Exclusively Theirs at Marvel and DC
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on March. 28, 2006 Sign up now!
By Ian Brill -- Publishers Weekly, 3/28/2006
 Wildsiders by J. Scott Campbell |
It's easy to see why the arrangement holds appeal for both sides. Exclusive deals offer freelance creators some stability in their careers, with both job security and benefits like health care. The financial rewards are there as well. Creators like the artist Jock (The Losers) have a guarantee of yearly work from DC Comics. If DC doesn't supply him with the amount of work agreed to, the company pays the difference. According to Jock, that is standard in most deals DC offers. Royalties and page rates are also affected by deals like this.
For creators used to writing for many different companies, there's another reason to get attached to one publisher. According to writer Kurt Busiek (Astro City, Avengers), who just signed an exclusive with DC, "It's attractive to me, at this point in my career, to 'put all my eggs in one basket' for a while, streamline my career and not have to juggle multiple assignments at multiple publishers, none of whom, understandably, have any sympathy for the others' production schedules." Busiek gave up working on Conan, one of Dark Horse's bestselling titles, when he went exclusive with DC.
Even though Marvel and DC have both been signing a lot of creators, some of the exclusives aren't all that exclusive—many creators are still allowed to lend their talents to independent publishers. Writer Peter David signed with Marvel recently but is still writing the creator-owned Fallen Angel for IDW and Soulsearchers and Co. for Claypool. In this and many other cases, those smaller creator-owned projects were already in motion at the time the deals were made and so were allowed to continue.
With so much exclusive talent producing so many books, it might seem that both Marvel and DC are coming up with a distinct look and feel for their books. "I suppose there's some danger that each comic-book 'universe' will become more insular and inaccessible to new readers, as contract players work on making all of their company's books more cohesive, rather than concentrating on just their own individual titles," says popular writer Brian K. Vaughan (Runaways, Y the Last Man), a high-profile creator who has not gone exclusive. "But that's a worst-case scenario, and it probably has more to do with editorial."
Busiek sees two ways exclusives affect a company's output from the creator's side. "Having someone like, say, Geoff Johns exclusive to DC, rather than working for DC, Marvel, Humanoids and whoever else, concentrates the effect—DC is now the pace to go for Geoff Johns's work. And that deal probably makes Geoff think more about the DCU as his working 'home,' and thus be more encouraged to try to boost DC overall, rather than just thinking about his own books."
Most exclusive deals work out fine for the creator and his or her work schedule. Although in one recent case, artist Pasqual Ferry was announced as the artist for Mr. Miracle, one of the books that make up Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers project for DC, and then replaced after the first issue. Insiders believed that Ferry's exclusive deal with Marvel prevented him from working for DC. But in an interview at Newsarma.com, the comics trade news Web site, Ferry denied that, and said, "Schedules have to take the blame for my departure from the book. I had a much tighter adjusted plan to do the whole series, but the plans always change."
In the past, classic comics creators like Irv Novick, Jack Kirby, John Buscema and others had exclusive deals at Marvel or DC, but in those days neither the deals nor the artists received media hype, nor did they get the many benefits today's creators enjoy.
Some professionals are critical of these media announcements. Cartoonist Fabio Moon (Smoke and Guns, Rock 'n' Roll) criticizes the hype of these announcements, complaining that the focus should be on the book's stories and the characters. "We shouldn't be following the creators' lives. We should be following the fictional characters' lives. Whenever someone brings so much attention to the creators, that's not such a good thing, as the creators, in my view, are supposed to be invisible." Moon says only the characters and the story should matter. "If you keep bringing attention to the creators, you're pulling the reader away from the 'magic of reading.' "
Nevertheless, it's clear that exclusive deals have brought better pay rates and security to comics creators and other benefits to the publishers. Writer John Ney Reiber (Books of Magic, Captain America) thinks that the surge of exclusive deals is an outgrowth of the crossover programming both Marvel and DC are doing. Having creators working exclusively at a particular house makes it easy to plan complex and wide-ranging series and storylines.
"Both companies have used exclusivity agreements to create think tanks," says Reiber. "They've both cultivated a small core group of creators who work with their editors to develop the concepts that just about everyone—the think tankers included—will be turning into actual comics a year or two from now. And it's crucial that the company be able to rely on the long-term presence of these conceptual teams."
