The thing to think about is, if you want to wake up one day and say … this is what I want to do for a living, and you get the freelancer mindset– that “cheap research and development” could end up being a very decent living for an illustrator.

Get yourself some royalties or bonuses, shared rights, and you’re made in the shade if your lucky ticket wins the lottery. But don’t bank on it.

DC does publish a lot of creator-owned books, mostly through its Vertigo imprint…. but then this doesn’t seem to have netted them a multi-movie-size hit yet.

The Keanu Reeves-starring film CONSTANTINE (based on the DC/Vertigo comic HELLBLAZER) made $230 million at the box office. Reeves has expressed interest in doing a sequel.

And I agree with T that Gary’s attempts to define a Aquaman-size hit dilute his point. I can name a number of franchises that are huge now and will probably outlive us all. I’ll start with Alien, as in the Giger creation, (movies, comics, novels, video games, toys), Transformers (toys, cartoons, movies) and Garfield (comics, toys, movies, video games).

But fantastic article none-the-less.

If I worked at Warner today, I’d be watching conversations like this one, taking notes and taking meetings, determining how much money the WB would need to commit to make that “digital slush pile” designation go away forever. I mean, I certainly would have put specific compensation for freelancers into the press release if I thought it was attractive, and if I knew what it was.

Gary, your essay goes off the rails when you try to define what an “Aquaman-sized hit” is, and how many there have been in the last thirty years. Those are murky waters you’re wading into. And there are motives behind Zuda you haven’t covered, such as “getting into this Web 2.0 thingamazoo that’s making the kids all jitterbuggy with their citizen journo and their iWalkmans.”

But the above are quibbles. Your main points, that Warner and not DC is behind this, and that it has its eye on a bigger prize, are well argued, and well taken.

The thing people keep ignoring is that DC publishes A LOT of creator-owned books, not just company-owned books. DC definitely gets a cut of the profits from creator-owned books like DMZ and Transmet and whatever, and they deserve a cut, because it’s their marketing budgets that get those books on so many bookshelves, and it’s presumably their marketing budget that will get Zuda in front of eyes, too.

But full of shit? Consider this line from the press release:

… said Paul Levitz, DC Comics President & Publisher. “We want … for the creators to share in the profits their creations can generate.”

Sounds generous. But it’s parsed in terms of what DC/Zuda will grant to creators, instead of what a creator gives up (which, since DC/Zuda are allowing the creator a share of the profits, would be ownership of the creation; if this were not the case, DC/Zuda would not logically be in a position to share “any” profits). If I were to create a year’s worth of webcomics (as per the press release), I wouldn’t want to share the profits of my creation, I’d want (and I don’t think it’s unreasonable) all of them.

What DC/Zuda bring to the table, and what they expect to get out of it are still to be quantified. But it’s up to them to justify their worth and the costs to the creators, and every creator is right in the meantime to be skeptical.