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Seijaku_Ishida
Shouting Fox
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Sorry If this question has already been ask a million times but honestly there are way too many pages to read through but is Archaia Entertainment a creator owned company in a sense that they'll publish your comic or graphic novel and you retain the rights like Image comics?


I'd sacrifice the rights to my first ten projects if it meant a profitable career in comics. And then I'd use the money to work on projects I care more about, and the notoriety to shop around for a place for those projects to call home where I will keep the creator's rights.
Doing something like that would really only give you a reputation for being easy to screw over.


How many people can you name that started off with a creator owned work and have made it work for them profitably? (By which I mean, how many of them are making a comfortable, continual living in comics doing only creator owned work?) The flip side is, how many people can you name that started off working on a company's shitty title before making their bones and making it big? In the entertainment industry, people who don't sell out somewhere down the line usually don't make it very far.

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Shouting Fox
Seijaku_Ishida
Shouting Fox
xTeChNo_KiSsEsx
Sorry If this question has already been ask a million times but honestly there are way too many pages to read through but is Archaia Entertainment a creator owned company in a sense that they'll publish your comic or graphic novel and you retain the rights like Image comics?


I'd sacrifice the rights to my first ten projects if it meant a profitable career in comics. And then I'd use the money to work on projects I care more about, and the notoriety to shop around for a place for those projects to call home where I will keep the creator's rights.
Doing something like that would really only give you a reputation for being easy to screw over.


How many people can you name that started off with a creator owned work and have made it work for them profitably? (By which I mean, how many of them are making a comfortable, continual living in comics doing only creator owned work?) The flip side is, how many people can you name that started off working on a company's shitty title before making their bones and making it big? In the entertainment industry, people who don't sell out somewhere down the line usually don't make it very far.

I can name quite a few, actually. I'm very interested in independant artists(particularly webcomic artists) that manage to make things work.

And sometimes selling out can screw you over for years like Peter S. Beagle. Really, the entertainment industry is a crapshoot any way you look at it.
Shouting Fox

I'd sacrifice the rights to my first ten projects if it meant a profitable career in comics.

That is without a doubt the dumbest thing I've heard all day.
Quote:
How many people can you name that started off with a creator owned work and have made it work for them profitably? (By which I mean, how many of them are making a comfortable, continual living in comics doing only creator owned work?) The flip side is, how many people can you name that started off working on a company's shitty title before making their bones and making it big? In the entertainment industry, people who don't sell out somewhere down the line usually don't make it very far.

You think getting exploited is a mandatory part of having a successful career in the arts. And you don't just expect it; you welcome the idea.

Congratulations. You're part of the problem.
Shouting Fox
xTeChNo_KiSsEsx
Sorry If this question has already been ask a million times but honestly there are way too many pages to read through but is Archaia Entertainment a creator owned company in a sense that they'll publish your comic or graphic novel and you retain the rights like Image comics?


I'd sacrifice the rights to my first ten projects if it meant a profitable career in comics. And then I'd use the money to work on projects I care more about, and the notoriety to shop around for a place for those projects to call home where I will keep the creator's rights.


Uhm that doesn't answer my question sweatdrop

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Shouting Fox

In the entertainment industry, people who don't sell out somewhere down the line usually don't make it very far.


i've done work-for-hire. it was the most miserable working experience of my life. actually selling the rights of something i painstakingly crafted? oh ******** no. i'd rather not make it.

we have the internet now. there are alternatives to the old habits of publishing. accepting that kind of bullshit? you go ahead. i'll be over here learning how to craft a kickstarter.
Shouting Fox
I'd sacrifice the rights to my first ten projects if it meant a profitable career in comics. And then I'd use the money to work on projects I care more about, and the notoriety to shop around for a place for those projects to call home where I will keep the creator's rights.

AAAAHAHAHAHA! That's like saying that the best way to start a happy family is to put your first ten children up for adoption. Good lord.

THE INTERNET EXISTS. KICKSTARTER EXISTS. CREATORS HAVE OPTIONS.
Kickstarter is the best thing to happen to independent creatives in a decade. Possibly longer.

Profitable Prophet

I'm not sure how I feel about Kickstarter. I mean, I do really like it a lot, and I realize that xkcd bead me to it, but with that and just the internet in general, it makes everybody's ideas valid, and gives everyone the possibility of creating something, or being discovered. Yes, you don't always have to sell your soul now, but there's also a buttload more competition to make people look at your work.
Niiwa
I'm not sure how I feel about Kickstarter. I mean, I do really like it a lot, and I realize that xkcd bead me to it, but with that and just the internet in general, it makes everybody's ideas valid, and gives everyone the possibility of creating something, or being discovered. Yes, you don't always have to sell your soul now, but there's also a buttload more competition to make people look at your work.


This was the same argument I heard when webcomics first took off. "Now that anyone can make one, it'll be harder to get noticed." As if it were ever easy.

Here's the thing, though. The classical, top-heavy, executive-favoring, creative-exploiting production model Shouting Fox is so eager to drop his pants, grease up, and bend over for? It wasn't doing a very good job.

Publishing on a large scale, meaning tens of thousands of books with national distribution, is cost-prohibitive and innovation-resistant. That means the people in charge need what they publish to make the most bang for their investment of time and money, and are far, FAR less likely to invest in untried, untested material. Thanks to a moral panic in the 1950s (Frederic Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, etc.) that brought on the tyranny of the Comics Code Authority, Comics is even LESS interested in innovation than prose publishing. Which is one hell of an accomplishment.

The print comic industry favors superheroes, because superheroes sell, and people buy superheroes. Not just any superheroes, of course; an established pantheon of fifty or so, created half a century ago. In comics, it's BIG NEWS when a character changes the color of long underwear he leaves the house it. That is absurd.

And people don't buy superheroes like they used to... The industry's been in a steady sales decline since the speculator bust on the 1990s, and wasn't really doing so hot before then, either... but by choking off innovation in the genre because it wasn't The Devil They Knew, they've condemned themselves to selling increasingly fewer comics to increasingly fewer people, and guaranteeing a lack of new interest from curious outsiders. The best-selling comics out there aren't even by publishers who specialize in comics, anymore. That is how bad they've gotten at this.

And I think we've all seen their laughable, half-hearted and condescending attempts to find new audiences.

In this kind of climate, imagine your favorite webcomic approaching Marvel or DC with their comic in their portfolio. They would be laughed out ofthe room, and not because they're bad cartoonists. It would happen because they're not drawing superheroes. And that is ******** idiotic. it would be like telling Werner Herzog you won't finance his films, because they're not about cowboys.

The democratization of audience access hasn't been a hindrance. ********, I'd argue comics is currently experiencing a renaissance. Of course there's plenty of crap out there, but there's also Pictures for Sad Children, Octopus Pie, Sinfest, Awkward Zombie, Gone with the Blastwave, The Jain's Death, Oglaf, and countless other fantastic comics that would have never had a chance in hell of being seen any other way.

And now, Kickstarter is democratizing monetization of those comics. That is awesome.

And if a bunch of morons with awful comics put up bad, silly Kickstarters that're just embarrassments and don't make goal? Or if a comic you hate makes ten million dollars? So what. Seriously, I don't care. It's dumb to care.

Profitable Prophet

IronSpike

You are absolutely correct. I think my opinion was just a bit skewed because I was thinking about it primarily from a video perspective. There are several similarities between the two, but it is much easier to get a crappy show/movie/web series created and monetized as of now than a comic, and it does create a huge influx of amateur video makers with relatively cheap, but effective, equipment.

But yes, you are correct and my comment was directed more towards a different industry.
Wow. After a couple months of trying to integrate into the comic creators scene 'round here and not getting noticed, I've realized that all it takes is one ill-received comment and people will be chompin' at the bits to get to you. ******** lovely.

IronSpike

You think getting exploited is a mandatory part of having a successful career in the arts. And you don't just expect it; you welcome the idea.

Congratulations. You're part of the problem.


You're absolutely right, sir. In my experience, a person only needs to draw on six sentences-- two statements-- before that person can accurately sum up what a person is or isn't. The ability do so as concisely as you do must be oh-so-handy. Has it occurred to you that one hypothetical statement is not the end all, be all of my opinion of creators' rights or breaking into the comics industry? I'm guessing not. I'll explain.

There are possibilities out there. I'm not blindly unaware of what options lay before up-and-comers and how those options effect the industry. I've known about Kickstarter for a while now-- it's quite big on Whitechapel and I've known members there to meet it with decent success. I've been aware of the webcomics route since I caught wind of SNAFU and what they had to offer. I'm aware of Comixpress and the ability to send PDFs off and have the comics put together for you. I'm aware that a fourteen year old girl outsold every comic company on Amazon's Kindle Store with her own homebrew graphic novel. I've read Scott McCloud's books on comics (and the creation thereof) and understand the points made therein. I'm aware that with a little digging, or maybe a little innovation and hard work, there are options neither listed above nor realized in general at the present time. Simply, I know.

I'm also aware of what a career is and what it means beyond the idea of "doing it for the art." I write because I love to write, but I realize the constraints it puts upon my relationship with my girlfriend and her children, and I know how many nights I've sat awake working on a project knowing that I need to get to bed so I can get up early and go to work. There is currently a Department of Defense waiver submitted on my behalf to determine whether or not I can join the US military so that I can support my girlfriend and her kids. My ultimate goal is to make doing what I love to do my career, hopefully one capable of supporting my girlfriend and her children, and I understand that constraints put upon my life can possibly put me in a position where I may never get the chance to make my own comics and work with talented artists.

If it meant getting my name out there, and if it meant a career by which I can support me and mine, I would do all of the above. I'd try a Kickstarter, and making comics for the Kindle, I'd submit to Digital Webbing Presents or variations thereof (because I'm pretty sure that's all gone to s**t), I'd hand out comics at conventions that I've printed through Comixpress, I would submit to publishers with staunch pro-creators' rights views-- yeah, that's great. If it didn't? I'd let Dan Didio and Stan Lee run a drug-fueled train on me while Disney and Warner Bros. execs watched if it meant a crack at my dream job, because doing what I love to do and making a living from it can't be any worse than doing what I don't love doing for a living.

Snicket
That's like saying that the best way to start a happy family is to put your first ten children up for adoption.


Yeah, or like saying-- I dunno-- that I'd sacrifice a pawn or two for a chance at a checkmate. Whatever floats your boat.
Shouting Fox
Wow. After a couple months of trying to integrate into the comic creators scene 'round here and not getting noticed, I've realized that all it takes is one ill-received comment and people will be chompin' at the bits to get to you. ******** lovely.

You mean when you say something aggressively stupid, people will give you s**t for it? Yeah! That's a thing!

Shouting Fox
Yeah, or like saying-- I dunno-- that I'd sacrifice a pawn or two for a chance at a checkmate. Whatever floats your boat.

You said your "first ten projects," and now it's "a pawn or two"? That's... not how math works.

Look, I understand the temptation of the corporate shortcut as a way to try to build some creative stock and get yourself noticed, but as has already been said, that's totally unnecessary these days. Plus, selling even ideas you consider to be unimportant isn't really a wise move. I can't even count the number of times something I considered a throw-away idea became precious to me as I worked on it more. If that happens to you and you've sold all the rights to that idea, then too bad! The company that owns it can mandate changes, edit it without your approval, or even take you off of it completely. And when you're not on the payroll anymore, they'll gleefully pump it for all the cash it's worth, no matter your feelings.

The fact is that no one cares more about your work and your ideas than YOU. No one will promote your art more genuinely and enthusiastically than YOU will. A company, especially a large one with lots of people working for it, isn't going to do as much for your reputation as you just getting your work and name out there any way you can, without the need to sell your soul in the process.

There are people in the industry for whom this deal with the Devil situation worked out, but for every one of them, there's ten more who got screwed out of all their best work or faded into obscurity once they'd finished "sacrificing their pawns."

Just don't do it. They probably don't want your ideas, anyway; the Big Two, especially.
Snicket
Shouting Fox
Wow. After a couple months of trying to integrate into the comic creators scene 'round here and not getting noticed, I've realized that all it takes is one ill-received comment and people will be chompin' at the bits to get to you. ******** lovely.

You mean when you say something aggressively stupid, people will give you s**t for it? Yeah! That's a thing!


Aggressively stupid? It was a passive remark. There were no screaming capitals, no emphatic bolding or redundant exclamation marks. How stupid it was? To be determined. Y'know.

Quote:
Shouting Fox
Yeah, or like saying-- I dunno-- that I'd sacrifice a pawn or two for a chance at a checkmate. Whatever floats your boat.

You said your "first ten projects," and now it's "a pawn or two"? That's... not how math works.


Italics. I meant exaggeration, you took it as emphasis. I can see how that works. Beyond that, there are ten pawns to each side and you can trade in a pawn later for a better piece you've lost previously, but an argument over analogy's really going to get stupid fast.

Quote:
...the rest...


To me, it comes down to how much I want it, and whether or not I would let one issue stand between me and the goal. As I've said already, I'm not submitting ideas to people saying, "I'll sell you my rights if you make me famous!" It's not about that. It's about whether or not there's the chance of it becoming a career, and what I would do to attain that career.

I would rather this conversation was a bit more amiable, as I'm not violently anti-creators' rights. I'm not anti-creators' rights at all! As a matter of personal business, I'm saying that I would sacrifice mine to get a little further ahead. As far as the business of buying rights in such manners, I'm not really all that big on it. I realize that there are a lot of creators who've been s**t on in the past, namely everyone who ever did anything for DC Comics, for a start. But that's the thing: I would subject myself to it, and I put that out there as a matter of opinion, but I'm not saying that everyone should.

To me, it's just kinda ******** logical. I know that as a writer I'm supposed to have these artistic sensibilities about what I would and wouldn't do for a paycheck, but as a person with a significant other and her two kids to worry about, I have to consider whether I want my writing to work for me or if I want to work for it. Never in my life, much less adult life, have I had the privilege of doing something I wanted to do without doing something that I didn't want to do. The comic industry is still an industry and I look at it in much the same light as any other company: no one gets to the top without getting s**t on at some point.
I've been gone the better part of a year and this is what I come back to. Hoo boy.

So I take it you are not a fan of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, IronSpike?

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Somewhat related to the argument going on, Sean Gordon Murphy posted this journal today on "detrimental awe" http://fav.me/d50chy2

I thought it was an interesting read.

...sort of makes me think of how I sell many of my plushies too cheap for the number of hours spent.

Well, I've been fussing over pricing a bit since I wish I could just run an Etsy shop and work less at a "real job." I'M SO GLAD I'M GRADUATING BUT AT THE SAME TIME ******** TERRIFIED.

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