Ed Brubabker Criticizes Disney/Marvel For Lack Of Winter Soldier Royalties

[inisideguy]

Brubaker has the ability to write his own comics that he owns and can market for any kind of multimedia deal with its own arrangement. In fact, he's one of the best comic writers in the business. But the character doesn't have the success of Bucky Barnes. As great as his contribution was to the mythos, it was just that - a contribution - and one Brubaker benefitted from as much as Marvel did proportionally speaking.

Exactly all of these people keep arguing like Brubaker has not benifited from writing for Marvel. This is just stupidity.

[inisideguy]

"Based On..." is one thing.

The instance we are discussing?

It is Brubaker's story lock/stock/barrel.

Marvel/Disney didn't "Base..." it on anything. They just put it onto the screen, and cashed in.

No they didn't. The winter soldier story Burbaker wrote isn't the same as what marvel did. Its similar. But its not the same story. Where did you get that?

[numberthirty]

No they didn't. The winter soldier story Burbaker wrote isn't the same as what marvel did. Its similar. But its not the same story. Where did you get that?

Give me a "Main..." difference that is really serious.

[numberthirty]

Let's put it this way...

Someone who knows and has read "The Seven Capital Cities Of Heaven" would know that the character Bride Of Nine Spiders in the live action incarnation has right around "Nothing..." to do with the character that Brubaker/Fraction created.

(Never Mind All Of The Other Differences Between Their Run And The "Live Action..." Version Marvel/Netflix Were Behind...)

That is not the sort of thing that Brubaker/Fraction should see any additional compensation for. Marvel/Netflix took it, and ran with it.

The Winter Soldier?

Almost the exact opposite of Bride Of Nine Spiders.

[Brian B]

I think many of you guys are trying to simplify this in a case like Brubaker. But take the guardians of the Galaxy and think how crazy complex this can get. The original creator of Guardians of the Galaxy. Then the all the individual characters within that movie hero and villans and everything else someone created Nova corp etc etc etc. The Guardians themselves and then the reinvention of those characters via different creators. Its impossible for Disney/ marvel to give some sort of fair deal of royalties to everyone who was involved at some point with the characters and other things within that movie. Many of you are not thinking this through at all.

“...crazy complex?!?” For Guardians of the Galaxy? Again, folks, we —WE, the people on this board — KNOW these creators. We are fans. This isn’t hard to figure out. Nothing complex about it.

For what we’ve seen in the movies, here are the characters’ creators. This is from memory, so please correct if I am wrong:

— Groot, Jack Kirby, people! C’mon! And Larry Lieber and maybe Stan Lee.
— Ego, Jack Kirby, and maybe Stan Lee.
— Collector, Stan Lee and Don Heck.
— Ronan, Jack Kirby, and maybe Stan Lee.
— Guardians of the Galaxy, Arnold Drake and Gene Colan, maybe Stan Lee too, and this includes the character Yondu.
— Starhawk, Steve Gerber and Sal Buscema.
— Mantis, Steve Englehart, and Don Heck.
— Thanos, Jim Starlin.
— Gamora, Jim Starlin.
— Drax, Jim Starlin.
— Her / Ayesha, Len Wein, David Anthony Kraft and Herb Trimpe.
— Star-Lord, Steve Englehart and Steve Gan.
— Rocket Racoon, Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen.
— The Nova Corps, Marv Wolfman, John Romita Sr., John Buscema, and Keith Pollard.
— Nebula, Roger Stern and John Buscema.
— Modern take on the Guardians, Keith Giffen, and Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.

Some of you on this thread are saying things that create an impression like we don’t know who created what, that it’s all just this miraculous Intellectual Property created by committee. That couldn’t be further from the truth. In the instances where it was at the behest of a “corporate direction,” it was created by about 3, maybe 4 people, tops.

We know their names, very well. We are fans. We know who these people are or were. We know the stories behind these characters’ creation. In many instances the mistreatment of these creators over rights by Marvel and DC is well documented. There is no mystery about who created what, except maybe how much Stan took credit for and how much he genuinely created. But hey, if his name was on it, it was at least his words in the balloons.

Quit writing things that create the idea we don’t know who the creators were. We here do know, because we are fans.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Brubaker never get as famous and rich as he is without Marvel and DC in the first place. They gave him the platform and the character of Captain America to write about which he used.

In the case of Marvel, when Brubaker arrived this was a company that six years before was facing bankruptcy. Joe Quesada said in an interview that when he came in he had to alter a culture of arrogance whereby people before him and others had alienated and p--sed off a bunch of writers and artists because the attitude was "We are Marvel, you should be grateful to get scraps of this table" and Quesada had to alter that by going on an apology tour, liking paying a personal visit to Alan Moore in Northampton (where Moore hosted him graciously and politely accepted Quesada's apology for Marvel's bad dealing in past but politely declined he was done with superhero comics) and then Neil Gaiman which went better, (and led to him working at Marvel eventually). Likewise Grant Morrison. And then bringing in independent writers and others.

Ed Brubaker coming to Marvel was part of Quesada's soft-glove approach. So the moral of the story is that Marvel was an arrogant company that got into the pits as a result of that arrogance and that being humble and going hat-in-hand to creators is what led to Bendis, Brubaker and others working there. So I am sorry your pro-corporate propaganda is not only immoral or callous, it's not that it rests on a dubious assumption; it's just flat out wrong. It's historically wrong, and contextually wrong. It flies in the face of the 2000s-era Marvel. Whatever value any major brand or corporate structure or any major studio has as a "platform" ultimately whatever value and meaning and status that has as a "platform" is because of people.

Historically Marvel as a company originated as a truly mediocre and second-rate comic company from its origin to about 1961 -- it was inferior to all its peers (Harvey Comics, EC Comics, Quality Comics, Fawcett Comics, Dell Comics, National/DC Comics, several other newspaper strips and small publications). Captain America by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby was their one big success and then they drove away Kirby and Simon because they got uppity and they declined in quality once again becoming notorious for its serial layoffs. Then after Stan Lee drove away Ditko and Kirby, the company after a brief up period dipped badly in the mid-70s and what kept them afloat was simply a chance investment on a property that one of them thought was worth betting on -- and that property was Star Wars and the license to print comics which sold big when the movie arrived. You can point to some publications and studios as being driven by patronage but that will never ever apply to Marvel Comics. This is not any platform this is a company that time and time again got a bite of hubris, drove creators away paid a price and then got bailed out by luck by apology tours and so on.

I think many of you guys are trying to simplify this in a case like Brubaker. But take the guardians of the Galaxy and think how crazy complex this can get.

As has been mentioned countless times for your benefit, every situation is different. Reality is not allegory. Brubaker's situation of exploitation is not the same as Kirby, Moore and so on. And every situation has to be considered differently.

Going "what about Guardians" is a lame dodge.

Its impossible for Disney/ marvel to give some sort of fair deal of royalties to everyone who was involved at some point with the characters and other things within that movie.

It's not impossible at all.

Many of you are not thinking this through at all.

Quite the contrary. We have thought about this far more than you have, especially given your appeals to history and tradition without knowing a good deal about said history or tradition.

Quit writing things that create the idea we don’t know who the creators were. We here do know, because we are fans.

Some people prefer to be in denial, you know like people who can't accept the Civil War was about slavery, you have people who can't accept that their favorite characters are created by people with actual lives and names and feelings and wasn't magicked by a company by mere association. People assume that Marvel was always successful or that it's always going to be successful.

[gurkle]

I don't know you are getting into weeds when you start saying well writer A took character B in a totally different direction therefore he deserves more royalties than the writer who put a hammer in Jane Fosters Hand. Then you start to say well but if they make a movie somewhat based around that story then the writer deserves royalties. To me this is a giant headache.


Lets take this as an example. The kingpin dies in the comic. 3 years later another writer brings back The kingpin yet now he is a superhero fighting on the side of justice called the Kingman. Somewhere down the line at some point Marvel makes the kingpin a good guy in a movie. You are saying that writer who made the kingpin a good guy deserves royalties for that.

This is the kind of grey area movies and TV deal with all the time. When is something just "inspired by" or "influenced by" a work from another medium, and when do they actually need to pay the creators? That's why lawyers exist.

But all this started with Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's "Winter Soldier" story, and that's not a grey area at all. They didn't create the character of Bucky, but they created the story which the MCU used for their version of Bucky. No one's denying that, any more than they're denying that their version of Groot is the version Abnett and Lanning developed.

If the MCU had done a story where Bucky turns out to be still alive, but for a different reason and he was just Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier, then, no, that wouldn't be the same thing.

[inisideguy]

This is the kind of grey area movies and TV deal with all the time. When is something just "inspired by" or "influenced by" a work from another medium, and when do they actually need to pay the creators? That's why lawyers exist.

But all this started with Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's "Winter Soldier" story, and that's not a grey area at all. They didn't create the character of Bucky, but they created the story which the MCU used for their version of Bucky. No one's denying that, any more than they're denying that their version of Groot is the version Abnett and Lanning developed.



If the MCU had done a story where Bucky turns out to be still alive, but for a different reason and he was just Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier, then, no, that wouldn't be the same thing.

So you are saying that if the MCU uses a version of a character that someone didn't create but changed that the person deserves royalties for that. Ok who deserves the royalties for the vulture in spider-man homecoming. Or are you saying not so much the character but the story? Does brubaker want money for the winter solider movie? Or does he want money for everytime the MCU uses the winter soldier in anything for as long as he is alive? I mean if thats the case he would probably want royalties for anytime any writer uses the winter soldier in any comic as well right?

[gurkle]

So you are saying that if the MCU uses a version of a character that someone didn't create but changed that the person deserves royalties for that. Ok who deserves the royalties for the vulture in spider-man homecoming. Or are you saying not so much the character but the story? Does brubaker want money for the winter solider movie? Or does he want money for everytime the MCU uses the winter soldier in anything for as long as he is alive? I mean if thats the case he would probably want royalties for anytime any writer uses the winter soldier in any comic as well right?

These are things they would have to work out if they had a policy of compensating the creators of the Marvel stories they adapt. After the policy comes a bunch of lawyers and discussions and rules for when and how that policy applies.

But right now it's moot because the MCU can adapt any comics story for free.

[Alan2099]

This is the kind of grey area movies and TV deal with all the time. When is something just "inspired by" or "influenced by" a work from another medium, and when do they actually need to pay the creators? That's why lawyers exist.

But all this started with Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's "Winter Soldier" story, and that's not a grey area at all. They didn't create the character of Bucky, but they created the story which the MCU used for their version of Bucky. No one's denying that, any more than they're denying that their version of Groot is the version Abnett and Lanning developed.

If the MCU had done a story where Bucky turns out to be still alive, but for a different reason and he was just Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier, then, no, that wouldn't be the same thing.

So, are you saying anytime a movie uses a story that a comic writer works on they deserve royalties?

How much of a story do they need to use before they get them?

I mean, as a character, the movie Winter Soldier was quite different from the comic version.

The whole emotional angle of the movie was that Bucky used to be Steve's friend even before he became Captain America.
When Cap got enough pull, he put Bucky in his commando team.

Comic Bucky was some black Ops, wet works assassin assigned to work with Steve so he didn't get his hands dirty.

Movie Bucky was a common soldier that got turned into a living weapon against his will.
Comic Bucky was already halfway there before they did any brainwashing.

That's two very different takes on the character.

[inisideguy]

These are things they would have to work out if they had a policy of compensating the creators of the Marvel stories they adapt. After the policy comes a bunch of lawyers and discussions and rules for when and how that policy applies.

But right now it's moot because the MCU can adapt any comics story for free.

The thing is its not a straight line. And people on here keep acting like it is. I get some of the arguments but its not simple. And you are right thats what Lawyers are for. In all reality The winter soldier is Bucky. Yea he is changed. But so are a million other characters in comics over time. The MCU is adapting stories for sure. But good lord I am watching Agents of Shield. And in that show they are moving comic characters in and out all over the place. Ghost Rider just being one. Not the Johnny Blaze one. But hey Johnny Blaze was the original Ghost Rider. So the guy who created him deserves some money I would think. And then the guy who created the Robby Reyes Ghost rider probably deserves something. And well I couldn't tell you if they are adapting some of the stories that all of these Ghost Rider writers have done over time. Maybe they are I don't know every ghost rider story thats for sure. I mean we are not even getting into the cartoons, and various other merchandising issues. This is up to the writers and the company and the lawyers at the time when these things are being written. Brubaker isn't dumb. He knew what he was getting into when he sat down and wrote for marvel.

[inisideguy]

So, are you saying anytime a movie uses a story that a comic writer works on they deserve royalties?

How much of a story do they need to use before they get them?

I mean, as a character, the movie Winter Soldier was quite different from the comic version.

The whole emotional angle of the movie was that Bucky used to be Steve's friend even before he became Captain America.
When Cap got enough pull, he put Bucky in his commando team.

Comic Bucky was some black Ops, wet works assassin assigned to work with Steve so he didn't get his hands dirty.

Movie Bucky was a common soldier that got turned into a living weapon against his will.
Comic Bucky was already halfway there before they did any brainwashing.

That's two very different takes on the character.

Thanks I feel like I am crazy here. LOL

[Brian B]

Why don’t you all who are arguing against compensating comics creators for their creations want to see your favorite creators well compensated? These people created things that give your life a little joy. Don’t you want to see them paid well for their work?

[gurkle]

The thing is its not a straight line. And people on here keep acting like it is. I get some of the arguments but its not simple. And you are right thats what Lawyers are for. In all reality The winter soldier is Bucky. Yea he is changed. But so are a million other characters in comics over time. The MCU is adapting stories for sure. But good lord I am watching Agents of Shield. And in that show they are moving comic characters in and out all over the place. Ghost Rider just being one. Not the Johnny Blaze one. But hey Johnny Blaze was the original Ghost Rider. So the guy who created him deserves some money I would think. And then the guy who created the Robby Reyes Ghost rider probably deserves something. And well I couldn't tell you if they are adapting some of the stories that all of these Ghost Rider writers have done over time. Maybe they are I don't know every ghost rider story thats for sure. I mean we are not even getting into the cartoons, and various other merchandising issues. This is up to the writers and the company and the lawyers at the time when these things are being written. Brubaker isn't dumb. He knew what he was getting into when he sat down and wrote for marvel.

Oh, I totally get that it isn't a straight line. That's why we're talking about one of the few MCU movies where it really is a straight line -- I mean they called it The Winter Soldier and invited Brubaker to make a cameo, so they weren't pretending it wasn't an adaptation of his story. If they had adapted a novel and changed all the things they changed, they would still have had to pay the author.

Other times, obviously, the line isn't as clear. "WandaVision" was announced as being influenced by "House of M" and Tom King's "Vision" comic, but all it had in common with the former was "Wanda creates her own reality" and it didn't take anything from the latter except the name of the dog. Where would the line be drawn if they had a different policy, what could MCU take or not take from the comics... I have no idea. It's not my business anyway.

But it's definitely the case that if a movie company adapted one of Brubaker's creator-owned comics, and changed as much of it as the MCU changed of Winter Soldier, he'd be entitled to a big payday. He's not claiming that Marvel cheated him or that they have any legal requirement to pay him for adapting his story... but why shouldn't he feel bad about it?

[inisideguy]

Why don’t you all who are arguing against compensating comics creators for their creations want to see your favorite creators well compensated? These people created things that give your life a little joy. Don’t you want to see them paid well for their work?

Are you saying you know Brubakers annual salary? How do you know he isn't well compensated for what he does? I am not claiming I know. Heck he could have bought apple stock 10 years ago. He works a lot as far as I can see. But I don't know what he is paid, or what his financial situation is.