on the back of a mutated mammoth bent on major destruction. The hero’s way out of his league here, but he’s determined to stop the monster before it goes Godzilla on the town of Talbot’s Peak.

Here’s where the problems kick in. Talbot’s Peak is a shared universe, collectively created by four other writers and me. Over the years we’ve come up with all sorts of characters, some paranormal, some human, some alien. We’ve got dragons and interstellar superwolves and kickass women from other dimensions with weapons that could take out the Terminator. You think they’re going to sit on their hands while Talbot’s Peak is threatened?

Well, yeah. They’re going to have to, because this isn’t their story.

This happens all the time in comic books. It’s been established for years that pretty much every superhero in the Marvel universe hangs out in or around New York City. So when Ultron drops by and starts leveling Manhattan, why is Spider-Man going against him all by himself? Where’s the Fantastic Four? The Avengers? Is Thor on a coffee break or what?

Over in the DC universe, the Thanagarians are invading Earth again, and only the Flash can stop them. What, just him? Can’t he call his buddies in the Justice League? Or send an SOS to the Green Lantern Corps? They were supposed to be watching the Thanagarians in the first place. This is their problem. The least they could do is lend a hand.

The usual explanation is that every other hero in the city is “unavailable,” or off on a mission or something. The real reason is that the name of the book is The Amazing Spider-Man, not The Amazing Spider-Man Gets His Ass Hauled Out of the Fire by a Guest Star. In spite of the dozens of heroes, mutants and gods on hand, Spidey’s got to face the menace by himself. That’s the way the story has to go.

Ditto for the Flash. Sure, he can go whining to Superman, if he wants to look like an ineffectual wuss in his own book. No point in calling Batman; he always has his phone turned off. It’s okay if he calls Hawkman, because Hawkman’s a Thanagarian and would know how to fight them. But in the end the Flash has to defeat them on his own, because it’s his name on the cover.

And what about Harry Potter? He went to Hogwarts for seven years and faced death practically on a daily basis. Where were the teachers? That school was crawling with fully-trained adult magicians. Why wasn’t Dumbledore dealing with Voldemort? Why leave the fate of the world to a trio of underaged kids? And you thought your school district had lax anti-bullying policies.

One look at the title answers all these concerns. It’s not Dumbledore and the Prisoner of Azkaban, after all. Whoever’s name is on the front of the book is the one who has to deal with the problems. That’s why they’re the hero, after all. Even in a shared universe.

And that’s why (no offense to the gods and demigods and dragons and aliens and whatnot living in Talbot’s Peak and created by my fellow writers) it’s Ewan the coyote shifter who’s going to have to deal with the giant mammoth and save the town and rescue the girl. It may end up being a group effort, but in the end he’s the one doing the heavy lifting. It’s his story. He needs to be the hero. If you’ve read the entire Hunger Games trilogy and not just the first book, you know exactly where I’m coming from.

Don’t worry. Ewan's got a few tricks up his sleeve. And sometimes pantsers can haul themselves out of their comfort zone and plot something. It’ll all work out. I’m on top of this. Trust me, I’m a writer.

And please don’t shoot me emails wondering, “But you’ve got a freakin’ dragon there! Why couldn’t the dragon snatch the girl off the mammoth’s back and save the day?” Welllll … the dragon wasn’t available. He was on a mission. He was out in space with Superman or something. Just willingly suspend your disbelief and go with it. Nobody ever said a shared universe had to be a perfect universe.