|
Citation: |
|
|
Posté par Magda |
|
|
|
|
|
Ce n'est pas une news, mais cela concerne DC et c'est réellement scandaleux de leur part sérieusement:
|
Citation: |
|
|
|
|
Un nouveau scandale de royalties entre DC et ses artistes
C'est l'auteur Gerry Conway, (co-)créateur de centaines de personnages pour l'éditeur aux deux lettres, qui vient de tirer la sonnette d'alarme. DC, via des pratiques légales un poil douteuses, prive progressivement ses auteurs du crédit qui leur revient lors de la création d'un héros, à commencer par les royalties, qui permettent aux artistes de ne pas vivre de leurs seuls planches et scénarios.
Depuis son Tumblr, le scénariste (a qui on doit, en partie, le personnage du Punisher, de Firestorm ou encore des moments forts comme la mort de Gwen Stacy) a donc décidé d'exposer la situation.
Une participation jadis équitable
Il commence par expliquer le concept de "creator equity participation", mis en place par l'éditeur il y a plusieurs années de cela. Une protection légale qui permet aux auteurs de toucher une part minime mais bien réelle des bénéfices générés par un média qui utiliserait leurs personnages. Gerry Conway explique par exemple qu'il a touché de l'argent lorsque Killer Croc est apparu dans Batman : The Animated Series. Ce principe fut longtemps appliqué de manière proactive et limpide dans les locaux de DC, notamment sous l'impulsion de Paul Levitz, ancien artiste devenu éditeur, sensible à la condition de ses scénaristes et dessinateurs.
Malheureusement, tout a changé, selon Conway, lorsque DC comics est devenu officiellement DC Entertainment. Un changement qui ne s'est pas fait sentir tout de suite, mais qui est devenu bien réel pour Gerry Conway lorsqu'on lui a expliqué qu'il ne recevrait plus d'argent pour Power Girl, qui était désormais considérée comme un personnage "dérivé" (nous reviendrons sur cette notion). En guise de compensation, l'auteur reçut alors un chèque de 1000 dollars.
Dérives et personnages dérivés
Devenu superflu, le concept de "creator equity participation" n'est également plus proactif. C'est désormais à Gerry Conway, et aux auteurs en général, d'aller chercher les références faites à leurs créations dans les différentes médias, ce qui permet à DC d'économiser son chéquier : imaginez un peu le temps qu'il faut à un artiste comme Conway pour repérer toutes les apparitions de ses personnages dans la masse de produits à base de super-héros.
Revenons maintenant sur le principe de personnages "dérivés", qui est l'arme de DC dans cet affrontement avec les auteurs. Il s'agit d'une définition légale qui, en gros, permet de définir un personnage comme un simple dérivé, une évolution d'un autre personnage. Par exemple, Power Girl est désormais considérée comme un dérivé de Superman, comme Superboy et Supergirl. Cette définition permettant à l'éditeur de revenir, éventuellement, jusqu'à un personnage qui lui appartient entièrement, ou du moins, à une situation plus avantageuse. Une logique douteuse, et d'un autre âge, comme l'explique Conway, puisque sa dernière utilisation remonte aux années 1940 lorsque National Periodical Publications (l'ancêtre de DC) cherchait à récupérer les droits de Superboy des mains de Siegel et Shuster, en invoquant le lien qu'il partage avec Superman, pour ne pas avoir à payer l'utilisation des deux personnages.
Ce principe suppose ainsi que la plupart des héros de comic books (on trouvera toujours un lien avec un personnage plus vieux) ne sont pas de vraies créations. Ce qui, en plus d'être irrespectueux, n'est ni éthique ni moral. Pire encore, si un personnage connaît plusieurs alter-ego (c'est le cas de Killer Frost, co-crée par Conway), ce seront les créateurs de sa première identité qui bénéficieront de royalties, pas leurs successeurs. Car la seconde identité du personnage n'est que variation de la première. La première n'étant qu'une variation d'un autre personnage, si on suit la logique de DC.
Ce qui mène Gerry Conway à penser que les personnages de DC seront bientôt créés par personne, venus au monde sans créateurs. Cela arrange forcément l'éditeur, qui n'a alors plus personne à payer. Une approche inédite de la paternité créative que tous les lecteurs de comics devraient connaître et dénoncer. |
|
|
|
|
Les gens impliqués dans ce problème chez DC devraient être honteux sérieusement. |
|
|
|
|
Tiens pourquoi ne pas donner la réponse de DC et ce qu'en a pensé Gerry Conway aujourd'hui?
|
Citation: |
|
|
Posté par Dan Didio et Jim Lee |
|
|
|
|
Dear Talent,
DC Entertainment’s talent community is extraordinarily important to us, and we value your many contributions to DC’s legendary stable of characters and world-class stories. We pride ourselves on being the premier destination for top talent.
Recently, there have been questions regarding DC’s credit and equity policies, and we wish to assure you that no changes have been made to either of these policies that in any way diminish the credit or equity that we’ve been extending to our talent for nearly four decades…
As part of our ongoing mission to attract and retain the best artists and writers in the industry, we are looking to build off of and improve on current practices by finding ways to increase the frequency of such payments and to proactively compensate equity stakeholders above and beyond the usual standards when their characters are the driving principals of new productions. With the dramatic increase in the use of DC characters across all media, there will be more and more uses of our characters across our businesses. This is great news for all of you!
We have tremendous respect for the creative contributions of the writers and artists who bring DC’s characters to life, as reflected by our long-standing business practice of rewarding talent for those valuable contributions. We welcome any questions you may have about credit, character equity or any other matter as we continue our efforts to improve the ways we recognize, compensate and reward our talent.
Sincerely,
Dan & Jim |
|
|
|
|
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/05/...s-to-creators/
|
Citation: |
|
|
Posté par Gerry Conway |
|
|
|
|
First, I want to thank Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns for reaching out to me yesterday, in response to last week’s Tumblr post about my issues with DC Entertainment’s handling of its creators equity program.
I figure, since I made this issue public, I owe it to these men to thank them publicly for their calls. I believe they’re sincere in their reassurances that DC wants to do right by creators, as they both told me personally, and as Dan DiDio and Jim Lee stated in their press release yesterday. I can’t imagine that Dan wanted to talk to me after I ripped into DC in such a public way, but he was incredibly nice, and I truly appreciate his kind and thoughtful words. Ditto for Geoff, who’s always been very generous to me– starting when we shared a stage at a convention in Gijon, Spain almost fourteen years ago.
Good people, both of them. I believe they’re going to make a valiant effort to clarify and strengthen DC’s approach to creators’ equity. As I told Dan in a follow up email, since I complained loudly about DC’s current policy, it’s only fair that I offer some practical suggestions (and not just incessant negative whining, which I’m all too good at).
So, here we go, two suggestions to help DC address the issue of creator equity, offered in a spirit of cooperation and in appreciation of Dan and Geoff’s generous effort at outreach. (I’m really, really impressed they didn’t just tell me to jump off Gotham Bridge.)
First, DC could clearly articulate its policy for compensating creators of both original and derivative characters. (Apparently DC does have a policy to compensate creators of derivative characters like Caitlin Snow and Jason Todd, something I was unaware of; I’m still not certain how it works.) If DC wants to keep “derivative” characters out of the equity program, it could articulate a simple and consistent principle for how creators of derivative characters will be compensated.
Second, DC could accept responsibility to proactively offer equity contracts for original characters used in other media. Right now it’s up to creators to contact DC. Make it DC’s policy to take charge of this. That information is easily accessible both on the public Internet and in DC’s own corporate records. DC can track character use and make sure all creators of original characters are offered an equity contract as soon as DC becomes aware the character will appear in another medium — either as a toy, or in a video game, or in a film or movie or a book. It’s the right thing to do, and from a public relations point of view, it’s just good corporate policy.
I truly believe Dan and Geoff and Jim Lee and Diane Nelson all want to do right by DC’s creators. Sometimes corporate policy takes on an inertia of its own separate from the people guiding it. There’s no ill will in cases like this: it’s hard to stay on top of everything, and often the people who are charged with executing a policy aren’t aware of what the people who instituted the policy really want to accomplish.
(That’s what leads to a lot of government scandals, after all. Good intentions filtered through bureaucratic misinterpretation.)
It’s up to us – creators and fans – to alert the policy makers when their policies aren’t working the way they intend.
Corporations move slowly and inexorably in predetermined paths, much like cruise ships. It’s hard to make them change course dramatically. But a small change can have a great effect. Just ask the passengers of the Titanic. If someone had alerted the crew to alter course by one small degree, it would have missed that iceberg by a mile.
You an also hear him talk about the issue on the Fire And Water Podcast, about how movies and TV shows are plumbing the seventies and eighties for characters and talking with Dan DiDio
When I talked with Dan about it, I did sense there was a certain element of of bewilderment on his part that I was upset because from their point of view, there’s is nothing different about what they were doing, The problem is not the policy that they believed they have in place, the problem is the policy that has settled into place through the bureaucracy of the corporate inertia. It’s one thing to say. we want to compensate creators for the characters that they create, so we have this process we think is very fair, all a creator has to do is provide a request… it all seems very nice, but it’s in the execution that things become problematic and I don’t think anybody at DC was really aware of that in the visceral way that my tumblr post waded out . Or were really aware of that their approach to derivative characters could be perceived the way that my tumblr post had waded out.
One of the things that came up in conversations, was that they feel like they’ve got a way to compensate people for derivative characters. And as they explained it to me, they kinda do. Problem is that it’s not really clear how that’s supposed to work on a functioning basis. I don;t think the the people they put in charge of executing that policy even aware the policy existed. It’s a communication issue. I was really touched and very flattered that they reached out and talked to me about it….
I did try to address this with DC for several years, dealing with the people who were in charge of executing this policy. What I got back was the stonewalling that led me to express the frustration that I felt.
And I thnk that took DC by surprise |
|
|
|
|
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/05/...ator-payments/
__________________
Alan Moore :
"I should just keep me mouth shut, I just upset people."
|