Comics and the WGA strike

There’s no bigger story right now in Hollywood than the writers strike, which began today and looks like it could go for a long time.

So far, the most visible TV scribes who also write comics are on board for the strike. Comic Book Resources has a report on plans from the likes of Marc Guggenheim ("Brothers & Sisters"), Daniel Knauf ("Carnivale") and one “anonymous” writer. Brian K. Vaughn, whose comic work got him on the writing staff of “Lost,” mentions on his blog that his phone began ringing from Marvel and DC editors as soon as the strike began, but plans to stick with his creator owned series like "Ex Machina" and walking the picket line for the time being. And the ever-informative Mark Evanier reflects on his long experience writing for TV, comics and animation over at his blog, which can be found here.

While comics writing is outside the jurisdiction of the WGA, reactions in the blogosphere indicate we’re unlikely to see a massive influx of new comics from film and TV writers looking for interim work. If fans are lucky, a few of those terminally late comics from TV writers may finally catch up on projects like Damon Lindelof’s almost-finished "Ultimate Hulk and Wolverine" or Joss Whedon’s “Runaways” and “Astonishing X-Men.” And fans of “Buffy” can rest assured that the strike will not affect Whedon and Vaughn continuing the “Season Eight” series at Dark Horse.

Most of the cross-over between comics and Hollywood is creative, so it’s no surprise that these are all writers who support their guild's decision to strike. It’s not clear how much the history of comics and the lessons of the likes of Siegel and Shuster, Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber or Marv Wolfman are at all a factor in anyone’s thinking, but their stories are prime examples of the kind of treatment the writers in the WGA are trying to avoid.

While attempts to unionize comics pros have never succeeded, it is perhaps informative to consider what happened when a group of popular comics creators with complaints similar to today's TV and film writers decided to do something about their situation and go their own way.

Such was the case more than 15 years ago, when Marvel's top artists — Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino — struck out on their own to found Image Comics, an organization that would allow each of them full control and ownership of whatever it was they wanted to created.

As with pundits' criticism of WGA members, all of these artists worked on top-selling books and were very well paid for their work. But they nevertheless felt — especially in McFarlane's case — that Marvel deep down did not respect their contributions. This was expressed in ways big and small, whether it was demanding excessive changes in their work, not paying artists when their work was used on trading cards or T-shirts, or simply brushing off the value of their contributions to toe a company line that discouraged the idea that anyone besides Marvel itself was responsible for the success of any of its properties. Marvel execs famously discounted the idea that even this many top artists leaving would have any effect on the company. After all, this wasn't the first time, and if the company could survive the departure of Jack Kirby in 1970 none the worse for wear, then it could survive this, too.

But they were wrong, and when the Image books came out, the kids that had driven up Marvel's sales because they loved Jim Lee's art on "X-Men" or Rob Liefeld on "X-Force," jumped on the Image bandwagon in a second. (That the interest in comics in sure-fire collectibles was at an all-time high was also a factor, but one that was egged on by both Marvel and DC long before Image was founded.) Even as Marvel and DC hired scads of Image imitators and managed to hold their own in a red-hot market, Image proved exactly what those companies had spent decades denying: that the creators who actually made a comic are a factor in its success.

The results of the Image experiment in the short term were nothing short of astounding, as sales hit record levels and made instant millionaires of any creator whose book bore the Image label. This market gave the world the likes of such still-popular characters as "Spawn" and "Hellboy" (who first appeared in an issue of "John Byrne’s Next Men," a well-regarded creator-owned series from that era that is finally coming back to print from IDW) and even made hits of such self-published fare as “Bone,” “Strangers in Paradise” and “Stray Bullets.”

Of course, that kind of runaway growth couldn't be sustained, and the crash was so hard that its repercussions are still being felt. Given the rhetoric that surrounded the creation of Image — of the freedom to create, control and profit from your own work — it’s disheartening to see today’s direct market once again so heavily dependent upon and dominated by Marvel and DC superheroes created under work-for-hire conditions. The Image founders themselves are still around, as is the same basic Image operation, though only Larsen has stuck with writing and drawing his original series, The Savage Dragon. Liefeld was fired or quit, depending on who's talking, and is now back, while McFarlane concentrated on toys and Lee sold his WildStorm operation — and all its characters — to DC Comics in 1998. The state of creator ownership they espoused is prospering on the web, and under attack in print and in the direct market from new publishers whose strategy of using comics to develop film and TV properties requires the creator to be, at best, mere co-owners of their creations.

The final lesson to draw from the Image experiment is still open to interpretation — a lot of the early comics from Image were, despite the hype, pretty awful. But it does prove that the creation of successful stories and franchises is as much if not more about creativity than labels and marketing. TV and film writers have a disadvantage when compared to comics creators, in that making a show requires a great deal of money and collaboration with crews of craftsmen and other artists, from actors and directors to cinematographers, editors, gaffers and, yes, even studio and network executives. History shows that collaboration requires respect and flexibility, two qualities that both sides should consider carefully as they try to work out their differences.