Jupiter's Legacy #2

[superboyprime]

"Back in the Sixties, artists and writers would go to the company and get ripped off. Now artists are going to the writers ...and getting ripped off. There are so many people drawing books, but owning only a small percentage, and yet, there are no articles about this. The artist is getting some revenue from publishing, but nothing on merchandise, or movie deals. The writer sometimes stays on as a screenwriter, then front-loads the deal so they get tonnes of cash for the screenplay, and the rights are much smaller.

"I want to set the standard by making it 50-50 in terms of cash and producer credits. It's not that I think I'm a good guy for doing it, just that you're a bad guy if you don't!" - Mark Millar

Comments

[freezer]

We've already got Marvel Ultimate and New52... Do we need another asshole-filled superhero universe?

[espanolbot]

Well no one reads Ultimate Marvel anymore, so an opening has appeared, I guess.

[q99]

As long as they're off in their own titles like this, I don't mind.

Assholefication of existing non-asshole universes and too big of an overall trend is what I have issue with.

[icon_uk]

Re Millar's comments. I'm reminded of the pact made by British comedy double act Morecambe and Wise (For those who've never seen them they are considered to be the epitome of TV comedy double acts, and were the biggest stars on British TV back in the day). The agreement was, more or less.

1) Never argue over which of us gets the punchline as long as there's a laugh from the audience.
2) Split everything we make 50-50, every time.

They never made a big deal of it, but they kept to this deal for their entire working careers, which was forty years as a double act, and when Morecambe had to step down to recover for a significant period of time from a heart attack in the middle of it, Wise would send through half of everything he made from solo appearances (even things like opening supermarkets) because he knew that any fame he had he had because of their partnership, and so the pact applied. Always struck me as one of the best examples of professionalism I'd heard of.

[korvar]

Personally, I'm not sure a 50/50 split is fair - the artist puts in a whole lot more work than the writer. A quote, that may be from He Who Shall Not Be Named: "The writer is dating the comic. The artist is married to it."

Of course, given how different and yet intertwined the jobs of artist and writer are, I'm not sure how it could be reasonably divvied up... 50/50 has the advantage of being simple :D

[icon_uk]

Not sure I'd agree, a different sort of effort rather than less effort I'd say.

A writer puts a LOT of work into the story that the artists tells. In the superhero/sci-fi/fantasy realms there would be the worldbuilding as well as the characters and backgrounds etc.. Who has more input into something like Astro City for example?

Even if the art is bad, the story can still shine through, and the inverse is true too of course (As someone else once said "You can wrap a turd in pretty ribbons, it'll still attract the flies")

50/50 is like going Dutch, and allows for a little toing and froing from issue to issue.

[captainbellman]

In some cases I'd say the artist puts in more work - for instance, there's only a few people who could be pulled in to replicate Frank Quitely's work on Jupiter's Legacy, and I could count them on my hand, whereas any chucklehead from the Big Two could have penned the above script. For the majority of them, it wouldn't be much of a challenge.

Whereas you also get writers like Alan Moore, whose Kubrickian sense of detail and control almost seems to outweigh the contribution made by the artist's individual stylistic choices.

[panthyr]

It is true, that no one else draws hideous potato people quite like Quitely. Not really a selling point for me. Nor is the universe of super-assholes Millar thinks are "cool and likeable".

[korvar]

However, onsider the number of comics an artist can do in a month, verses the number of comics an writer can do in a month. Most writers seem to be on more than one book a month; most artists only on one.

I also don't think you can underestimate the story-telling contribution of the artist.

Having said all that, 50/50 is a big improvement on what artists usually get!

[turtlefu]

What does that top quote have anything to do with the comic?

[icon_uk]

Perhaps nothing directly, but it's an interesting quote on the genre by the writer of the comic beaing featured.

[turtlefu]

Yeah, I just didn't know if there was something I was missing or a segway that wasn't there or something? I was just confused. Like, if the following pages illustrated Quitely's increased involvement in the comic or something.

[skjam]

Maybe it came from an interview about the series, Millar hinting that we should buy copies to give Quitely a decent payday.

[mrstatham]

Given it's an Image book, very much this. The creator owned stuff at Image, as great as it is, basically relies on the creators taking a gamble and being willing to do the work in the hopes the book will sell; In some instances - your Morning Glories, your Manhattan Projects, great - they'll sell. In others, like Butcher Baker, not so much, which is why that took forever to come out; The artist went to do The Strain at Dark Horse because he needed to put bread on the table with a consistent monthly job.

[espanolbot]

Wait a second... isn't this a repackaged version of that comic Noble Causes? A dysfunctional family of superheroes who have to be extremely media savvy due to their internal strife, with a distant father figure who is disappointed in his children, and whose teenage daughter gets pregnant (via her family's archenemy due to a pattern of selfdestructive behaviour she developed for reasons I won't go into here)?

Although the Noble family have kind of more of a Marvel slant compared to Jupiter's Legacy's DC-inspired outlook, with the father of the Noble's being kind of an expy of Reed Richards (with none of the redeeming qualities), the mother being a female version of Stephen Strange or Clea, etc.

[dc2houseofmystery]

I hate hate *hate* Millar's approach to dialogue. No one talks with that much exposition! That like about secret identities is so superfluous, just one more example of Millar needing a REALLY strong (brave?) editor.

[mrosa]

There used to be a time when Frank Quitely looked like one of the greatest comic book artists of all times...

[silicondream]

Not entirely sure why the surviving dude with "strength, speed, sonic screams and optic blasts" doesn't just retreat about ten feet and then blast Hutch to smithereens. So far as I can see from the rest of the comic, Hutch isn't invulnerable or superspeedy himself.

Millar apparently describes Hutch as "our Han Solo. Incredibly funny, cool and likeable." I'm not feeling it so far.