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Post by Cei-U! on Sept 5, 2019 8:13:31 GMT -5
This isn't about writers telling execs how to do their job, but now that you mention it, would that be any radically different from execs telling writers how to do their job, or are you implying that writers shouldn't have any of their creative freedom at all as long as they're working for DC or Marvel? Having worked as a freelance writer in the gaming industry for a number of years, I get the struggle between meeting client's demands and wanting creative freedom, but at the end of the day the creative choices belong to who's signing the paychecks. As a freelancer you have a choice if you don't like those decisions, do what you are paid despite not liking it, or or leave the assignment and look for another one. How much you have in the bank and how much clout to get an assignment form someone else when you don't do the job you were hired for informs a lot of the decision you make in that decision. It's work-for-hire, you are being hired to do what your client hired you to do. It's not a matter of creative freedom, it's a matter of understanding what the actual job is that you were hired to do. If the company hires you and says you have carte blanche creative freedom, that's one thing, but that is rarely the case in comics any longer, and hasn't been for a very long time. And when you take the job, you should understand what it is you are agreeing to, if not, you are either not doing your due diligence or are having sevrely unrealistic expectations about the gig. -M Exactly. To use a rather dated analogy, if you're hired to write an episode of Friends, you don't complain because they won't let you turn Ross into a serial killer. If you're a true professional, you write within the creative parameters of the assignment. If there's room for experimentation or personal expression, great. If not, suck it up and do your job.
And actually, Big Two comics writers have more creative freedom than writers of episodic TV. Sometimes too much of it, if you ask me.
Cei-U! Is feeling feisty this AM!
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Post by electricmastro on Sept 5, 2019 14:36:23 GMT -5
This isn't about writers telling execs how to do their job, but now that you mention it, would that be any radically different from execs telling writers how to do their job, or are you implying that writers shouldn't have any of their creative freedom at all as long as they're working for DC or Marvel? If the company hires you and says you have carte blanche creative freedom, that's one thing, but that is rarely the case in comics any longer, and hasn't been for a very long time. Having worked as a freelance writer in the gaming industry for a number of years, I get the struggle between meeting client's demands and wanting creative freedom, but at the end of the day the creative choices belong to who's signing the paychecks. As a freelancer you have a choice if you don't like those decisions, do what you are paid despite not liking it, or or leave the assignment and look for another one. How much you have in the bank and how much clout to get an assignment form someone else when you don't do the job you were hired for informs a lot of the decision you make in that decision. It's work-for-hire, you are being hired to do what your client hired you to do. It's not a matter of creative freedom, it's a matter of understanding what the actual job is that you were hired to do. If the company hires you and says you have carte blanche creative freedom, that's one thing, but that is rarely the case in comics any longer, and hasn't been for a very long time. And when you take the job, you should understand what it is you are agreeing to, if not, you are either not doing your due diligence or are having sevrely unrealistic expectations about the gig. -M If there's room for experimentation or personal expression, great. Well then you both have perhaps just summed up what's possible one of the biggest issues in the modern comics industry then, that there's a lack of willingness for creative freedom, experimentation, or personal expression. Just because there exists the idea of "that's just how it is"/"companies don't have to change their ways" or whatever unproductive "working standards" you both want to repeat doesn't mean it *should* always be that way, should it? I get you're both attempting to describe reality, but even companies like Marvel or DC can be capable of admitting when standards have to change and reality isn't always assigned on one path. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 5, 2019 18:38:02 GMT -5
If the company hires you and says you have carte blanche creative freedom, that's one thing, but that is rarely the case in comics any longer, and hasn't been for a very long time. If there's room for experimentation or personal expression, great. Well then you both have perhaps just summed up what's possible one of the biggest issues in the modern comics industry then, that there's a lack of willingness for creative freedom, experimentation, or personal expression. Just because there exists the idea of "that's just how it is"/"companies don't have to change their ways" or whatever unproductive "working standards" you both want to repeat doesn't mean it *should* always be that way, should it? I get you're both attempting to describe reality, but even companies like Marvel or DC can be capable of admitting when standards have to change and reality isn't always assigned on one path. Why exactly do they need to "admit" that standards need to change? You clearly think they do, but that doesn't mean that everyone agrees with you. Marvel and DC are IP farms for their parent companies. DC and Marvel are not "the modern comics industry." They are subsidiaries of multi-national corporations and as such they are never going to be a vehicle for creative freedom, experimentation, or personal expression. The times they have been have been the rare exception. There are plenty of places within the actual industry where creators can experiment and exercise their creative freedom. |
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Post by electricmastro on Sept 5, 2019 19:22:51 GMT -5
And I think there's a lot of truth to what Hickman's saying even from a business standpoint - Marvel and DC should want new characters and IP that can be featured in movies, games, and action figures... as Hickman did with the Black Order. A lot of current Marvel and DC characters are between 40 and 80 years old, which makes it a little difficult for them to capture the current cultural zeitgeist. Yeah, now that you said that, there may be some truth to Marvel and DC getting updated for the times, in a productive and interesting way, even when considering the business standpoints and all of that. |
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Post by berkley on Sept 5, 2019 21:23:09 GMT -5
Having worked as a freelance writer in the gaming industry for a number of years, I get the struggle between meeting client's demands and wanting creative freedom, but at the end of the day the creative choices belong to who's signing the paychecks. As a freelancer you have a choice if you don't like those decisions, do what you are paid despite not liking it, or or leave the assignment and look for another one. How much you have in the bank and how much clout to get an assignment form someone else when you don't do the job you were hired for informs a lot of the decision you make in that decision. It's work-for-hire, you are being hired to do what your client hired you to do. It's not a matter of creative freedom, it's a matter of understanding what the actual job is that you were hired to do. If the company hires you and says you have carte blanche creative freedom, that's one thing, but that is rarely the case in comics any longer, and hasn't been for a very long time. And when you take the job, you should understand what it is you are agreeing to, if not, you are either not doing your due diligence or are having sevrely unrealistic expectations about the gig. -M Exactly. To use a rather dated analogy, if you're hired to write an episode of Friends, you don't complain because they won't let you turn Ross into a serial killer. If you're a true professional, you write within the creative parameters of the assignment. If there's room for experimentation or personal expression, great. If not, suck it up and do your job.
And actually, Big Two comics writers have more creative freedom than writers of episodic TV. Sometimes too much of it, if you ask me.
Cei-U! Is feeling feisty this AM!
That isn't what mrp is talking about though: Marvel or DC would be quite happy to to have Ross written as a serial killer - if it sold. They aren't concerned with the integrity of the concept, just its profitability. They want creators to do what they're told, including things like making Ross a serial killer if that's what they decide. |
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Post by berkley on Sept 5, 2019 23:36:18 GMT -5
Well, ideally all these things would be public domain so yes, creators would be as free to do what they want with them as they are with, say, Dracula or whatever the case may be.
That doesn't mean that, if someone comes up with what I think is a real dumb idea for a Dracula story - "Let's make him a kung-fu expert instead of a vampire!" - I'm not going to feel free to tell everyone how dumb I think it is, just as I feel free to tell everyone how ill-conceived I think something like Tom King's Mister Miracle was.
As usual we're speaking in absolutes but really there's a balance and give and take. I could go along with the idea of companies being the caretakers of these characters, providing loose, general guidelines to avoid crazy departures that empty a concept of any meaning, if that's what they actually did, but they don't, really - they actually have made Dr. Strange a womaniser, funnily enough, as well as a wise-cracking Tony Stark-style sleazebag. Hickman himself has come up with some pretty bad ideas about the Celestials that management did nothing to hinder. So I don't think we'd be any worse off in that regard if the creators were given more free reign.
Anyway, I think what Hickman was warning against - and I can't believe I've been defending him here, since I really don't rate him much as a writer - is more a kind of group-think that makes everything a kind of bland, samey, tasteless product, not carte-blanche to just write whatever silly nonsense comes into your head. And a lot of writers have commented the last few years that Marvel in particular has gotten worse in this respect - Richard Corben comes to mind, for example.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Sept 6, 2019 0:32:10 GMT -5
Exactly. To use a rather dated analogy, if you're hired to write an episode of Friends, you don't complain because they won't let you turn Ross into a serial killer. If you're a true professional, you write within the creative parameters of the assignment. If there's room for experimentation or personal expression, great. If not, suck it up and do your job.
And actually, Big Two comics writers have more creative freedom than writers of episodic TV. Sometimes too much of it, if you ask me.
Cei-U! Is feeling feisty this AM!
That isn't what mrp is talking about though: Marvel or DC would be quite happy to to have Ross written as a serial killer - if it sold. They aren't concerned with the integrity of the concept, just its profitability. They want creators to do what they're told, including things like making Ross a serial killer if that's what they decide. I mean, that might get me to watch Friends. |
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Post by berkley on Sept 6, 2019 3:28:42 GMT -5
Yeah, I know what you mean and I'm not married to the idea that it's quantitatively (if there were any way to quantify this) worse now than, say, the Shooter era, or the 90s when every artist apparently had to draw like Jim Lee or whoever, or the early 70s when Stan suddenly decided that every cover had to have dialogue balloons because the stats said they sold better.
OTOH, I would say that in each era this managerial interference takes a form specific to that era, and today it happens to be stuff like the movies, event-driven storylines that affect every series, and a lot of the characters sounding kind of the same (as opposed to for example the 90s, when all the artists started to look kind of the same).
So it's understandable that readers and creators will compare today to previous eras and think, some particular flavour of interference is more prevalent today even if the interference was always there, just in a different form.
And I think it's good that writers and artists resist this kind of control as much as they can - which may not be very much, in practical terms, but even a token resistance is something. I think you're more likely to get better, more interesting stories if commercially driven managerial control over the creative side is kept to a minimum. Taken in that spirit, I still like what Hickman is saying.
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