it could be argued (and has been argued) that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster received very adequate compensation for SUPERMAN as a comicbook story when seen against the backdrop of industry rates at the time. What couldn’t have been anticipated by these two “boy geniuses” is the impact a comicbook story could have on a new and expanding youth market through toys, radio programs, television and, eventually, big-budget Hollywood films. Fortunately, the creative rights climate in America and in it’s comics industry has changed since then and every couple of fans with a pencil, some ink and idea are on the lookout for preparing for cross-over success. Not being able to understand how a work of your own hand can be used, or abused, in this market climate as a property would be backward and short-sighted.

But you’re right. If a story is not a work of personal art first, then you certainly would be better off looking for a career in game design these days. Comics is still, and will always remain, a drudgery business that requires the dedication, unwavering commitment and damn-near foolishness of “doing-it-for-art’s-sake” attitudes to generate the best and personal properties.

But there’s really a much more narrow margin of break-through success than people new on the scene seem to understand. Chris Ware’s amazingly cogent graphic novel JIMMY CORRIGAN took over a decade to make and is generally referred to as a benchmark of what can be done in the language of comics. it sells in bookstores and comicshops with equal strength and regularity years later, and there’s almost always talk of it being made into a movie. Still, its hardly a household word or pop culture idiom like HARRY POTTER. Must everyone who has any distant awareness of comics as an artform is distantly familiar with the idea behind MAUS, but I’m yet to see the Vladek and Artie action figures in a comicshop, let alone at Toys-R-Us.

In fact, there’s really not that many people making a stable let alone comfortable living out of comics and graphic novels these days. One might argue that this balloon of creator rights issue, as necessary and well-intended as the might have once been haven’t helped people keep their jobs in a collapsing market. Remember though, I’m from working class Detroit, and a little leery of people telling me how i should expect more than just a paycheck for doing a good job. It doesn’t always seem to work out that way.

Yeah, i think we should be aware of our work as a property and the rights we have if that property can be moved into a bigger market than what we’d do with it on our own. But what we’re making here is stories and their market forces at work in the world that can turn those stories into properties and those properties into the thing they’re really looking for, traffic and commodity, are in it to make a living just as we all are.
-Rob

There are different ways to sell stuff – so like there’s ’sports people’ and ‘action movie people’ and ‘opera people’ and then ‘comics people’. People that are into comics can be sold a whole subset of ’specialty products’ like anime and manga because they are aware of these things and care to know more. Someone who’s ’sailing people’ is not likely to notice/care about the difference.

So yeah – while you or I may have a liking to a genre like ‘historical drama’ and then go out and enjoy movies, novels, comics, manga and anime that all fit that genre, the marketplace definition divides things differently, and sadly, marketplace language spills over into the common vernacular all too often.

(I hate HATE the word ‘property’ to describe a story)