It’s always tough to write a Waiting for on a week where there’s just not that much new stuff that’s interesting to me. While that doesn’t happen all too often, I find myself facing that particular issue right now, actually, as I stare at the little blinking cursor and...well, whisper curses at it.
My list for the weekly comics shop sojourn is awfully short today, and even though there are a couple of books that I’m looking forward to picking up, I guess my comics enthusiasm has been quelled a bit because of stories like this and this, both of which broke over the past week or so.
I’m always saddened by tales of creators losing out on the things they created, and in both of the above cases, that appears to be exactly what’s going on.
I went through—on a much smaller level, mind you—an incident where a character I’d created was being claimed by someone else as their own. And let me tell you—even on the smallest level, that situation is absolutely not fun.
For me it was maddening, and just thinking about it makes me angry all over again.
So when I hear about things like what’s happening to Gary Friedrich—the creator of the most-recognized version of Ghost Rider—I tend to get a bit...punchy. I don’t mean that in the literal sense, but it does annoy me quite a bit thinking about what’s just plain right—if not in the legal sense, then certainly in the moral sense.
And the issues between Walking Dead co-creators Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore—high school friends who are now embroiled in a lawsuit concerning payment over Walking Dead royalties—make me sad, and put a bit of a damper on what was an otherwise excellent mid-season premiere episode of the show.
So, yeah, I’m a bit soured towards comics today.
It’s mind-boggling that basic creator rights issues still take place today in an industry with its fair share of outright creator-rights nightmares. It’s unfair, and frankly, unnecessary. Am I so naïve to think that giant corporations want to protect the properties they own? Of course not. But at the same time, I wish the same giant corporations would give something back to the creators that gave them—and fans—so much during their careers.
Right. I’m off my high horse for today.
As for today’s new comics? Well, quickly, there’s Batman, issue six, from writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo, and Wonder Woman, issue six, and both those books deserve lots of attention. Batman, particularly, has been wonderful. There’s also the fourth issue of Richard Moore’s Gobs, and issue nine of Mark Waid’s excellent Daredevil relaunch.
You really can’t go wrong with any of the above comics. So, while I go cool down a bit...what are you Waiting for?
No comments:
Post a Comment