Is Alan Moore a hypocrite?

[Lightning Rider]

This is what he said precisely:


I agree that comics can be made for adults, I read a lot of these “graphic novels” as well as comics for children.

I miss also comics as a popular medium that draws generations and classes together, it’s just too expensive…

I don't disagree with that sentiment. I'm referring to these comments:

"I’ve been told the Joker film wouldn’t exist without my Joker story (1988’s Batman: The Killing Joke), but three months after I’d written that I was disowning it, it was far too violent – it was Batman for christ’s sake, it’s a guy dressed as a bat. Increasingly I think the best version of Batman was Adam West, which didn’t take it at all seriously...I have no interest in superheroes, they were a thing that was invented in the late 1930s for children, and they are perfectly good as children’s entertainment. But if you try to make them for the adult world then I think it becomes kind of grotesque."

[Hol]

I haven't read or watched the interview, but I don't get how creators had anything "stolen" from them.

If you create a character as a work-for-hire, then you know going in that it's the company's property.

If you create it and then sell it to the company the way Siegel & Shuster did with Superman, then you know you are signing away your ownership of the character.

If you want to own your creation 100%, then you must self-publish and get those trademarks registered.



Anyone who works for a company in any field knows that the work we create is owned by the company. It is not being stolen from us even if the company can take what we create and use it to make lots of money for itself.

If you create a spreadsheet at work that simplifies a task and ends up saving the company a lot of money, you aren't entitled to a cut of that. You also aren't entitled to sell the spreadsheet to other companies as your product. It belongs to the company you work for.

The programmers who wrote the code for Microsoft Excel don't have a claim of ownership on the software. It is owned 100% by Microsoft. If Microsoft wants to pay royalties to software writers, that's nice of them, but they don't have to.

Thank you thank you! I 100% agree with this. It's not always the big bad corporation. They made a deal, signed contracts. Just because DC followed their contracts and the creators didn't think their creations wouldn't become so successful doesn't mean DC is wrong.

[Hol]

Alright, but do you get that on account of your ignorance, your opinion should be qualified, curious, inquisitive and not dismissive and indifferent to a widespread problem in the industry?

It's fine if you don't get how creators had anything "stolen" from them, you can just ask what the issue is.



WATCHMEN wasn't created as a work-for-hire. It was a creator owned property of original characters agreed upon by both parties. The contract acknowledged that Moore and Gibbons owned the rights of Watchmen but that they gave DC rights for the first printing, at the end of which it would go back to them. At that time, the concept of a comic going into second printing was unheard of. It was unprecedented in that era. DC changed things to hold on to the rights.



No. Look at book publishing, authors like Stephen King, J. K. Rowling among others own their creations and they publish with major publishers at the same time.

I think you have a pretty limited and shallow appreciation of intellectual property law. You do not in fact have to prostrate like a feudal serf before a corporation as it exercises prima noctae.

But these decisions (Watchmen, Superman, Superboy) have been held up in court (despite many lawsuits and deals) so how have these characters (all of them) been stolen?

[Hol]

There are PLENTY of exceptions to this though - and it's a pretty important piece you're missing.
Superman was created by two kids in the middle of the Depression. They were paid a $100.00 and given a job of writing & drawing their creation.
Once it took off, the company proceeded to screw them over making literally MILLIONS - and when they complained about not getting a tiny slice of the perfect pie they'd created they were fired!
It took the release of the Superman movie and Neal Adams telling their story to all and sundry for DC to finally come to the table - and even then it was from fear of public backlash, not because it was the right thing to do.

Bill Finger got screwed by Bob Kane who made the deal with DC that EVERY Batman appearance ANYWHERE was required to state: Batman - created by Bob Kane.
Finger came up with damn near all of it, but died broke and virtually unknown to the general public.

Sure, now it's completely different, and if you choose to create a character while working as a paid for hire that takes off - expect to get very little.

It was a very different landscape in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Unfortunately, history is littered with comic creators being fucked over by both DC and MARVEL.

They weren't kids though. They were adults. In their 20's. They made an agreement with DC. Signed a contract. No one else was looking to buy Superman at the time so DC (National Comics) took a shot as well. I don't think just because it became a monster success that the creators deserved more after the fact.

What happened shortly after with Superboy was a different story. They deserved compensation for that. And even after they got the compensation and signed their rights away S&S still went back to DC over and over for more money. And they did get more. They got a $20k a year stipend after the initial sale of Superboy for $90k.

So it is ok for creators to go back to the well and use the legal system to make money but when DC does it they are monsters?

[Lightning Rider]

I haven't read or watched the interview, but I don't get how creators had anything "stolen" from them.

If you create a character as a work-for-hire, then you know going in that it's the company's property.

If you create it and then sell it to the company the way Siegel & Shuster did with Superman, then you know you are signing away your ownership of the character.

If you want to own your creation 100%, then you must self-publish and get those trademarks registered.



Anyone who works for a company in any field knows that the work we create is owned by the company. It is not being stolen from us even if the company can take what we create and use it to make lots of money for itself.

If you create a spreadsheet at work that simplifies a task and ends up saving the company a lot of money, you aren't entitled to a cut of that. You also aren't entitled to sell the spreadsheet to other companies as your product. It belongs to the company you work for.

The programmers who wrote the code for Microsoft Excel don't have a claim of ownership on the software. It is owned 100% by Microsoft. If Microsoft wants to pay royalties to software writers, that's nice of them, but they don't have to.

One can be perfectly aware of the industry norms, and still make criticisms of the arrangement as unfair or flawed.

[Hol]

I am addressing all four posts because all of them operate on a bunch of false assumptions and misconceptions about this situation:

1) Alan Moore wasn't some moron bumpkin who never signed a contract before he worked on Watchmen. The contract that Moore and Gibbons signed with DC was a common contract for a miniseries of that sort. It dealt with original characters, with the understanding that rights would revert to Moore after the original print run ended. It. Was. Not. A Work-for-Hire. Contract. It was a contract that recognized Watchmen as a creator-owned work. Nobody at that time in Moore's position would have expected anything other than a fair shake with that contract. So if y'all think you guys are smarter than dumb ol' Moore against Little Miss DC than think again. The issue is that DC kept Watchmen in print perpetually after seeing its success. The Trade Paperback Market took off and they exploited that by publishing Watchmen in a TPB and keeping it in print, breaking the spirit of that contract completely.

2) There is no such as a purely ironclad contract that cannot be contested. In other words, there is no perfect contract that can protect you 100% from Alan Moore's situation with Watchmen. Alan Moore was "careful with what he signed" and he got screwed anyway, because y'all don't seem to appreciate that this in fact can happen and that if you get into such a situation no matter what you sign and what the contract holds, it's your lawyer against the corporate lawyer phalanx that DC/WB can conjure out of thin air, it's fees you have to pay for a case you have to fight against a judge who most likely goes golfing/fishing with.

3) Things are different now certainly, in part because what happened with Moore. As a rule, creators and writers are very careful about publishing creator owned original material with the Big Two after Watchmen.

I do not think anyone is saying they are smarter than Moore. Things did change. The trade paperback market...I get it. DC did keep Watchmen in print so they could keep the rights. Absolutely. But technically what they did was legal. They didn't steal anything.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Thank you thank you! I 100% agree with this. It's not always the big bad corporation.

It is ALWAYS, and ALWAYs will be, the big bad corporation, one way or another. No exceptions, ifs, buts, ands.

Just because DC followed their contracts and the creators didn't think their creations wouldn't become so successful doesn't mean DC is wrong.

Again that's not what happened and that's not what the situation is about. This is a bonedead incorrect idea of what actually went down.

But these decisions (Watchmen, Superman, Superboy) have been held up in court

So now we are in a world where facts don't matter, people don't research, and simply speak what they think has happened and assume that's true.

--In the case of SUPERMAN, Siegel-Shuster brought action against DC in the early '50s but they settled out of court at the time, but the entire issue had so many unresolved things that lawsuits and other stuff kept coming up, and it led to further settlements down the road.
--Watchmen was never litigated in court at all, because Moore's lawyers told him that DC could litigate him into poverty and the only avenue was settling with DC (which would mean and include an NDA) and Moore refused that out of principle because he felt it was important to talk about it and keep the issue in open.

This hasn't held up in court at all. Because it was never brought to court to start with.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I do not think anyone is saying they are smarter than Moore. Things did change. The trade paperback market...I get it. DC did keep Watchmen in print so they could keep the rights. Absolutely. But technically what they did was legal. They didn't steal anything.

Technically slavery was legal too, as was colonialism and imperialism, as was child labor, and until the 90s spousal rape wasn't explicitly made illegal in all US States.

Something being legal and backed by a legal system funnelled with corporate cash doesn't mean that crimes don't happen at all, or that an action cannot be called theft just by skating on legalese documents and definitions.

[Zelena]

I don't disagree with that sentiment. I'm referring to these comments:

"I’ve been told the Joker film wouldn’t exist without my Joker story (1988’s Batman: The Killing Joke), but three months after I’d written that I was disowning it, it was far too violent – it was Batman for christ’s sake, it’s a guy dressed as a bat. Increasingly I think the best version of Batman was Adam West, which didn’t take it at all seriously...I have no interest in superheroes, they were a thing that was invented in the late 1930s for children, and they are perfectly good as children’s entertainment. But if you try to make them for the adult world then I think it becomes kind of grotesque."

I think that to be realistic in a adult world, the superheroes should be ready to give up all their fancy stuff, all the things that could be tied to “childish superheroes” or be ready that people “in-universe” make fun of them.

A creator shouldn’t stop doing what he thinks it’s right because of the mytho.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

They weren't kids though. They were adults. In their 20's. They made an agreement with DC. Signed a contract. No one else was looking to buy Superman at the time so DC (National Comics) took a shot as well. I don't think just because it became a monster success that the creators deserved more after the fact.

You think wrong. You are entitled to the success that derives from your intellectual property especially when that character, name, visual design and concept makes money for and on behalf of a corporation through reprinting and merchandising.

As I said you do not have to comport yourself as a feudal serf while the corporation exercises primae nocta.

And even after they got the compensation and signed their rights away S&S still went back to DC over and over for more money.

That's capitalism at work, not so different from how abuse victims have to still rely on partner owing to fears of protection and safety.

So it is ok for creators to go back to the well and use the legal system to make money but when DC does it they are monsters?

Yes. Because there's no equivalency between individual creators with little resources and a company with its army of lawyers.

[cgh]

Just to give a little more perspective on Moore's views on superheroes, he has always claimed his best and most serious work has nothing to do with superheroes at all. Thus the "superheroes are for kids" stuff. For example, many believe "From Hell" is his masterpiece (I agree) and is served by a higher level of discourse than one might give, say, Swamp Thing, but that discourse rarely seems to take place. When you add in his feelings about creators' rights and the general sleaziness of corporate behaviour, you end up with "Alan Moore, cranky old man". But I think his crankiness is well-founded.

[Dark Falz]

I am addressing all four posts because all of them operate on a bunch of false assumptions and misconceptions about this situation:

1) Alan Moore wasn't some moron bumpkin who never signed a contract before he worked on Watchmen. The contract that Moore and Gibbons signed with DC was a common contract for a miniseries of that sort. It dealt with original characters, with the understanding that rights would revert to Moore after the original print run ended. It. Was. Not. A Work-for-Hire. Contract. It was a contract that recognized Watchmen as a creator-owned work. Nobody at that time in Moore's position would have expected anything other than a fair shake with that contract. So if y'all think you guys are smarter than dumb ol' Moore against Little Miss DC than think again. The issue is that DC kept Watchmen in print perpetually after seeing its success. The Trade Paperback Market took off and they exploited that by publishing Watchmen in a TPB and keeping it in print, breaking the spirit of that contract completely.

3) Things are different now certainly, in part because what happened with Moore. As a rule, creators and writers are very careful about publishing creator owned original material with the Big Two after Watchmen.

No, he was not careful, or at least not careful enough, I'm afraid. He signed over his creations to DC Comics. If he didn't want to do that, he should have never done that. I would have never done that.

It doesn't matter what he expected to happen, what matters is what was in the contract. As far as the law is concerned, it's really as simple as that. If his creations were THAT important to him, he could have taken the contract to a contract attorney to have them look it over for him and warn him of what could happen, if he didn't.

[Jim Kelly]

One of the great comforts I have in life as an unknown, low income person with few friends is that I'm not always being called upon to defend my inconsistent values and opinions. I know that I am imperfect and can hold maybe paradoxical beliefs--but nobody's out to get me for that (I hope).

[Pinsir]

Alan Moore has pretty much denounced most of his superhero work anyway. I'm actually a Alan Moore megafan because I've followed his wishes and have pretty much never read any of his work (including Watchmen). Anyone else a true Alan Moore fan like me?

[Hol]

It is ALWAYS, and ALWAYs will be, the big bad corporation, one way or another. No exceptions, ifs, buts, ands.



Again that's not what happened and that's not what the situation is about. This is a bonedead incorrect idea of what actually went down.



So now we are in a world where facts don't matter, people don't research, and simply speak what they think has happened and assume that's true.

--In the case of SUPERMAN, Siegel-Shuster brought action against DC in the early '50s but they settled out of court at the time, but the entire issue had so many unresolved things that lawsuits and other stuff kept coming up, and it led to further settlements down the road.
--Watchmen was never litigated in court at all, because Moore's lawyers told him that DC could litigate him into poverty and the only avenue was settling with DC (which would mean and include an NDA) and Moore refused that out of principle because he felt it was important to talk about it and keep the issue in open.

This hasn't held up in court at all. Because it was never brought to court to start with.

I was referring to the Superman/Superboy case not the Watchmen situation.