Charcter Ownership - Creators versus the Fans

Creators by a landslide. Fans get disappointed because they get passed on from creative team to different creative team and lose their impact because the corporations want to milk the creative property. When a good creative team comes in, it springs back to life. Which can turn characters like Spider-Man and Superman to cultural icons. The bad is that the stakes could never be as high because they have to keep stories going no matter what and not even death is taken seriously anymore. I think it's better now since more creative teams especially ones with new property can create a beginning middle and end, a more fieshed out complete story. Imagine if Y the Last Man was still going on? I wouldn't even care anymore. Imagine if Spidey ended in 1970 and never came back? The story might have been more impactful, but, he probably wouldve became a relic of his time.

The characters in superhero comics are owned by the same people who own the characters of greek myth.

Creators should certainly have ownership of the fiction they create -- though, it is a bit questionable how far that should be extended. With Superman, rival comics heroes like Captain Marvel (SHAZAM!) and Wonder Man faced lawsuits because they used the basic idea of Superman. However, was the idea of a hero with super-strength something that the creators of Superman owned? What about Hercules? Or the novels GLADIATOR (Wylie) or THE NTH MAN (Flint) that predated Superman? Characters should be owned, but general ideas...?

However, honestly, for the most popular pieces of fiction in our contemporary world, most of them are not entirely owned by the creators. Certainly, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Star Wars and Star Trek no longer belong to their creators (most of whom are dead) nor to the creators producing the material today. Instead, to get into a little Marxist critique, they are primarily owned by those who also own the means of their production - the movie studios, media and publishing corporations. The copyright is an economic asset protected (and increasingly extended) for its value to people who do not contribute anything creatively to it.

Added on to this, though, is a deeper philosophical and cultural question of how intellectual property affects us socially. If you think about it, what is the intellectual property that these media giants own? It's kind of a piece of your imagination. In the imaginations of the fans or even casual viewers of this material are where these stories and characters exist. They aren't isolated to the media we consume - that's just the delivery method - nor do they only exist in the minds of the actual creative people writing the stories, drawing or filming them. They live in our imaginations - we bring them to life. They have value because we use them to entertain ourselves. They are prepackaged daydreams with increasingly complex, developed and interactive worlds to keep us distracted and virtually living inside them. So a large part of ourselves, what we think, dream, talk about and obsess over is actually a product owned by and making money for someone who likely has added little if any creativity to it.

So, we're basically paying to have our own minds colonized by these products and culturally that started at a very young age.

[QUOTE=Carabas;3906806]Welp, let's replace the line-up and coaches of a major sports team with a bunch of fans, and see how well they do.
[/QUOTE]

I think this analogy fits the theme of more than one answer in this thread. While many fans are very knowledgeable they often can be blinded by emotion in situations that require great foresight. Coaches and the line-up have practice the rigid discipline and many other factors that go into the final product or the performance.

If someone created a character than the character belongs to the creator as far as I'm concerned. I don't care if the character created may be derivative of another. When it comes to most comic creators who just work on a pre-existing character that is created by someone else it's a toss up between them and the fans depending on how good or bad the creator is.

[QUOTE=TheRay;4547142]I think this analogy fits the theme of more than one answer in this thread. While many fans are very knowledgeable they often can be blinded by emotion in situations that require great foresight. Coaches and the line-up have practice the rigid discipline and many other factors that go into the final product or the performance.[/QUOTE]

The only elements is that obviously there are more sports fans who become coaches and players in professional sports than in comics. There are plenty of fans in comics professions but it's actually not that often professionals had been fans of the comics they write and that is a good thing. Were Claremont and Byrne fans of the X-men when they took it over? Not really, but they made a book that in a lot of ways created comics fandom. A lot of time, no one really knows what comics are going to hit with readers, and most fans don't know what they really want until a book comes along that shows them "yeah, that's what I want." Who wanted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before it hit the shops?

However, fans certainly have more influence on the comics business than in any other medium. Even though there are a lot of young readers around the world still into comics, they aren't into Marvel or DC and have no real problem reading comics on screens instead of on the page. Also, it does seem like a lot of comics writers are not really fans of the characters or even fans of the medium itself. That this is a gig they can get instead of writing for Hollywood movies or television or writing a novel.

Nevertheless, a lot of the best comics we've gotten and that have moved the industry forward were by teams who weren't necessarily fans of the characters or books they wrote and drew before they got on them. But I think the best creative teams are dedicated to the medium of comics, and there really shouldn't be any division or conflict between fans and the creators. No medium lasts long if it alienates anyone in its audience, but comics seems to depend on its audience pushing and talking about its books much more than any other form of entertainment.

I put the creators first, meaning the original artist/writer teams. The corporation doesn't count. AT&T doesn't care about Superman or Batman (obviously).

[QUOTE=captchuck;5051201]I put the creators first, meaning the original artist/writer teams. The corporation doesn't count. AT&T doesn't care about Superman or Batman (obviously).[/QUOTE]

It's not about caring, it's about ownership. Corporations have strong legal and official channels over characters when creators sell characters too.

[QUOTE=Ulysses;4434632]The characters in superhero comics are owned by the same people who own the characters of greek myth.[/QUOTE]

Actually, they have more in common with cereal mascots, and cartoon characters then mythic characters.

I don't think there is an objective choice to this question. All of the choices have their own biases and perspectives so each of them are valid to me. Even as a fan studying to being a writer, I don't think there is a real difference beyond a skillset. Doctor Who proves that even if the fans got to run the show, it would be divisive as anything else.

Fans literally are the ones who invest time and money in characters. They have reasonable claims on their stories and their world. Not to have every story be excellent - no, that isn't a reasonable reequest - but at least to have the stories respect their history, their lore, and their core canon. If you think Captain America's patriotism is passé and want to turn him Nazi, you have no business mucking around with the character except something explicitly non-canon. If you think invisible jets, kangas, and Paradise Island are camp or silly you should stay away from Wonder Woman.

it is actually based on everything, if they are creator but they do for others, they are not the owner to be exact. But if they do create for themselves, it is theirs. it doesn't matter whether some people care or not.

the worst thing is some bunch of people claiming others as theirs. Arghh BAD:")

[QUOTE=mathew101281;5052581]Actually, they have more in common with cereal mascots, and cartoon characters then mythic characters.[/QUOTE]

It would be funny to go back in time and discover that the Romans were eating Hercules Brand bread or buying Dionysus chardonnay.

[QUOTE=seaturkey;4137211]Oh, really? What about the Walking Dead and Invincible? I'm pretty sure Mr. Kirkman has 100% control and ownership of his creations and they're virtually house-hold names these days. So, it seems you're mistaken, my friend.

Creator owned properties are just better, because they aren't tied down by some editor, but only by the creator/writer's vision. I'd much rather see something made as intended over what some exec thinks.[/QUOTE]

Good example. Again, he said 'close to zero' and you named 2... so I'd say he's still right ;) But those properties are finished now. They were lucky to last about 15 years. Compared to the 80+ that Superman ran straight, that's a great argument AGAINST Creator owned properties.



[QUOTE=MyriVerse;4367289]Eh. Fans? Never. I tend to favour corporate over creator.[/QUOTE]

Actually me too. For the importance that creators naturally have in the product... They don't make it on their own. It wasn't Siegal and Schuster or Bob Kane that made Superman and Batman household names. It was DC pushing the ever living HELL out of them. DC spends a LOT of money promoting, encouraging and advertising these character and make them household names. It's what separates say 'The Phantom' from 'Superman'. I'm 43 now and i've never seen a Phantom comic in the stores even though they were supposed to be awesome and one of the first costumed heroes of all time... I've also never read more than 1 or 2 Siegal and Shuster Superman books. But I've read hundreds of Superman issues from silver age to now. Because the characters grew beyond the creator and have outlived most of them. The characters adapt and change far beyond the original creators visions into their own legends. If the books had stopped when the creators left... I would have never seen any Superman, Batman, Spider-man... none of them.

For example, Who gets credit for Deadpool? He's a household name and the idol of millions... but the fun loving fourth wall breaking psychopath has NOTHING to do with Liefields vision. That was Joe Kelly's vision.

What about Blade? The whole Daywalker nonsense was created for the movie and NOTHING like marv Wolfman's character. Courts even dismissed his lawsuit because the characters were so differnet. However I think I may be the only person left alive who still preferred the goggle wearing human whose only power was 'immune to vampire bites'. If they stuck with that vision, Blade the half-vampire dhampire with all their powers would NOT have the following that he does now. he wouldn't exist.

Who gets credit for that? It's easy to say that the writer should get all the moneys... but what about the 6 million characters that did NOT catch on? For every Green Goblin, there's a 'Big Wheel'. Comics are still a business and that business is the one with all the risks.

Personally I think the entire industry of Comics has gone downhill since the wholel 'creator owned' concept of celebrity writers/artists took off in the 90's. Egos got bigger, quality has dropped. Prices have skyrocketed. readership has plummeted.

That's not a bad argument. The essential benefit that conglomerated capitalist approach has is that it can attract talent and put more resources behind the production of the comics that an individual creator or independent creative team could not. Most of the elements of any profitable character that has maintained success over time from James Bond to Ghost Rider has been the combined contribution of many people and not the original creators.

I do agree that too often the creator has been leveraged out of deserved compensation by the unfair advantages conglomerates have as far as getting published or getting access to the resources necessary to market the books.